Service-oriented high level architecture

Recently, service-oriented paradigm is emerging as a new pattern following process-oriented and object-oriented ones in systems analysis and software development. Service-oriented High Level Architecture (SOHLA) refers to the high level architecture (HLA) enabled by Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services etc. techniques which supports distributed interoperating services. The detailed comparisons between HLA and SOA are made to illustrate the importance of their combination. Then several key enhancements and changes of HLA Evolved Web Service API are introduced in comparison with native APIs, such as Federation Development and Execution Process, communication mechanisms, data encoding, session handling, testing environment and performance analysis. Some approaches are summarized including Web-Enabling HLA at the communication layer, HLA interface specification layer, federate interface layer and application layer. Finally the problems of current research are discussed, and the future directions are pointed out.