One may hardcode the URL of a service in the service consumer configurations, or one can use the dynamic mechanism to fetch the URL at program execution (initialization) time. This fetching of the actual URL is part of service discovery. UDDI is one of the ways to register services and their URLs, and also to retrieve them by their respective consumers. Service discovery mechanism can also be custom-built by an organization in combination with the configuration management system. Most of the SOA solutions provide service discovery as part of the solution.

This feature of SOA does not necessarily enforce the policy framework, while some of the service discovery solutions offer lifecycle management as well.