SOA

Abbreviation with 2 meanings

SOA
Stands forService-oriented architecture
Meanings2
CategoriesTechnology & Computing

SOA has two meanings. It stands for Service-oriented architecture (programming) or Start of authority (record) (networking).

Meanings of SOA at a glance

#SOA stands forContext
1Service-oriented architectureTechnology & Computing › Programming
2Start of authority (record)Technology & Computing › Networking

1. Service-oriented architecture

Technology & Computing · Programming Abbreviations

A design approach in which applications are built from loosely coupled, reusable services that communicate over a network through well-defined interfaces, often SOAP web services connected by an enterprise service bus.

Example: The bank's SOA exposes account, payment and customer services to every channel.

Prominent in enterprise IT from the early 2000s; Amazon's internal mandate of around 2002, requiring teams to communicate only through service interfaces, is a famous example of the idea. Microservices are often described as a lighter, more independent evolution of SOA. In DNS, SOA means a start of authority record.

2. Start of authority (record)

Technology & Computing · Networking Abbreviations

The DNS record at the top of every zone that names the primary name server, the administrator's email address and timing values such as the serial number, refresh interval and negative-caching TTL.

Example: Bump the serial in the SOA after editing the zone, or the secondaries will never sync.

The administrator email is written with a dot in place of the @ sign, so hostmaster.example.com means [email protected]. Serial numbers are often written as dates, such as 2026110401. In software architecture SOA means service-oriented architecture, which is unrelated.

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  • SemVer – Semantic Versioning
  • SO – Stack Overflow
  • SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
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More networking abbreviations

  • SMB – Server Message Block
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  • SNI – Server Name Indication
  • SNMP – Simple Network Management Protocol
  • SPF – Shortest path first
  • SRV – Service (record)
  • SSH – Secure Shell
  • SSID – Service set identifier

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