Hi Rebekah, (01)
I must admit that I like the way you think. Lots of people tend to get
bogged down in the technical aspects, but you certainly seem to have an
awareness of the bigger picture. Very cool. (02)
[Disclaimer: Sorry Cory and everyone else. This isn't directly related
to the demo, but I just couldn't resist... ;)] (03)
On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 13:44, Metz Rebekah wrote (but not necessarily in
this order): (04)
> While listening to an NPR newscast on globalization, I started
> thinking about how the characteristics of economic globalization may
> in fact also emerge in a truly service oriented technology system.
> But, I digress.. (05)
That just means you're as weird as the rest of us! ;) (06)
> [->] Here’s what’s fascinating to me – within relatively short order,
> the discussion of SOA and a particular demonstration of the
> applicability of SOA concepts to this context is not primarily focused
> on the technology aspects of the challenge. We have already
> recognized the inherent need to identify and solve the leadership,
> governance, privacy, cultural, and legal challenges to information
> sharing. SOA is largely about enabling information sharing, so it is
> only natural that the context of any demonstration reflects these
> non-technical challenges of information sharing. (07)
and: (08)
> Web-services (expressed with a SOA) must have the following dimensions
>
>
>
> 1) re-use that is measured against community transparent utility
> functions
>
> 2) agility measured as the ability to respond in novel circumstances,
> and to
>
> novel requests
>
> 3) governance that is open to inspection from stakeholders
>
> 4) commonality within a community or community of communities
>
> [->] Would this be commonality of need, capability, meaning or any/all
> of them? (09)
Personally, I wouldn't see the isolation of any one of these providing
any real value--simplicity, yes; value, no. (010)
> 5) competency that is measured at several levels including competency
>
> expressed by individual capability and community capability[->] -
> i.e. the whole may be greater than the sum of the parts. What a
> powerful argument for dynamic composibility of capability to respond
> to novel and unanticipated needs.
>
> [->] I really like these dimensions. I would suggest that any
> services expressed as part of SOA must have these dimensions, but that
> these dimensions really provide a litmus test of when a collection of
> web services == SOA. Too often we see existing systems or information
> being “service enabled” simply by generating WSDL from the existing
> code used to gain access to the information. One of the key
> challenges is to get folks to understand why that type of step != SOA.
> These challenges provide an excellent framework for that discussion.
> May I use it elsewhere? (011)
and: (012)
> [->] Ultimately, (but not necessarily as part of the SOA Demo) I think
> we’ll need to address all the dimensions of information sharing
> challenges....
>
> COMMUNITY
>
> Dimension 4
>
> Dedication throughout a
> community to overcome
> challenges to
> information sharing.
>
> GOVERNANCE
>
> Dimension 3
>
> Agreements upheld by
> all stakeholders to
> identify information
> and capabilities to
> share (exchange).
>
> PRIVACY
>
> Dimension 5
>
> Sharing and
> dissemination protocols
> consistent with privacy
> laws and regulations
> impacting all
> participating agencies.
>
> CULTURE
>
> Dimension 4,5
>
> Overcoming community
> and personnel concerns
> that prevent effective
> sharing.
>
> TECHNOLOGY
>
> Dimension 1,2
>
> Leveraging existing
> technology to integrate
> knowledge, consistent
> with the established
> rules of governance.
>
> LEGAL
>
> Dimension 3,5
>
> Navigate the various
> laws and regulations
> impacting dissemination
> of sensitive and/or
> case-specific
> information.
>
(013)
Rebekah, I think these observations are great (the community is working,
I think)! One of the problems I've had is that a lot of these things
were either internal assumptions ("well, of course that's the way it
is") or just more hazy concepts (for me). (014)
Between Paul and yourself putting some words down, I think it provides
some valuable, concrete points to use when discussing SOA and Web
services, not only with business stakeholders. It's also a way to
increase the awareness of people designing and implementing solutions
that we can't afford just to bury our heads in religious arguments about
technologies and pretend these problems either aren't there or that
someone else will fix them. (015)
Masochist that I am, I'm reading Boehm's "Software Engineering
Economics" based on references to it in some other things I was
reading. Even though it was published in '81, this quote seems like a
lesson that the industry has yet to learn: (016)
"From the standpoint of _practice_, this phrase [useful to man] places a
responsibility upon us as software engineers to make sure our software
products are indeed useful to people. If we accept an arbitrary set of
specifications and turn them into a correct computer program satisfying
the specifications, we are not discharging our full responsibility as
software engineers." (017)
All of the things Paul and yourself mention fall squarely into that part
of our responsibility that is often ignored because, as you pointed out,
it's the hard stuff. Writing code and designing software in isolation
are relatively easily, and you're in control of the environment.
Thinking about the implications of what you're doing is too often seen
as the "hard stuff", "not necessary" or "people/manager stuff" that we
(collectively as the software industry) have allowed to become
acceptable (and ingrained, even). (018)
As you have alluded to with the potential global aspects and
interactions resulting from service-oriented architectures, we can no
longer allow these things to happen. Maybe this is part of the process
of "growing up" for the industry. (019)
Thanks, (020)
ast
--
Join me in Dubrovnik, Croatia on May 8-10th when I will be speaking at
InfoSeCon 2006. For more information, see www.infosecon.org. (021)
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