SOA and Web Services

SOA is not Webservices, but web services are the preferred standards-based way to realize SOA

Web services are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. This interoperability is gained through a set of XML-based open standards, such as WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. These standards provide a common approach for defining, publishing, and using web services.

Interoperability is the most important principle of SOA. This can be realized through the use of web services, as one of the key benefits of web services is interoperability, which allows different distributed web services to run on a variety of software platforms and hardware architectures.