Abstract: A Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and accompanying method. In one embodiment, the SOA includes one or more service requesters coupled to one or more service providers via a bus. The bus includes runtime-binding functionality to facilitate interaction between the one or more service requesters and the one or more service providers. A registry, which stores information pertaining to a service provided by the one or more service providers, communicates with one or more service providers and/or requesters and the bus. In a more specific embodiment, bus includes a Service-Integration Bus (SIB) that includes a Service-Factory (SF) module for facilitating implementing the runtime binding functionality and for selectively invoking the service.