Using Service-Oriented Architecture and Component-Based Development to Build Web Service Applications

TL;DR: Is there anything new about building enterprise-scale solutions from services?

Abstract: Building an enterprise-scale software system is a complex undertaking. Despite decades of technological advances, the demands imposed by today’s information systems frequently stretch to breaking point a company’s ability to design, construct, and evolve its mission-critical software solutions. In particular, few new systems are designed from the ground up. Rather, a software architect’s task is commonly that of extending the life of an existing solution by describing new business logic that manipulates an existing repository of data, presenting existing data and transactions through new channels such as an Internet browser or handheld devices, integrating previously disconnected systems supporting overlapping business activities, and so on. To assist software developers, commercial software infrastructure products are now available from vendors such as Microsoft and IBM. They form the centerpiece of the approaches to software development they advocate in their .NET and WebSphere product lines, respectively. Both approaches focus on assembly of systems from distributed services [1,2]. However, is there anything new about building enterprise-scale solutions from services? How do the lessons of component-based systems apply to construction of service-based architectures (SOA)? What are the best approaches for building high quality systems for deployment to this new generation of software infrastructure products? These important questions are the topic of this paper.