One key factor in the emergence and success of SOAs is the evolution of standards. Standardization has made SOAs more useful now than ever before. In the past, companies have made numerous attempts to develop a standard to support some version of SOAs. Standards such as CORBA and DCOM have existed for a while, but have not been widely adopted to allow true interconnection of companies and people.
Thanks to the Internet and standards such as HTML and HTTP, companies and customers are linked together as never before. This linkage is the key to the interconnection and combination of services that distinguish an SOA. As the Internet has matured, web service standards have emerged; they now have a common set of standards across vendors and businesses. Major vendors have agreed on standardization of web services and have incorporated these standardized services into products, providing an unprecedented breadth of tools for supporting an SOA. Standards for interoperability that have been widely adopted include:
- HTTP
- XML
- SOAP
- WSDL
- UDDI
- OASIS standards, such as ODF
Note
The Open Document Format (ODF) is an open XML-based document file format for office applications, which can be used for documents that include spreadsheets, text, and Rich Text, along with chart types. This particular standard was developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium and based on the XML format originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite.
Other factors play key roles in the adoption of SOAs. For example, mature software and software frameworks are now available across a breadth of vendors, including Eclipse and OSGi. SOA-related governance models and best practices are defined and proven. With the development of the Internet, implementation is now practical, and business/IT collaboration is receiving renewed focus.