Software Engineering Institute

This report examines the relationship between service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and quality attributes. Because software architecture is the bridge between mission/business goals and a software-intensive system, and quality attribute requirements drive software architecture design, it is important to understand how SOAs support these requirements. This report gives a short introduction to SOAs and outlines some of the main business goals that may lead an organization to choose an SOA to design and implement a system. This report outlines a set of quality attributes that may be derived from an organization's business goals and examines how those attributes relate to an SOA. In addition, this report describes how the SOA impacts those attributes and how choosing an SOA can help an organization achieve its business goals.