{{unreferenced, date=May 2008 Service-oriented communications (SOC) technologies are designed to be easily used in the context of service-oriented architectures. These technologies are generally software based and are built more like a business application than a traditional PBX business

communications system A communications system or communication system is a collection of individual telecommunications networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and terminal equipment usually capable of interconnection and interoperati ...

. Service-oriented communications systems allow their services to participate in

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es. They make their services available to other business applications within and SOA and allow for reuse of the services. The goal of service-oriented communications is to enable business environments to build communications into their business processes, enabling more streamlined collaboration among people within the business. It typically assumes that certain services are provided in the context of an SOA service provider. This is often in the form of a suite of web services, but may also be attached to other means of sharing the services such as an enterprise system bus (ESB). The communications part of SOC Enterprise communications have traditionally been provided by closed, stand-alone PBX systems. Installed in a separate phone room or wiring closet, operated over a different wiring infrastructure, known only by the telecom manager, these systems ran independently from every other aspect of the business. Today’s business-savvy chief information officers (CIOs) are exploring ways in which

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

can be better leveraged to improve the efficiency and productivity of the enterprise. In practice, CIOs are embracing the concepts of

service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...

s and rethinking how the different business systems in use within the enterprise can be designed to allow each system to leverage the benefits of any other system. The maturing of web service technology has provided a real framework for allowing one system to leverage the services of another according to the principles of a service-oriented architecture. Complex business systems can now work together to deliver solutions in highly customized ways to end users. Increasingly, applications are adapting to the specific needs of users rather than users being forced to adapt to the available functionality of applications.

Web service technology

As the Internet grew from a forum for sharing information to a marketplace for doing business, a technology matured that allowed computers to transact with each other more easily. Out of these Internet roots, web service technology was born. The general goal of web services is to construct elements of

business logic In computer software, business logic or domain logic is the part of the program that encodes the real-world business rules that determine how data can be created, stored, and changed. It is contrasted with the remainder of the software that might ...

, services, which can be very easily used by other applications. The services themselves hide the complexity of their business logic from the consumers through simple interfaces that allow the services to be reused in many different applications. The service and the consumer are described as being loosely coupled, an approach that allows complex composite solutions to be developed through leveraging multiple web services. There are a number of key elements to web service technology… * XML (

eXtensible Markup Language Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

) is the core language of web service technology. It provides a platform neutral way to describe the data associated with any service transaction. * SOAP (

Simple Object Access Protocol Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are used as ...

) is the preferred means by which an application invokes a web service. The protocol itself is written in XML. * WSDL (

Web Services Description Language The Web Services Description Language (WSDL ) is an XML-based interface description language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also ...

) is the specification of the interface that a web service exposes to consumers. It describes the set of operations that the service makes available. The WSDL is also written in XML. Advantages of web services * Loosely coupled—the high degree of abstraction that exists between the implementation and the consumption of the service frees the web service client and the web service provider from needing any knowledge of each other beyond inputs and outputs * Platform neutral—web services can be provided by or invoked on most, if not all, platforms today, even legacy platforms * Development language neutral—people are developing web services using C/C++, C#, Java,

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (cl ...

, Python and others * Standards are architecture neutral—these do not enforce client–server,

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

or any other model, although practical implementation issues currently drive developers to client–server * Web services leverage existing standards—standards that are already in place for conventional

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...

applications, including HTTP, secure sockets and authentication * Relatively lightweight—so they can be easily deployed to small devices for example PDAs and

SmartPhones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

. Communication