ESOA is a very vague term which is not very clearly explained by everyone. The main reason for this being that ESOA is not an application or a service but its a method or concept to be implemented. This blog aims at clearling the muzziness behind the evolution of ESOA in today's world.
Before going to what ESOA means its very important to know what SOA is and why is it useful.
SOA is an architecture which enables the loose coupling of services so that they can communicate and interoperate. This line from WIKI further clarifies the concept of SOA.
"SOAs build applications out of software services."
Services are nothing but essential functional units but the main drawback is that services are independent. SOA defines a protocol by which services can communicate with each other and thus provide end-to-end business solution.
Let me simulate the definition with an example. When we book a flight online. We first fill the form with our personal details, then processing of our request goes on and finally the payment is done. All these are independent services which are communicating with each other to get the job done and thus making our lives easier.
I hope this example clearly illustrates what services are and why SOA is necessary to extract the maximum benefits out of these services.
Coming to what ESOA is ESOA is Service Oriented Architecture merged with SAP's netweaver platform on the other hand ESOA has loads of additional features to a normal SOA approach.
1. ESOA follows a model driven approach.
2. IT adhers to reliable client-server computing.
3. Adhers to the web standards making it open.
There are two platform implementations of ESOA. ESOA by evolution and ESOA by design both of them use SAP's netweaver platform. I refrain myself from explaning the details of these two implementations as my motto was to explain what ESOA is and how it evolved.
Even a naive user can appreciate the evolution from services to SOA and now ESOA and understand by how far this evolution has reduced the implementation of end-to-end business solution.
