Service-Oriented Architecture

Service-oriented architecture offers a way of thinking about IT assets as service components, establishing a software architectural approach to building business applications. The service-oriented architecture approach is based on creating stand-alone, task-specific reusable software components that function and are made available as services.

A service-oriented architecture service exposes a clearly defined activity—like credit card validation—to consuming business applications that might need to perform that function (such as an order processing application). At the core of the service-oriented architecture philosophy is the modularization of business functions for greater flexibility, manageability, and reusability.

Granular organization of business software

Instead of building monolithic applications for each department, service-oriented architecture strives to organize business software in a granular fashion. As a result, various departments as well as external business partners can use common functions interchangeably in a flexible, dynamic, and cost-effective manner. Organizations benefit from adopting service-oriented architecture through increased application integration, reduced time to implement software, and lower development costs. You can consider service-oriented architecture an architectural evolution rather than a revolution in that it captures many of the best practices of previous software architectures.

A complete services architecture framework

In this respect, EMC Documentum Enterprise Content Services provides a complete services architecture framework that can be incorporated within an organization’s internal service-oriented architecture plans. Enterprise Content Services comprises services such as Documentum Foundation Services, which is provided as part of EMC Documentum Content Server.

Based on industry standards, EMC Documentum Foundation Services provide a set of runtime and design time capabilities that support the service-oriented vision of the EMC Documentum platform and its service-oriented architecture initiatives. Reinforcing the role of enterprise content management in the IT infrastructure, this vision includes building a complete set of services such as web services that organizations can use to build any EMC Documentum application.