| The computer programming and software modeling disciplines have gone through an incredible number of changes during the last two decades. We started with structured programming models, then moved on to object-oriented programming models, and then moved to component-oriented programming and software design. Each level of this progression was seemingly built on top of the other. Software design concepts then emerged from simple monolithic software design into a state of highly collaborative and distributed software design. The latest approach in this progression is service-oriented architecture (SOA) (see Figure 5.1). Figure 5.1. In the SOA, the exchange of messages is quite straightforward as a high-level concept.  In the earlier periods of software development, the basic premise of the component software ignores the details on interoperable messages and exchange patterns, while concentrating on the cohesive abstraction on software models. However, SOA is concerned with interoperable message interchange to and/or from a message producer to a message consumer, while hiding the details of the message processing. There are a number of derivatives of this message exchange pattern, based upon the synchronous/asynchronous nature, the protocol exchange model, the data format, and the end points. |
