7. Conclusion

The SOA style of architecture, defined by loose coupling, stateless and highly interoperable services, is not new in itself. These principles have been recommended since the early days of computing. What has changed is the context. With the Internet, it's easy to access any service anywhere in the world. The URI associated with DNS (Domain Name System) provides a free global naming and addressing infrastructure, the cost of which would be beyond the reach of any company of any size. XML/HTML defines a single syntax for all documents which, combined with the Unicode utf-8 encoding, enables all the world's alphabets to be represented. Today, the interoperability of services, i.e. their interconnection without specific programming, depends solely on the adoption of standard data vocabularies, which is well underway in many fields (see schema.org). In this context, SOA is a must. Companies with...