This book is about service-oriented computing (SOC). Service-oriented computing decomposes
the logic of an information system into services, which are smaller units of functionality.
These services can be used as building blocks in the composition of larger systems.
The philosophy of SOC is to build software applications by connecting di¤erent building
blocks of software (i.e. services) in a loosely coupled way. The services are made available
for use by publishing their interfaces. They can be provided in-house or by external parties.
Service-oriented computing holds the potential to be an e¤ective solution to letting software
systems work together, even when they are developed by di¤erent organizations and
are spread across the world.