# Service-Oriented Architecture ## Intent Partition capabilities into independently owned services with explicit network contracts. ## Problem and forces Capabilities need independent deployment, scaling, failure isolation, or organizational ownership. ## Applicability Use when those benefits outweigh network, consistency, security, and operational costs. ## When not to use Avoid for speculative scale, small tightly coupled teams, or transaction-heavy boundaries. ## Benefits Enables independent evolution and targeted scaling or isolation. ## Liabilities Adds partial failure, latency, versioning, observability, and distributed data consistency. ## Implementation considerations Align boundaries with ownership; define contracts, SLOs, data ownership, and failure handling. ## Credible alternatives Modular monolith, vertical slices, coarse-grained services. ## Related patterns Saga, Publish/Subscribe, Circuit Breaker, Anti-Corruption Layer. ## Architecture interview questions Which capability requires independent ownership or deployment, and what evidence supports it?