ASP.NET Service Oriented Architecture

Question

I've been asked to investigate a design for an ASP.NET (not MVC) application using a service oriented architecture.

This seems a bit wolly and could mean a lot of things. I'm looking for some guidance/articles on this topic to get me started.

Answer 1

Google will certainly provide a wealth of articles. I don't think I can improve on that.

But I think the important essence of services is to separate the UI from the back end when you're designing. Partitioning the problem by thinking about UI forms, gathering data from text boxes into data transfer objects or perhaps binding them directly to columns in tables will give you one kind of system.

But a service oriented view starts by looking at the business problem you're trying to accomplish and breaking it up into coarse grained functions, with methods that are units of work that span transaction boundaries. You'll worry more about the contracts and interfaces between clients and services.

Once you get the interfaces right, clients and services can be implemented independently. You can change the service implementation without affecting clients as long as you don't change the interface or break the contract.

SOA is about a style of thinking, not tools or standards like SOAP.