Anyone even peripherally exposed to business media that touch on enterprise application technology has seen the term service-oriented architecture (SOA) bandied about in advertisements and articles. Major enterprise applications vendors are using the term SOA as a marketing buzzword and are indeed moving their product offerings in directions that deliver the flexibility and total application cost reductions that SOA can offer. But given the central role that SOA is playing in information technology, it is important for professionals involved with specifying and purchasing enterprise applications to get beyond a buzzword level understanding of what SOA is and what it is not.
