Patrick Logan calls BS on some of the wilder claims made about SOA in the industry. He quotes the latest IEEE Software magazine (PDF):

In contrast to standard distribution middleware such as CORBA or Java RMI, an SOA implements processes as first-class entities.

Had I read that, I'd have the same bewildered reaction Patrick has:

This is on page 58 of the March/April IEEE Software magazine. I wonder if the editors have any more sense of how wrong this is than the authors?

First of all, SOA has no formal definition. Secondly, in any common use of the term SOA, there is nothing resembling a process, let alone a first-class process.

This is what happens when you let the marketing staff get ahold of a few buzzwords :)