Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and development is a paradigm where software components are created with concise interfaces, and each component performs a discrete set of related functions. With its well-defined interface and contract for usage, each component, provides a service to other software components. This is analogous to an accountant who provides a service to a business, even though that service consists of many related functions—bookkeeping, tax filing, investment management, and so on.

There are no technology requirements or restrictions with SOA. You can build a service in any language with standards such as CORBA, remote procedure calls (RPC), or XML. Although SOA has been around as a concept for years, its vague definition makes it difficult to identify. The client/server development model of the early '90s was a simple example of an SOA-based approach to software development.

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