While most people think about services when considering Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the reality is that the core value of all SOAs is the data. The management of data is nothing new; however, what is new is the use patterns of information within SOA that make more traditional data access techniques obsolete. Indeed, there is a clear need for a mechanism to simplify complex information structures and semantics into logical groupings that better serve the architecture, thus leading to both immediate and long term cost savings.

In addition to simplifying access to data, an approach is needed to place volatile data layers (data that constantly changes) into their own domains. Instead of making changes to the physical database, or even worse, the core services themselves, you need to act upon the common data layer that’s dynamically linked to the physical data. By using this approach, you’re able to make the appropriate adjustments within the schemas and semantics to manage changes to core business processes and services without having to redevelop, redeploy, and retest service interfaces. Moreover, you may also avoid changes to the physical structure of the core databases, which would likely break other connected applications and cause IT chaos.