*steps to the center of the room* (01)
*looks at all of the OMG members/participants in the audience* (02)
*blinks* (03)
Um, Cory... Please don't hit me, but if I didn't know anything about
SOA, and I read the demo specification, I would come to the conclusion
that MDA and OMG-EDOC/ECA were a requirement for SOA. (04)
I can understand that you, as a contributor to OMG specifications, a
developer of tools that implement these specifications and as an OMG
participant, naturally are using the technologies you believe in to both
express and meet the requirements of the SOA demo, but would it be
possible to not have the implication that SOA requires OMG standards as
part of the document? (05)
Please don't get me wrong (really!). This isn't a personal thing at
all--I'm trying to be objective here. I would say the same thing if
someone from Microsoft had expressed the demo requirements in terms of
WCF/Indigo/BizTalk, or someone from IBM/Iona/etc. doing the same with
SCA, or any one of the JBI vendors. (06)
However, the OMG approach and specifications only represent one way to
implement SOA. Further, I almost see the MDA meta-model as being not in
the overall interests of the community (as peers), because it implies
that there is an "owner" of the community that dictates the business
processes. Also, if I understand it correctly, changes to the
meta-model require changes to the community's agent implementations. If
these agents are truly independent, they cannot be under the control of
or tied to the MDA meta-model, and, as such, the positioning of the MDA
meta-model as the foundation of the community implies a sense of control
that cannot exist in a community of peers. In this respect, MDA is no
better or worse than any other way of specifying the "rules" of the
community. (07)
It is for these reasons that I ask the question--not because you are
part of the OMG. If the intent of the demo is to prove MDA as a means
of implementing SOA, then fine, it's an MDA-does-SOA demo, and that's
cool. It also implies that the fate of the SOA rests solely on the
capabilities of MDA, so I would question if that's a position the OMG
really wants to be in. Maybe it does. Sometimes sink or swim is a good
strategy rather than just floating along with all the others. (08)
We have spent a lot of time talking about the community aspects, and all
of the people who have participated in these discussions have completely
latched on to the implicit association between a social community of
real people and the way community has been used to describe the
architecture of the SOA. I think this is a powerful metaphor and one
that is good for both this CoI and SOA in general, but it's a bit like
being pregnant--you can't stop half way. All successful communities
have leaders, but few have dictators. (09)
If we have to create a demo by the conference, then I have no big issue
with the technical details of the scenario other than those I have
already expressed. I have a couple of detail questions around the
necessity of the buyer to register with the registry and the implication
that SOA requires traditional middleware, but these are minor things. (010)
Once again, I am not attacking you, the OMG or anyone else. I just
think that if you believe in SOA and the things we've been discussing,
that this is more important than trying to claim that there is an
optimal set of tools and technologies to implement it. If vendors wish
to showcase products and specifications in the implementation of agents
within the community, I think that's fine, and a good opportunity for
them. However, I firmly believe that implicitly tying the success or
failure of SOA the concept to any particular vendor or technology is a
mistake and is not representative of the capabilities or the potential
of SOA the architectural style. In this respect, I think the demo
should be as objective as possible. (011)
I guess these comments will pretty-much rule me out of much else to do
with this effort, but I think they are necessary. SOA should stand or
not on its own merits, and I think it can do so. Yes, you have to
implement it and there are easier ways than others, but these are
implementation details, and I think they should not be represented as
anything otherwise. (012)
Thanks for listening and good luck, (013)
ast (014)
On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 21:18, Cory Casanave wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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Join me in Dubrovnik, Croatia on May 8-10th when I will be speaking at
InfoSeCon 2006. For more information, see www.infosecon.org. (015)
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