The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a distributed software model. The primary characteristics of an SOA are:

1. Services are used to divide larger applications into smaller discrete modules.
2. Services are integrated via service composition mechanisms to create larger applications.

It is said that an SOA is usually comprised of three primary parties:

• A Producer (of services)
• A Consumer (of services)
• A Directory (of services)

Web Services are considered an example of a Service Oriented Architecture. Service Networks take on the properties of an SOA.