Understanding Service Oriented Architecture(SOA)

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a software design methodology based on structured collections of discrete software modules, known as services, that collectively provide the complete functionality of a large or complex software application.

SOA defines how to integrate widely disparate applications for a Web-based environment and uses multiple implementation platforms. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality. An endpoint is the entry point for such a SOA implementation. XML is often used for interfacing with SOA services.

Oracle SOA Suite 

Oracle SOA Suite is a comprehensive, hot-pluggable software suite to build, deploy and manage Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). The components of the suite benefit from common capabilities including consistent tooling, a single deployment and management model, end-to-end security and unified metadata management. Oracle SOA Suite enables system developers to set up and manage services and to orchestrate them into composite applications and business processes.

Components

The products contained in this suite are listed below:

BPEL Process Manager: BPEL is the standard for assembling a set of discrete services into an end-to-end process flow, radically reducing the cost and complexity of process integration initiatives. Oracle BPEL Process Manager offers a comprehensive and easy-to-use infrastructure for creating, deploying and managing BPEL business processes. 

Business Rules: Oracle Business Rules is a high performance lightweight business rules product that addresses the requirements for agility, business control, and transparency. It is part of the Fusion Middleware stack and integrates seamlessly across the entire Oracle SOA Suite and BPM Suite stack. It is also a core component for present and future Oracle Fusion Middleware and Fusion Applications products.

Oracle Service Bus: Oracle Service Bus transforms complex architectures into agile integration networks by connecting, mediating, and managing interactions between services and applications. Oracle Service Bus delivers low-cost, standards-based integration for mission critical SOA environments where extreme performance and scalability are requirements.

Oracle Web Service Manager: Oracle Web Services Manager offers a comprehensive and easy-to-use solution for policy management and security of service infrastructure. It provides visibility and control of the policies through a centralized administration interface offered by Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Human Workflow: Human Workflow component is responsible for managing the lifecycle of human tasks, including creation, assignment, expiration, deadlines, and notifications, as well as its presentation to end users. It supports sophisticated dynamic task routing leveraging declarative patterns and tight integration with business rules. The three main sub-components of Human Workflow are a Task editor, Task Service Engine, and a Worklist application.

Oracle BAM: Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM) gives business executives the ability to monitor their business services and processes in the enterprise, to correlate KPIs down to the actual business process themselves, and most important, to change business processes quickly or to take corrective action if the business environment changes.