This article describes how an essential precursor to any SOA implementation is a data modeling exercise that integrates all underlying data models, focusing more on the business requirements than on system- and application-specific requirements.

Integrating data models in a complex enterprise can be difficult because the IT landscape often reveals massive duplication and redundancy. Refining this situation without semantic loss is a tough nut to crack. This article discusses the problem domain and makes some recommendations.

Gartner, Inc., advises organizations wishing to fully exploit service-oriented business applications to focus on integrating the processes and underlying data models, rather than on integrating individual application components. Failure to integrate these aspects will place the organization at a competitive disadvantage. Gartner believes that such metadata management is "essential to reducing the escalating complexity of management and maintenance of integrated software platforms."