Enclosed expands on the “buyer/broker/manufacturer”
example as a proposed SOA demo. This is not yet done but I want to get it
out for feedback prior to doing much more work.
I actually started to do an SOA based on the records
management spec and pulled-back because it seemed that much of it would just
take to much interpretation and explanation – something we don’t
want for our first demo. There are a lot of special “archivist”
words that are outside of most of our comfort zones. So I returned to the
more simple (I know, some people think brain-dead) broker scenario. At
least it is easy to understand and implement (a lot of systems should be able
to be wrapped to implement & use the services it in minutes to hours, which
makes good demo).
I had hoped to get this to the next level, complete with
WSDL interfaces produced from the model, tested with simulation – but that’s
not done yet but will be in a couple of days (work keeps getting in the way). So
the idea is to get at least 3 independent participants to implement components
behind the services to bootstrap the community.
One area I really stripped-down is the SOA messages, they
are very small, really just a demo. I looked at some of the industry
schema, but they are so big it would be a bit hard to follow. So consider
the tradeoff and provide feedback.
There was also a question as to what EDOC was and what a SOA
community is – well, here it is. At least from one view.
The question was asked, again, as to the purpose of the demo
– this is what I have:
The goals of this demonstration are;
- To provide a
concrete example of how the SOA approach provides business value to a
community
- To provide
confidence that the approach and technologies are real – secure,
reliable, performing and practical.
- To validate that
independently developed applications can interoperate using SOA standards
What I may want to add a non-goal; This is not a demo
of what SOA may become or possible future approaches, this is to show how the
best practice of SOA and supporting real technologies can provide business
value RSN (Real Soon Now). Just the idea that independently developed
systems can interoperate within an open community is a big deal to much of the
business community, old hat to many of us, but still of great business value. So
that is the essence of the business value. We can then add to that all
the great stuff we can do with our cool tools, infrastructures, ontology-stuff
and approaches. If we can’t, at lest, do this simple demo we should
just go home.
Of course, the goals are also a part of the consensus
process, your mileage may vary.
We need to get consensus on the scenario real soon, not the
technology or SOA theory – but what the business intent of the SOA is.
If not “broker” we need well developed alternatives ASAP.
Regards,
Cory Casanave
