Service Oriented Architecture is constructed in such a way that business processes within an organisation can be changed without becoming to bogged down with the underlying technical stuff and IT can build from existing business functions to ajust to the business process.  To effectively do this it is important that the SOA be coupled with a management process such as buisness process management.

Business process management when conducted with SOA can be an extremely effective way of managing and adjusting to change as it occurs through the business.  This management process ‘is the modern approach to designing and managing business processes, and many business managers and business analysts receive training in BPM.  All by itself BPM has contributed significantly to the liberation of business from technology.’ (Hurwitz 2007 ).  The advantages of using a management strategie with SOA allows the business to work out new functions easily and tie together existing business functions as well as creating and tying in new functions.

It is important to note that SOA management should work to improve the way that the business functions and performs.  SOA management is introduced into a business to monitor processors and can provide instant feed back on processes good or bad.  Management of SOA is done using various management tools such as creation of new business functions, linking together existing functions and applications and programming of the workflow to carry out processors in the business.

The definition of Service Oriented Architecture or SOA governance is a way of exercising control over this structure using either a narrow focus of policies and monitoring or a broader focus using a perspective which is more business oriented.  SOA Governance should also have the focus of adding valueto the business usually by the development of services.  Gartner (an information technology firm) also defines Service Oriented Architecture as ‘Ensuring and validating that assets and artifacts within the architecture are acting as expected and maintaining a certain level of quality.’

SOA governance is becoming a more main stream business practice as companies are able to transform and add value to their IT components.  The governance part of the structure is quite important as this comprises the organisations principles and rules that determines how a business should function.  Without governance the implementation of the SOA structure within an organisation would grow and develop with no checks and balances leading to massive problems down the track.

The process of SOA governance can be broken down into three parts which includes a registry, policy creation and testing protocal.  It is important for all three parts to be included in the SOA governance as these parts all work together to make SOA governance successful.

The SOA registry is basically a continually growing data base of information about services that are available in the implementation of SOA in any given company.  The data base that makes up the registry allows companies to efficiently recognise and communicate with each other.

The second part of SOA governance is the creation of policies which put restraints and behavioural restrictions on SOA to ensure that there is consistency rather than conflict between the services.  These boundaries or constraints are also important in ensuring good engineering practices are followed, they also provide a company with customer relations principles that are efficient and also ensure that any government policies and laws are adhered to.  The use of SOA policy also allows for policy exceptions to be introduced within the policies and restraints.

The last part of the SOA governance process involves testing and monitoring.  To ensure that the SOA solution is cost effective, efficient and as up to date as possible it is important to have performance monitoring and audits which can easy demonstrate this.

The use of SOA architecture is not a new concept.  Before the advent of the internet and web based services SOA was and still is used to enable companies or businesses to work effectively.  The use of SOA has promoted a dramatic change in the relationship between IT and the business.  This relationship is a positive one that enables the business to develop.

To define SOA Architecture further it is necessary to look at each of the terms of SOA independently and how they work together and communicate.

The concept of architecture when applied through SOA is similar to that of the architecture function when building a house.  Almost everything that is build or constructed is done so using an underlying design.  This design known as the architecture,  can be simple or complex and serves to create order and organise the programs which helps the business.

The second part of SOA refers to the term service and or services.  Business services can be defined as ‘the logical encapsulation of business function.’( Hurwitz 19  ) which means that when you bring everything together that is involved in achieving a particular function within the business this bundle of things is referred to as a business service.  An example of business services could be all the steps that a computer company takes to fill an order for a customer.  All the processes done with the customer such as what type, colour, processor etc can be bundled up and referred to as the order taking service and the building of the computer comes under the computer building services.

When the two concepts of SOA are implemented business managers like SOA architecture as it allows the business to concentrate more on business and less on the technology side of things.  An example of this could be the plumbing in a house.  The pipes are there in the walls, you cannot see them but they are working – similarly with SOA the structure is there working mostly invisible with in the business.

In this article, we will discuss the Open Source SOA testing tool which is used mainly for SOA and Web Services. The use of Open Source SOA testing has become a much needed resource for the many tools and platforms used in SOA implementation.  Open source SOA testing has been proven to be reliable and cost effective when used for databases such as MySQL operating systems such as Linux and browsers such as Internet Explorer.

SOA testing involves the ability to test the structure and communication between business services against an endpoint in order to assess the strength, accuracy and flexibility of the service.  A comprehensive test of SOA endpoints involves the following 4 focal points: Function, Performance, Reciprocal Operation and Security.

Functional testing provides the ability to identify the correct operation of services and builds programs to automate testing of SOA and monitors baseline workings of services to quickly identify and validate the function of SOA through constant revision of the operation of the services.

Performance testing of SOA provides real time data which can give the business details of weaknesses, bottlenecks or queues in the system as well as performance problems.  Performance testing is done through the implementation of an agent framework which runs in the back end of the business and monitors capacities, inputs and outputs.

Reciprocal Operation testing maximises the operation of SOA by comparing and recording the type of service as well as its function in relation to the standards and best practices principles.  This test can potentially identify operation issues early in the implementation of SOA and therefore minimise problems occurring in the future.

Security testing is important in determining how vulnerable a service is in regards to data leakage, privacy and integrity of the data.  Security tests can be built into the system to provide ongoing assessment of the services and the applied frame work.

Many of the SOA training opportunities available to companies and individuals cover the following subjects:

Implementation and management of SOA – this covers aspects of SOA such as definitions, why should SOA be considered, the technologies available and skills in identifying services and the communication networks that connect these services.

Maximise use of SOA technology to improve business performance – subjects in this part of the training involve analysis of current and past software technology that is available for SOA implementation and management, industry standards Extensible Markup Language (XML), Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) and service implementation.

Use of best practices to integrate services into existing business framework – this covers the details of SOA best practices, transitioning beyond basic services and also covers the important aspects of business frameworks.

Automation of business processes – this covers subjects such as managing synchronous and asynchronous messages, identifying business process workflow, making a case for well structured architecture, breaking down the business process and testing a SOA.

Learning how to implement SOA governance – this covers subjects such as managing service quality with WS Policy, determining registry access and deployment options and learning how to describe interactions with choreography.

The benefits of providing SOA training for staff and businesses is that the implementation period of SOA will be significantly reduced and best practices will be in place from the beginning monitored by trained personnel.  Faster implementation of SOA enhances the agility of a business which is of great benefit to result driven companies.

SOA training within a company is targeted at people who work in software development and programming or in positions such as analysts, strategists and software architects.