a class of application whose fundamental construction model is the composition of parts or components

a hybrid of those two choices that allows developers to take the useful components out of existing applications -- even legacy ones -- and create a Web service out of it

an enterprise-spanning layer of software that connects with multiple applications and information sources, but behaves as if it were one seamless business process

a transactional application comprised of business functionality and data from one or more enterprise sources, deployed into a single interface

a transactional application consisting of business functionality and information from varied information sources

In computing, the term composite application expresses a perspective of software engineering that defines an application built by combining multiple services. A composite application consists of functionality drawn from several different sources within a service oriented architecture (SOA). The components may be individual web services, selected functions from within other applications, or entire systems whose outputs have been packaged as web services (often legacy systems).