A reference model is an abstract framework to understand and describe the significant entities and relationships among them for some environments. It is used or referred to for development of consistent standards or specifications supporting the environment of the enterprise.

The OASIS SOA Reference Model (SOA-RM) is an abstract framework that provides the fundamental concept of SOA to understand the entities and relationships between them, and for the development of SOA standards within an organization.

In the dictionary, service is defined as An act or a variety of work done by one for another. OASIS SOA-RM defines service in this one line: In SOA, services are the mechanism by which needs and capabilities are brought together.

The following reference model defines the principal concepts of SOA:

The explanation for each concept is as follows:

• Service: A mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities
• Visibility: A service provider and the service consumer need to see each other
• Interaction with services: Performing actions against a service such as sending/receiving messages
• Real world effect: The intent and result of interacting with a service
• Service description: The information required information in order to interact with a service
• Policies and contracts: Policies are constraints to use a service, and contracts are an agreement between two or more parties
• Execution context: A set of infrastructure elements, process entities, policy assertions and agreements, which are identified as a part of service interaction between the service provider and service consumer

The following diagram is for the Oasis SOA-RM reference model describing the services:

OASIS SOA-RM is a top-reference point for SOA concepts, and provides foundational knowledge for SOA architecture. It not only provides the SOA knowledge, but it can also be used to measure the sanity and validation check for SOA architectures, frameworks, and implementations.