SOA - Modularity, Delegation, and Federation

What are the core features that bring power to an SOA? I think they really come down to three things: modularity, delegation, and federation.

• Modularity is the componentization of software into discreet functional unit (the real key here is standardization within the modularity)
• Delegation is the ability to act as a delegate to perform a unit of work for another process
• Federation is the ability to provide a network of delegates that are independently maintained and operated.

I’ll get into a lot of this stuff in more detail in future entries, because each of these really has some interesting nuances, but I think that there are two really interesting things about these three items.

1) These three things are completely independent of the underlying technology, and;

2) You can have an SOA that doesn’t do a very good job at one or two of these, and you’ll never really get the full benefit of SOA