Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural approach for building software systems that use services to provide modular and reusable functionality. In SOA, an application is broken down into smaller, distinct units of functionality called services. These services communicate with each other to fulfill the overall business goals of the system.

Some key aspects of SOA include loose coupling, abstraction, reusability, autonomy, statelessness and discoverability. Services are designed to be loosely coupled, meaning they have little to no dependencies on each other. This allows them to be easily modified and reconfigured. Services also abstract away implementation details through well-defined interfaces. They can be reused and combined in different ways to meet changing business needs. Each service is autonomous and stateless, only maintaining the data it needs to function. Services can be discovered and invoked over a network using standard protocols. This provides flexibility and enables services to be consumed across different applications. SOA improves modularity and makes systems more adaptable to change. It is a common approach for building cloud native applications deployed in containers and orchestrated using tools like Kubernetes. Microservices architecture is an evolution of SOA principles for the cloud.