While there are many standards for describing the interfaces between services or components in a system, standards for configuring and deploying the implementations services and components have been specific to particular implementation languages or middleware environments. Service Component Architecture - SCA - defines a standard for describing the implementations of components and services and for configuring and deploying them in a way that is independent of the implementation technology. This significantly reduces the difficulty of assembling and deploying service-oriented or component-oriented applications that are composed of elements implemented in multiple technologies.

Service Data Objects (SDO) simplify data access and representation for a wide range of service-oriented software. SDO sidesteps technology churn "the rewriting of applications to keep up with shifting technology" by encapsulating data access details to insulate business applications from technology changes. This talk will describe SCA and how it is used, and will cover SDO's wide use in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), web services, relational data access, XML, messaging, the enterprise service bus, connectors and adapters, and model-driven architecture.