Service Orientation

Intro

Service orientation is a design paradigm that builds applications around services meeting business needs. In EA, it promotes modularity, reuse, and interoperability.

Key points:

• Centers designs on well-defined service contracts.
• Reduces coupling and improves agility.
• Common use cases across EA/BPM/Data/App/Tech include business service catalogs, microservices, and integration layers.
• Pitfall: labeling components as services without proper contracts or autonomy.

Examples:

• Customer profile service used across channels.
• Inventory service exposed to partners.
• Billing service orchestrated in order-to-cash.

In practice:

Define service boundaries and contracts first; then design interfaces, policies, and SLAs.

Related terms: Service; Service Oriented Architecture; Integration Architecture

FAQs:

Q: Is service orientation the same as microservices?
A: Microservices are one implementation style of service orientation.

Q: Do services need SLAs?
A: Yes; SLAs set expectations for availability and performance.

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