ISO/IEC 18384-1:2016 - Overview
ISO/IEC 18384-1:2016, part of the ISO/IEC 18384 series, defines the terminology, concepts and general technical principles for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Published in 2016 by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38, this first part establishes a common vocabulary and high‑level guidance to support consistent SOA design, development, deployment and management across organizations and markets.
Key topics and technical requirements
This standard focuses on core SOA concepts and foundational requirements rather than prescriptive implementation details. Important topics covered include:
- Unified terminology and definitions (actor, architecture, service, endpoint, execution context, event, composition, choreography, collaboration, etc.), supporting clear communication among architects and implementers.
- SOA concepts and roles: service providers, consumers, intermediaries and the relationships between them.
- Service description, interfaces, policies and contracts - guidance on what metadata and behavioral descriptions are expected for services.
- Service registration and discovery principles to enable findability and reuse.
- Compositions and processes (orchestration, choreography) and how services are combined.
- Lifecycle considerations for services and SOA solutions (development, deployment, management).
- Cross‑cutting concerns such as integration, management, security and governance, with an annexed SOA governance framework and management/security guidance.
- SOA architectural principles including interoperability (syntactic and semantic), discoverability, reusability, loose coupling, late binding, composability, self‑containment and manageability.
The standard provides guidelines and general technical principles relating to functional design, performance, development, deployment and management of SOA solutions.
Practical applications and users
ISO/IEC 18384-1 is intended for a broad audience involved in SOA adoption and solution delivery:
- Enterprise and solution architects - to align SOA designs to a common reference vocabulary and principles.
- Software/system designers and developers - to understand expected service behaviors, interfaces and lifecycle considerations.
- SOA service providers and consumers - to improve interoperability, discoverability and reuse.
- IT managers and governance teams - to establish SOA governance, security and management practices.
- Standards bodies and methodologists - as a normative reference when defining SOA-related deliverables.
Use cases include introducing SOA concepts within organizations, creating service catalogs, defining service contracts and discovery mechanisms, and guiding SOA governance and security policies.
Related standards
Keywords: ISO/IEC 18384-1, SOA RA, Service Oriented Architecture, terminology, SOA reference architecture, service description, service discovery, SOA governance, interoperability, loose coupling.
Open preview (PDF)Information technology — Reference Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA RA) — Part 1: Terminology and concepts for SOA
