Historically, the term "service-oriented architecture" (or "SOA") has been used so broadly by the media and within vendor marketing literature that it has almost become synonymous with service-oriented computing itself.

The SOA Manifesto (published at www.soa-manifesto.org) is a formal declaration authored by a diverse working group comprised of industry thought leaders during the 2nd International SOA Symposium in Rotterdam in 2009. This document establishes, at a high level, a clear separation of service-oriented architecture and service-orientation in order to address the ambiguity that had been causing confusion in relation to the meaning of the term “SOA.”

The annotated version of the SOA Manifesto is published at www.soa-manifesto.com.