"SOA 2.0 is the term that we're using to talk about the combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture," said Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware.

The term, SOA 2.0, also is being championed by Gartner's Yefim Natis, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the firm. Contacted by telephone, Natis stressed event-driven architecture as the main distinction between SOA 2.0 and the first, client-server driven iteration of SOA.

"SOA as we know it today deals with a client-server relationship between software modules," with services being subroutines serving clients, Natis said. "However, not all business processes and software topologies fit this model."

With SOA 2.0, an event-driven architecture is deployed in which software modules are related to business components, and alerts and event notifications are featured. The initial SOA concept has not been event-driven but instead has featured direct calls from one piece of software to another in a client-server process, Natis said. SOA implementations have focused on Web services and subordinates to clients, he said.

SOA 2.0 applications could include order processing systems, hospital admissions processes or bank transactions, Natis said.