The concept of using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based software technologies is not new and is being eyed with keen interest by many in the simulation industry. However, no extant program of record can afford to put their program at risk on an unproven approach, no matter how promising. The 2008 DOD study "Live Virtual Constructive Architecture Roadmap (LVCAR) Final Report recommends to, "Take actions that can reduce or eliminate the barriers to interoperability across the architectures" (Henninger 2008). As an early step towards addressing the LVCAR recommendation, a ‘SOA Outlook’ pilot effort was developed to determine if commercial SOA architectures, software and principles are an appropriate solution space for achieving LVC interoperability."

This paper will describe the pilot effort designed around the use of open standards wherever possible and attempts to illustrate SOA principles like composition and re-use. A common data abstraction layer in the application server provides an abstraction of the storage mechanism through the Java Persistence API (JPA) standard and allows for non-system-specific storage of shared data. Integration with existing legacy systems uses a two-part adaptor / plug-in architecture where the adaptor connects directly to the existing infrastructure and communicates with its plug-in counterpart inside the application server infrastructure. The pilot also includes a sample of other services that would be required for a complete interoperability framework. The SOA pilot successfully provides a limited interoperability framework based on the constraints of the use case selected and the level of effort involved. While not a ‘silver bullet’, this successful pilot demonstrates the applicability and viability of SOA-based architectures inside the LVC interoperability domain.