Opening up library systems through Web services and SOA: hype, or reality?(service-oriented architecture )(Report)

Abstract

Over the last few years, Web services and the service-oriented architecture (SOA) have become dominant themes in IT across many industries. Web-based computing, service-orientation, and cloud computing increasingly displace the client/server approach favored by libraries in the past. In library automation, one major trend involves evolving or rebuilding automation systems to adopt this new approach to software. Purveyors of both open source and proprietary library automation products increasingly emphasize the ways in which they embrace openness, support application programming interfaces (APIs), or implement Web services.

Libraries increasingly need to …