Hi Raghu,
SOA is based on the concept of reusable pieces of software (Enterprise Services) that can be assembled and orchestrated in order to execute a business process.
The shift from standard ABAP objects/BAPIs/Function modules is due to the fact that a service is not siloed within a simple set of software ERP, and that might be intended to be used by several other applications within the enterprise, on several technologies.
Web Services represent an appropriate answer in several ways:
- They offer a standard protocol supported by most platforms and can be consumed in different languages. Thus we're offering a proper abstraction allowing to access the information and post updates from any platform.
- They come up with a comprehensive set of tools for development (IDE), publishing (UDDI) and accessibility and orchestration (ESB, BPMS)
- Several standard protocols have been developed in order to make sure of the security and consistency of the transactions (WS-Security, WS-RM...)
As an example, the ability to expose your business functions as relevant enterprise services should allow you to enhance your ability to build a rich UI that is process-centric, with the appropriate level of abstraction that would prevent from making significant changes to your UI whenever you make adjustments to the base code supporting the business logic.
I hope that helps.
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