Real-World SOA: Applications as Services (Infoworld)

To understand and apply the principles of SOA,
you’d think we would have to agree first on what we
mean by a “service.” To a surprising degree, we haven’t,
but this is hardly the first time a powerful idea has been
tricky to nail down. Definitions of “objects’ and “components”
— the ideas that powered earlier phases of
software’s evolution — were just as elusive.