Service-oriented Software System Engineering

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a type of an integrated information environment of a business system, which is characterized by publishing and usage of distributed functions, so called services. It provides the basis for the concept of uniform posting, discovery, communication, and usage of individual business functions in order to achieve desired goals. SOA represents a set of principles that define a new concept of designing corporate information systems, by using loosely coupled business services and a unified view of the business processes that is supported by a granular business system architecture, whose implementation is independent of the technologies used by the different underlying vendor modules.

SOA can be viewed as a perspective of the global IT environment, in the sense that it allows for development, supply and use of independent, third-party software services that support individual requirements of the business processes and the users. In the SOA environment, services are available to business processes and users without control and coordination mechanisms; instead, they are invoked by a predefined infrastructure framework. SOA is neutral from the technology standards and protocols, i.e., it does not involve the use of specific technology and can be implemented by any interoperability standards, such as RPC, DCOM, ORB, or SOAP. The main focus of the SOA concept is the modeling and implementation of the business, not the technical infrastructure. Each service represents a set of business functions within a business environment. Technical services, such as transactions, data persistence, etc., which are necessary for the technical implementation of business services, are not relevant to the strategic modeling and development of the SOA environment. In this sense, the technical implementation details should not have any impact on the SOA structure’s higher levels, especially when it comes to the interdependence of different business services or their components. In this edition we cover topics about SOA-based software engineering, the design and the communication aspects of service-oriented systems, as well as different use-case scenarios and usage of the SOA in the public sector. Section 1 focuses on SOA-based software engineering, describing pattern-based software architecture for service-oriented software systems, software architectural patterns for service composition, feature-oriented service injection and composition of web services for distributed computing systems, security engineering of SOA applications via reliability patterns, and an industrial experience for service-oriented software development. Section 2 focuses on design and communication aspects of service-oriented systems, describing designing fault-tolerant SOA based on design diversity, conceptual framework for aligning service oriented architecture with business process, SOAP-based security interaction of web service in heterogeneous platforms, and enhanced program comprehension for service-oriented architectures. Section 3 focuses on different SOA use-case scenarios, describing distributed e-learning based on SOA, service-oriented data mining, SOA-based aeronautical service integration, business intelligence in telecoms industry, and service oriented analytics framework for multi-level marketing. Section 4 focuses on usage of SOA in the public sector, describing SOA perspective of e-governance in the Indian context, lightweight SOA-based collaboration framework for European public sector, educational modelling languages and service-oriented learning process, and the usage of SOA in the financial services sector in South Africa.