Services Oriented Architecture

SOA is an architectural style of building software applications that promotes loose coupling between components so that they can be reused. Thus, it's the next generation of building applications.

A service provides a specific, typically business-related function, such as analyzing an individual's credit history or processing a purchase order. Inside our system, a service can provide a single discrete function, such as A) suggesting the best location to put away a pallet or B) suggesting an optimum location for a picker to travel to and pick a case from a pick area or C) a service to interleave tasks and suggest that a picker perform cycle count given the event that the picker has gone to a specific location that's due to be cycle counted.

Multiple services can be used together in a coordinated way. The aggregated, or composite, service can be used to satisfy a more complex business requirement. Services are software components that have published contracts/interfaces; these contracts are platform-, language-, and operating-system-independent. XML and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) are the enabling technologies for SOA, since they're platform-independent standards.

The Softeon solution handles complex technological issues of today, like distributing software, application integration, varying platforms, technologies like voice, RF, mobile devices, and protocols, using SOA. In short, SOA provides a solution to all of the above without writing separate code/functionality for each technology, enabling users to, for example, pick the same order using either voice or RF. By adopting an SOA, the Softeon supply chain solutions eliminate the headaches of protocol and platforms, and applications will integrate seamlessly (e.g., with SAP under the NetWeaver / ESA framework).

Key Ingredients of the architecture:

• Web services (standards)
• Loose coupling and message transformation
• Different styles of architecting web services - event driven, process driven

Benefits:

• Softeon's SOA allows efficient configuration and solution engineering across various industry segments, or across companies/DCs with complex and varying business scenarios
• The system communicates with external applications like SAP or Voice/RF devices, and communicates with system business functionality using web service standards, which are described in a central repository