Service-Oriented Architecture: One Size Fits Nobody

Conceptually it is tempting to declare every piece of functionality a service, put all services on an asynchronous enterprise service bus or queuing system, compose these services into meaningful business logic and provide all services at runtime for execution. Real information technology environments are, however, not that simple and require an approach that is more differentiated and sophisticated. This contribution outlines different scenarios that lead to different types of requirements that cannot be addressed by one single service-oriented architecture (SOA) and service implementation approach. Instead, it argues for different types of building blocks within an advanced SOA that are fit for different requirements and application scenarios at the same time.