Final answer:
The statement about service-oriented architecture (SOA) being a set of self-contained services that communicate to create a software application is true. SOA enables services to cooperate over a network, providing scalability and reusability of components.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create a working software application is TRUE. SOA is an architectural pattern in software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. The basic idea of SOA is to allow for easy cooperation between computers connected over a network. Each service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit history, checking a customer's credit, or providing weather data. Services in a SOA act independently, are loosely coupled, and can be orchestrated to achieve complex operations, allowing for scalability and reuse.