A Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and accompanying method. In one embodiment, the SOA includes one or more service requesters coupled to one or more service providers via a
bus. The
bus includes runtime-binding functionality to facilitate interaction between the one or more service requesters and the one or more service providers. A registry, which stores information pertaining to a service provided by the one or more service providers, communicates with one or more service providers and / or requesters and the
bus. In a more specific embodiment, bus includes a Service-Integration
Bus (SIB) that includes a Service-Factory (SF) module for facilitating implementing the runtime binding functionality and for selectively invoking the service. Functionality of the SOA is strategically organized into various tiers and
layers, including a requester tier, a provider tier, a business-process services tier, an infrastructure-services tier, an SIB layer, a persistence layer, and so on, to optimize
system reusability, adaptability, and other desirable properties. A service interface pattern is described whereby a change in
service implementation does not require modification to the manner in which the service is invoked by a requester