Design patterns have been part of the IT world for many years. An entire patterns community has even emerged to foster the evolution of new patterns and to establish guidelines around how patterns should be documented and related.

Yes, that's right, patterns relate to other patterns. To work with design patterns, you need to understand these relationships. These relationships are especially important with respect to SOA because the scope of an SOA implementation tends to be larger than traditional applications. Therefore, SOA design patterns tend have a broader reach and, as a result, a greater impact.