The term Service Oriented Architecture is often used in conjunction with web services but often that is where the implementation of SOA stops. While web services are an important aspect of SOA, concepts such as abstraction, low cohesion, service offering and service discovery are the essential principles that SOA is based on. The author, Florian Leibert provides an overview of SOA concepts, the history of SOA, why it is important to use this architectural paradigm and shows how to develop a software project using SOA from the grounds up. He shows how to tackle application development using SOA principles and software engineering practices. Throughout the book, the author gives examples on how social networks and applications within social networks are an ideal example for a SOA implementation. In the process, he explains important social network concepts and gives many practical examples.