SOA

Service-oriented architecture: SOA is a concept for building a software architecture with the aim of providing programme functionalities (services) via a standardised interface and thus supporting distributed data processing across system boundaries. By combining "services" that are available in a distributed and independent manner, business processes can be mapped without the necessary functionality having to be available in a single programme. SOA is often realised via web services using the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) protocol standard.