<p>A service-<span>oriented</span> architecture is  essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with  each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or  it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some  means of connecting services to each other is needed. The .Net technology introduces the SOA by mean of web services.</p>
<p>The SOA can be used as the concept to connect multiple systems to  provide services. It has it\'s great share in the future of the IT world.</p>
<p><img src=\"images/SOA.jpg\" alt=\"SOA.jpg\" /></p>
<p>According to the imaginary diagram above, we can see how the Service <span>Oriented</span> Architecture is being used to provide a set of centralized services to  the citizens of a country. The citizens are given a unique identifying  card, where that card carries all personal information of each citizen.  Each service centers such as shopping complex, hospital, station, and  factory are equipped with a computer system where that system is  connected to a central server, which is responsible of providing service  to a city. As an example when a customer enter the shopping complex the  regional computer system report it to the central server and obtain  information about the customer before providing access to the premises.  The system welcomes the customer. The customer finished the shopping and  then by the time he leaves the shopping complex, he will be asked to go  through a billing process, where the regional computer system will  manage the process. The payment will be automatically handled with the  input details obtain from the customer identifying card.</p>
<p>The regional system will report to the city (computer system of the  city) while the city will report to the country (computer system of the  country).</p>