SOA/WEB SERVICES GENERAL FAQS
A. SOA is an acronym for Service-Oriented Architecture. It is not a particular technology but an architectural approach to solving business problems through software. In its SOA reference model, the OASIS standards group has defined SOA as: A paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains It provides a uniform means to offer, discover, interact with and use capabilities to produce desired effects consistent with measurable preconditions and expectations. In an SOA, software is built as multiple interacting service components which can be reused and aggregated into additional services and applications. The most common technologies for creating SOA include Web services (SOAP and REST) and ESB. |
A. Web services provide one underlying technology for building a SOA. It usually refers to service-oriented protocols which are based on XML and Web standards, in particular XML messages over an HTTP transport. Web services can also refer to a set of standards and multi-vendor specifications that add capabilities to SOAP-based Web services. These set of standards are sometimes collectively referred to as WS-*. The standards offer a vendor-neutral, OS-independent universal way of integrating applications that promises to replace proprietary EAI products and complex EDI technology. |
Q. Why would I "voice enable" my Web site? A. Voice-enabling a customer-facing Web site allows businesses to easily connect to their online customers and convey information with those calls, increasing customer reach and satisfaction. |
Q. How does SOA apply to telephony? A. SOA is a way to provide services into a software environment that is consistent with the most current architectural approaches to software integration. By bringing telephony to SOA we introduce new interactive services. The result is re-usable voice services that are easily integrated into any application or business process. |
Q. Why haven't current VoIP deployments embraced SOA? A. Until recently Web service / SOA APIs for telephony have been not much more than a wrapper around traditional CTI interfaces with XML APIs. The traditional PBX vendors have not made an effort to make telephony integration more consistent with IT knowledge and practices. These XML API wrappers still require significant telephony knowledge and aren't best suited for an applications developer.
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Q. How do you add interactive communications into business processes with SOA? A. Interactive communications can be added to business processes as simply as adding calling features to an application UI. By placing a call through the application that communication session can be tagged with application context and tracked as part of that specific task or workflow. More sophisticated additions of communications in business processes might leverage Business Process Management tools and technologies like BPEL or BPMN to model human communications into the business process. The BPEL for People proposal adds to BPEL the concept of human activities in business processes that might be fulfilled through phone communications. |
Q. What applications are best suited for voice-enabled SOAs? A. Any application that involves human interaction that can be made more effective through interactive communications is suited for voice-enabled SOAs. For example, it is more convenient to click a name in an application UI rather than look someone up in a phone directory and dial that number. A business process can be more effective if communications become integral to the process rather than an out-of-band interaction that is not part of the workflow history. |
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