This book tells the SOA story in a simple, straightforward manner that will help you understand not only the buzzwords and benefits, but also the technologies that underlie SOA: XML, WSDL, SOAP, XPath, BPEL, SCA, and SDO. And through it all, the authors provide business examples and illustrations, giving a practical meaning to abstract ideas. • Gives a detailed overview of Extensible Markup Language (XML), including namespaces and XML schema. • Describes Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) and SOAP, the standard SOA technologies. • Gives a clear tutorial on XML Path Language (XPath), a language for deriving data from transmitted messages and other sources. XPath is useful for working with a variety of other technologies, including several described in this book. • Gives comprehensive details on BPEL 2.0, a language that coordinates services and whose preceding version is already in numerous products. Our coverage is sufficient for most of your work with BPEL and includes a quick-reference guide. • Introduces Service Component Architecture (SCA), a proposed standard for composing and deploying applications. You’re sure to hear more of SCA, which is sponsored by 18 companies, including IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. • Introduces Service Data Objects (SDO), a proposed standard for representing data in a single way, even if the data comes from different types of data sources. SDO is likely to accompany SCA into the limelight.