Characteristics of SOA services

Granularity

Size / Scope of service

Encapsulation

Separation of interface form implementation

Modularity

Business processes can be decomposed into services which can be decomposed into smaller services

Loose-Coupling

Minimise dependancies to increase flexibilities

Isolation of Responsibilities

Similar functionality / information should be grouped into services

Autonomy

Services should be designed / implemented / deployed independently of each other

Re-Use

Functionality and Information should be re-used to prevent duplication of services

Dynamic Discovery / Binding

Services should be discovered at design time and bound at run time with dynamic service repositories

Stateless

Services don’t remember previous interactions – each interaction is wholly contained and independent from other interactions

Self-Describing

The SLA should describe the interface

Composable

Smaller services can be combined to create other services which, in turn can be combined to create other services.

Governed

Policies should describe how different users can use the services

Independent of Location, Language + Protocol

Authorised users should be able to use the service regardless of location, platform and language