Service-oriented computing

Article By:

Papazoglou, Michael P. Computer Science Department and INFOLAB, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Last reviewed:2009

Service-oriented computing (SOC) is the computing paradigm that uses software services (or simply services) as fundamental elements for developing and deploying distributed software applications. Services are self-describing, platform-agnostic computational elements that support rapid, low-cost composition of distributed applications. Services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes. They allow organizations to expose their core competencies programmatically via a self-describing interface based on open standards over the Internet (or intranet) using standard, for example, XML-based (Extensible Markup Language), languages and protocols. Because services provide uniform and ubiquitous information distribution for a wide range of computing devices (such as handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, or appliances) and software platforms (such as UNIX® or Windows®), they constitute the next major step in distributed computing. See also: Scientific workflows

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