摘要：Software Engineering, as a sub-discipline of the broader field of computer science, is concerned with the production, use, and maintenance of large, complex software systems. On first inspection, the set of managerial and technical activities involved in software engineering appears to be somewhat orthogonal to core research activity in the humanities, being concerned more with the production of research-enabling software systems than the research itself. However, as the scale of software used in digital humanities has increased, it is becoming clear that there are ways in which software engineering can inform, inspire, and aid in the management of the larger-scale software systems now being constructed in these disciplines. In particular, the development of service technology to aid in the production of flexible software systems for business now offers opportunities, not only for collaborative data sharing, but also the modelling, capture, provenancing, and replay of the research (and possibly creative) process itself. This paper examines, from the perspective of a software engineer relatively new to the digital humanities, how the recent developments in service-oriented architectures could be used to enable new approaches to digital enquiry in the arts and humanities. The first part of the paper presents a brief history of software engineering, with particular reference to the aspects that have led to service-oriented architectures. In the second part, the paper offers some thoughts on how certain aspects of service-oriented architectures could be used to enable new kinds of computer-based research and practice in the arts and humanities. It also introduces important national initiatives in this area, such as the JISC e-Framework programme for Higher Education.
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