The document provides an overview of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and how to build an SOA solution. It defines what a service is in SOA and the key characteristics of services. It describes how an enterprise service bus (ESB) acts as the integration layer and middleware for SOA solutions, facilitating loose coupling and location transparency. The document outlines the process of building a compound application in SOA using standardized service definitions, implementations, and business process execution language (BPEL) to orchestrate services into larger business processes that flow through an example ESB architecture.