SOA

SOA

1. Service Oriented Architecture.

A collection of services that communicate with each other. SOA is an architectural approach to system design based around the use of services and the interfaces to those services.

cf WCF.

For more information see:

• www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/08/18/soa_explained.html
• www.devshed.com/c/a/Web-Services/Introduction-to-Service-Oriented-Architecture-SOA/

2. Start of Authority.

A SOA record identifies the authoritative name server for a specific DNS zone.

3. Super Output Area.

SOAs are a unit of geography used in the UK for statistical analysis. They are developed and released by Neighbourhood Statistics.

SOAs were created with the intention that they would not be subject to frequent boundary change. This makes SOAs more suitable than other geography units (such as wards) because they are less likely to change over time, and thus SOAs are more suitable to change over time analysis.

There are three layers of SOAs (i.e. three different but related geography boundaries). These are:

• Lower Layer - Minimum population 1000, mean population 1500. Built from groups of Output Areas. Commonly known as Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA).There are 34,378 LSOAs in England and Wales.
• Middle Layer - Minimum population 5000, mean population 7200. Built from Lower Layer SOAs. Commonly known as Middle Layer Super Output Area and abbreviated to MSOA. There are 7,193 MSOAs in England and Wales.
• Upper Layer - Commonly known as Upper Layer Super Output Area (USOA).

Each SOA is identified by a nine character code (for example E01000001). This code consists of three parts:

• The first letter identifies the country:

  E	England
  W	Wales

• The next two digits indicates the type of SOA layer:

  01	Lower Layer SOA
  02	Middle Layer SOA

• The final 6 digits provide a unique tag.

For more information see:

• www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do?page=aboutneighbourhood/geography/superoutputareas/soafaq/soa-faq.htm - Super Output Areas Frequently Asked Questions, from Neighbourhood Statistics. Shapefile and MID/MIF format boundaries can be ordered from this site.
• http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do?page=aboutneighbourhood/geography/superoutputareas/soaboundaries/soa-boundaries.htm - Page from which SOA boundaries can be ordered (free).
• http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do?page=aboutneighbourhood/geography/superoutputareas/soalookupfiles/soa-constitutions.htm - Download page for SOA boundary lookups, i.e. .csv, .txt or .xls files for looking up for converting from OA to LSAO to MSOA etc.

4. Same Old Architecture.

5. Service Order Agreement.

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