• A style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A SOA service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products, and technologies. A service has four properties according to one of many definitions of SOA: 1) It logically represents a business activity with a specified outcome; 2) it is self-contained; 3) it is a black box for its consumers, meaning the consumer does not have to be aware of the service’s inner workings; and 4) it may consist of other underlying services. ← Wikipedia

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