In this context, a reference model is seen as a venue to provide a common semantics that can be used unambiguously across and between different SOA implementations.
While discussions found obvious commonality, harmonization was beyond reach at that time, and the final product was a joint paper Navigating the SOA Open Standards Landscape Around Architecture[9] published in July 2009.
According to the SOA-RM specification, SOA is a paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains.
It provides a uniform means to offer, discover, interact with and use capabilities to produce desired effects consistent with measurable preconditions and expectations.
According to the SOA-RM specification, a reference model is an abstract framework for understanding significant relationships among the entities of some environment.
A reference model consists of a minimal set of unifying concepts, axioms and relationships within a particular problem domain, and is independent of specific standards, technologies, implementations, or other concrete details.