This document provides an overview of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). It discusses SOA characteristics, principles of service orientation, the role of web services in SOA, and SOA support in J2EE and .NET. The document also covers topics like service oriented analysis, design, SOA platforms, SOA standards, service composition using BPEL, and security in SOA. Prerequisites for understanding SOA include basic knowledge of object orientation, web technologies, Java programming, and internet programming.