Like 2005 before it, 2006 turned out to be a busy year for service-oriented architecture and Web services. In fact, there's been so much activity in the space for such a long time that it undermines complaints about the hype around SOA.

Sure, there's always hype around a hot technology, or in this case a hot methodology for deploying technology. Yet the sheer weight of new SOA-themed products, of new SOA standards, of changes in the industry caused by SOA and, most importantly, of users actually embracing SOA is massive.

That's not hype. It's a movement, one worthy of a year-end countdown. We've picked out the top eight stories from the past year and we'll be covering numbers five through eight in this installment.