What is Service Oriented Architecture(SOA)

SOA is short for “Service Oriented Architecture”. It is defined as a software design principle and aims to organize the interaction of software components within a system in a certain way.

SOA recommends defining components within a software system as “services”. These services are autonomous units that perform a specific function and can be used by other components with a specific interface. Services respond to calls from other components and use the necessary resources to perform a specific task.

SOA allows software systems to be more modular, flexible and scalable by increasing the independence and reusability of components in the system. It also facilitates the integration of different systems with each other by enabling different software components to work on different technologies and platforms.

What should we pay attention to when developing software for SOA approached architectures?

It is important to pay attention to the following issues when developing software with the SOA approach:

1. Define services correctly: The SOA approach proposes to define the components in the software system as services. Defining the services correctly is important so that the components within the system can interact correctly.
2. Independence of services: Services being independent from each other ensures that changes in the system can be made without affecting other components.
3. Reusability of services: The reusability of services enables different components within the software system to use the same service instead of writing code separately to perform similar functions.
4. Standardizing the interfaces of services: Standardizing the interfaces of services ensures that different components can communicate with each other in a compatible way.
5. Testing the services: The correct operation of the services ensures the healthy operation of the system. Testing services allows early detection of errors and problems in the system.
6. Security: When developing software with the SOA approach, the security of services is important. The correct authentication and authorization of the services ensures the protection of sensitive data in the system.
7. Performance: When developing software with the SOA approach, the performance of services is also important. The fast and efficient operation of the services ensures that the transactions in the system are carried out faster.

What kind of structure should each service have in SOA architecture?

In SOA architecture, the structure of each service may vary depending on its functionality and the service provided by the service. But in general, services in SOA architecture are expected to have certain properties:

1. Services are autonomous units: Services are autonomous units that can operate independently of other components. They respond to calls from other components and use the necessary resources to perform a particular function.
2. The functions of the services are clearly defined: Each service performs a clearly defined function. It is specified what kind of data the service will process and which inputs and outputs it will provide.
3. The interface of services is standardized: SOA recommends standardizing the interfaces of services so that different components can communicate with each other in a compatible way. Services’ interfaces are usually defined in a description language such as WSDL (Web Services Description Language).
4. Accessibility of services is ensured: Services must be accessible so that they can be called by other components. This is usually done over a protocol such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) or REST (Representational State Transfer).
5. The security of the services is ensured: The correct authentication and authorization of the services ensures the security of the system. Services are protected by a layer of security, which is usually provided using a secure communication protocol such as HTTPS (HTTP Secure).
6. The performance of the services should be high: The fast and efficient operation of the services ensures that the processes in the system are carried out faster. The performance of services can be increased by choosing an appropriate architecture and infrastructure.
7. Monitoring and management of services provided: SOA architecture provides appropriate tools and processes for monitoring and management of services. This allows for early detection and resolution of errors and problems in the system.

With which technologies can services in SOA architecture be developed?

SOA architecture allows different technologies to come together to form a whole. SOA-based services can be developed using various technologies.

1. Web Services: Web services are components that perform a specific function and work in harmony with each other. These components communicate with each other with standards such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. Web services are a popular option for SOA architecture.
2. RESTful Services: RESTful services are services created using an architectural style called Representational State Transfer (REST). These services access data sources using the HTTP protocol and can use data formats such as XML or JSON.
3. Messaging Services: Messaging services are a method used to share data between different systems. These services help to forward messages from one system to another using a specific message format.
4. Data Integration Tools: Data integration tools are used to connect different data sources. These tools offer many features that can be used to maintain data integrity and facilitate data sharing.
5. Workflow Management Tools: Workflow management tools are used to define and manage business processes. These tools provide a set of features for the design, automation and management of business processes.
6. Database Management Systems: Database management systems are used for storing, managing and accessing data. These systems have the necessary features to maintain data integrity and facilitate data sharing.
7. Middleware: Middleware is a software layer that facilitates data sharing between different systems. This layer offers many features such as data processing, security, communication and data integration. Middleware is an important component for SOA architecture.

Since there are many technologies that can be used in the development of services in the SOA architecture, it is important that the selected technologies are suitable for the needs of the services and can work together in harmony.

A basic example for SOA Solution

An e-commerce platform is a web application that allows customers to view, purchase and pay for products. This platform can be designed using SOA architecture.

First of all, the functionalities on the platform are determined and separate services are designed for each functionality. These services may include:

1. Product Management Service: This service manages the addition, deletion and updating of products. It also monitors product stock status.
2. Basket Management Service: This service manages the items in customers’ baskets. It performs the operations of adding, deleting and updating products to the cart.
3. Order Management Service: This service manages customers’ orders. Performs order creation, sending and payment.
4. Payment Management Service: This service accepts payments from customers and manages their payment transactions.

These services communicate with each other using a certain standard. This standard is usually SOAP or RESTful web services.

The web application is designed using these services. Customers use the web application to view products, add products to their carts, create orders and make payments. The web application makes calls to the services required to perform each functionality.

This sample SOA solution is based on the principle that functionalities are designed as separate services and these services come together to form a whole. This architecture increases the scalability of the platform and can be done more easily when a functionality needs to be changed, reused or updated.

What does it mean for services in an SOA architecture to be scalable?

SOA architecture is a structure where different services come together to perform a specific function. The scalability of services means that the capacity of the system can be increased to handle a higher throughput or user traffic.

In an SOA architecture, services are scalable, allowing the system to do more when needed, using more resources. This is especially important in situations such as heavy user traffic or increased transaction volume. Scalable services help maintain system performance and availability.

The design for scalable services should ensure that a particular service runs on multiple servers rather than running on a single server, adding more servers as needed. This enables services to provide high performance and availability and respond to increased demand. In addition, scalable services reduce the impact of errors that may occur in the system and are an important factor for the high availability of the system.

What are the most widely used scaling technologies lately?

The most commonly used scaling technologies recently are:

1. Kubernetes: Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration platform. It simplifies the scaling and management of applications and services. Kubernetes can dynamically allocate resources and scale quickly.
2. Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm is Docker’s tool for building scalable container clusters. Swarm bundles multiple Docker hosts together to ensure high availability and scalability.
3. Apache Mesos: Apache Mesos is a resource management solution for scalable and high-performance data centers. Mesos enables scaling and management of applications using all resources effectively.
4. Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing services provider and offers a variety of scaling solutions. Services such as AWS Elastic Load Balancer, Auto Scaling, and Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) facilitate scaling and load balancing.
5. Apache Cassandra: Apache Cassandra is used as a distributed database management system for big data applications that require high scalability. Cassandra splits the database across several servers, thus ensuring scalability.
6. Microsoft Azure : also has such scaling solutions. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and offers many options for scalable solutions.

These technologies are popular solutions used to enable scaling and high availability of applications. However, when choosing scaling technologies, factors such as application requirements and budget should also be considered.

Some Microsoft Azure solutions

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and offers many options for scalable solutions.

For example, you can build Kubernetes-based scalable solutions with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). AKS provides a fully managed service for creating and managing a Kubernetes cluster. Azure Functions, on the other hand, is an event-driven serverless solution, and you can quickly scale your applications as needed.

Azure Virtual Machines can be used to host scalable and high-performance virtual machines. Azure Load Balancer is an option to meet your load balancing needs. In addition, Azure Traffic Manager can be used to route and load balance traffic between servers in different geographic regions.

Azure Stream Analytics is a service for processing and analyzing real-time data streams. This service can provide scalability and high availability to large volumes of data streams.

Azure Cosmos DB is a multi-model database service and provides a scalable, distributed and global data storage solution.

Microsoft and Azure offer many solutions that provide scalable and high availability, so they may be an option for those looking for scalable solutions that can be used in SOA architecture.

Conclusion

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a software architecture approach and represents a system design where services interact with each other. SOA enables systems to be modular and allows for combining and reusing functions.

SOA architecture needs to be developed and scalable with many different technologies. Scalability means that the system can provide the same performance when the number of users or the processing load increases. Therefore, it is important that services in SOA architecture are scalable.

The most widely used scaling technologies lately include cloud computing, Kubernetes, serverless technologies, and other scalable architectures. Big technology companies such as Microsoft and Microsoft Azure offer solutions based on SOA architecture and these solutions provide scalability and high availability.