Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a popular tech topic these days. SOA involves Web services standards and promises improvement in support of enterprise software.
SOA has many forms, including XML, BPEL, UML and other related acronyms. I think some of the features of SOA that are worth considering, particularly for those of us who have to maintain booger software are:
Component Reuse
Organizational Agility
Leveraging Existing Systems
You may want to see the Crosstalk article by Geoffrey Raines, copyright 2009 by the Mitre Corp. on Leveraging Federal IT Investment With Service Oriented Architecture, as it provides a solid definition of SOA today amongst context for Federal system engineering.
Perusing BPM on the web as I have of late, I find BMP to be closely related to SOA. SOA may in fact be the services that BPM requires as processes to manage in the ultimate sense.
There is a myriad of standards, including BPEL, that may help provide the linkage to SOA. Any analysis toward the SOA end likely requires charting of the processes involved, and UML 2.0 may be a good starting point.
