Read Incorporating Enterprise Data into SOA
The article starts off explaining the typical layers in an SOA, followed by some of the issues related to data access:
- Consolidation of data between multiple applications.
- Ownership of enterprise data by services.
- Interface definitions
- Aligning enterprise data support with the business services
- Enterprise data access as a business service
- Enterprise data bus
As the scope of SOA implementations expands from limited in scope departmental implementations to enterprise-wide undertaking the issues of enterprise data access are quickly starting to become one of the most important implementation issues. If not architected correctly from the very beginning, enterprise data access can become a major problem down the road. Design patterns presented in this article define different approaches to dealing with the enterprise data in the SOA environment along with the drawbacks and advantages of each approach.