What are the major characteristics of a service-oriented architecture?
The dividing line between devices and services is expected to gradually blur. Today, there is a trend to think more in terms of abstract services than of hardware devices. This service-oriented tendency parallels the advent of the Web Service paradigm, which ushers in a shift from traditional distributed computing to service-centric computing. A service-oriented architecture can be informally described as a set of rules defining how autonomous, independent, self-contained systems can interoperate. Service-centric computing thus provides a high-level model for how applications can be assembled from a distributed network of constituent parts, the service framework providing the underlying infrastructure for implementing such federated structures. Being based on established industry-wide protocols, this infrastructure obviates the limitations that used to be associated with platform-specific component models. There are indeed several fundamental characteristics setting service-centric com
