It's impossible to underestimate the impact that SOA, or service-oriented architectures, has had on enterprises and business integration. Whether or not a business has implemented a full-fledged SOA platform, there is still a very good chance that a large portion of their business and partner integration is based on core SOA technologies such as XML.
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The funny thing about SOA is that despite its importance, its origins were in many ways a surprise to many of the pundits and experts who followed the technology at the time of its infancy.
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Back then, most of the focus on Web services was on the consumer and individual side of the Web. Anyone who sat through early Web services demos most likely saw a sample application designed to help an individual book travel, or buy online goods.
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