When used by businesses, service-oriented architectures can make it possible for the establishment of, for example, a complete online registration process. This process could include a way to send the registrant an email with specific directions to the facility without requiring the person to go to a third-party website for that information. Instead, a program could be written to pull the information directly from the registration application, reference the third-party website, and seamlessly integrate the response into the confirmation email.

The same could hold true for weather information - the program could give the user information about the weather based on both the user's zip code and the zip code for the location of the training. This would enable the business to offer a value-added service in its emails - the weather information would be provided directly, rather than from a third-party site that the end user would have to access independently, and would be personalized. Other items involved in the service-oriented architecture could include scheduling, registration, and credit card processing.

Services could also allow different ways to access a single database. Using a real-world example of service-oriented architecture, a company could make its database of books and music available to outside users as a service, and the users could choose to create processes that pull particular information out of that database. For example, someone could create a process that allows visitors to a website to search an artist name within that larger database, and the results returned would only encompass information relating to compact discs, rather than to book titles that also mentioned the name.

Taking an example of service-oriented architecture from the business world, a database of courses could be utilized as a service to give different individuals access to different aspects of the database in different manners. Trainers, for example, could be given access to a thick client application that enables them to search a complete database, including courses that are not made available to the public. The public, on the other hand, could be given access to a web-based application through which it could search for courses falling on particular dates or covering particular topics. And sales people could be given even a different way to access that database to find out not only when courses are available but in which locations, leading to weather information and driving directions. All of this could be accomplished seamlessly using service-oriented architectures, without needing to create multiple databases for multiple users.