Abstract
We show that service orientation is a quite complex trend: There are several types of service-oriented architectures (SOA). Individual SOA types may have different domain of application, different patterns and antipatterns, they can use different modeling and development techniques.
Proper selection of SOA type can be a crucial task significantly influencing likelihood of project success. The applicability of individual SOA variants depends on requirements and on general business circumstances like staff knowledge, planned business alliances, and the need to reuse existing software.
The proper selection of a SOA variant is an important pattern. The most important patterns for one variant of SOA are user (business) oriented service interfaces, reuse of legacy systems and third-party products, and the use of architecture services.
Architecture services can serve as message transformers, heads of composite services, process managers, and integration constructs for the integration in the large.