Patterns for Orchestration Environments∗

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is an emerging architectural style. SOA builds on insights gained from previous attempts at building systems out of distributed components, using the pull of the Web to succeed where these failed. Service orientation revolves around orchestration. Orchestration deals with the coordination of services comprising SOAs. It provides the means for aggregating services into applications. Orchestration is not a panacea. It involves tradeoffs. As it typically happens, orchestration solves some problems while adding its own problems. Although the fundamental ideas of orchestration are several decades old, orchestration represents uncharted territory for many people. This collection of patterns aims at shedding light over the problems you have to deal with when you use orchestration in your enterprise architecture. The patterns target people who would like to learn about orchestration, people who are evaluating orchestration-related products, and people who are building orchestration-related middleware. In effect, the patterns aim at educating users, helping them make decisions, and communicating with others.