You won't be doing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for long before you encounter the concept of a Canonical Data Model (CDM). The idea is that you analyse your business processes, and derive a set of standard data types that you model using XML schema and use in your services - the Canonical Data Model. Perhaps you go one step further and bring in an industry model like IBM's IFW and use that as a starting point.
In the real world however, there is an estate of legacy systems that will tend to have a narrower view of data types than that proposed by the CDM. Some will only be interested in a particular aspect of the CDM types, some subset of the attributes, whereas others will have a different view completely. The issue is that there are different ways to model things.
In the real world however, there is an estate of legacy systems that will tend to have a narrower view of data types than that proposed by the CDM. Some will only be interested in a particular aspect of the CDM types, some subset of the attributes, whereas others will have a different view completely. The issue is that there are different ways to model things.