A Software Architecture Process for SOA Definition: Designing Service-Oriented Architectures in an Enterprise Context

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) emerged as a type of software architecture to build systems through the composition of services. In the enterprise context, SOA permits the organizations, which have a fragmented application infrastructure under management of different domains, can integrate these applications in the service level. The service-oriented paradigm has become a distinct design approach which introduces specific principles that govern the design of architectural elements. In this sense, this book presents a SOA-based architecture process that comprises the main software architecture and SOA foundations in order to guide the architects in the construction of a software architecture description for SOA in an enterprise context. The book begins with an overview of the software architecture and SOA fields, discussing their definitions, roots, foundations and elements. Next, the proposed process is presented with its foundations, roles, activities, sub-activities, inputs and outputs. At the end, an experimental study that was performed using the process is discussed.