SOA4ALL · Service Oriented Architectures for All

Computer science is entering a new generation. The emerging generation starts by abstracting from software and sees all resources as services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). In a world of services, it is the service that counts for a customer and not the software or hardware components which implement the service. Service-oriented architectures are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm. However, current SOA solutions are still restricted in their application context to being in-house solutions of companies. A service Web will have billions of services. While service orientation is widely acknowledged for its potential to revolutionize the world of computing by abstracting from the underlying hardware and software layers, its success depends on resolving a number of fundamental challenges that SOA does not address today.<br/>SOA4All will help to realize a world where billions of parties are exposing and consuming services via advanced Web technology.The outcome of the project will be a comprehensive framework and infrastructure that integrates four complimentary and revolutionary technical advances into a coherent and domain independent service delivery platform:<br/>• Web principles and technology as the underlying infrastructure for the integration of services at a world wide scale.• Web 2.0 as a means to structure human-machine cooperation in an efficient and cost-effective manner.• Semantic Web technology as a means to abstract from syntax to semantics as required for meaningful service discovery.• Context management as a way to process in a machine understandable way user needs that facilitates the customization of existing services for the needs of users.<br/>SOA4All is endorsed by the NESSI constituency as an Strategic Project and will contribute significantly to the NESSI Open Framework, which is one of the main challenges of the European Platform on Software and Services.