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Re: [soa-forum] [sicop-forum] The Open Group SOA Ontology

To: bcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Service-Oriented Architecture CoP <soa-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice <sicop-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ken Laskey <klaskey@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:49:06 -0500
Message-id: <74C911B6-3D75-42A7-BDE2-4626C809F1E4@xxxxxxxxx>
One thing not addressed in the OASIS RM is to specifically differentiate between a "business service" and a "SOA service".  I have a draft white paper on this that I never quite get around to finishing but in general it appears useful:

- to use the OASIS RM idea of a SOA service to provide access to a capability, and
- to relate the business service with the capability to which the SOA service provides access.

In particular,

A business service is the functionality invoked in using a capability designed and implemented to address certain needs, i.e. the solution to a business problem.  It implies actions.  The real world effects of using a business service are changes to the public aspects and/or the user’s private aspects of the world in a way that has some positive impact on those needs.  The user may not be aware of private impacts on others.

A SOA service is an IT artifact (i.e. a thing) that makes possible the efficient connectivity between consumer needs and provider capabilities.  It provides a mechanism to access the capability of a business service and to realize some subset of the real world effects gained by interacting with the SOA service to access the business service.  As implied, the SOA service is not required to enable access to all of the underlying capability’s potential real world effects. In operational use, the SOA service is the entity that must conform to such things as quality of service (QoS) metrics and the thing to be fixed if these metrics are not met.


Comments welcome.

Ken

On Dec 21, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Brad Cox, Ph.D. wrote:

> definitions of SOA are currently broadening to the point where they
> are not particularly useful any more.

The same debate raged in the 90's as to the 'real' meaning of 'object'. Of course the term is just as ambigious in everyday life where the term originated and where it means quite different things at different levels of granularity (subatomic, atomic, molecular, biological, astronomical, etc).

Seems to me we could add a lot of clarity by specifying what level of granularity "service" is being applied to. The article applies it at the enterprise level so service = an organizational capabilitiy.

Several levels below that is the application level, where it means a network-resident computer program; the meaning most technical folk have in mind. Below that are the POJO objects from which applications are usually composed these days (locally accessible objects that are not on the network).

PS: I once tried to get traction on applying hardware engineering terminology in software but that never caught on. Gate-level objects = plain C functions, chip-level = C++/Java objects, card-level = SOA services, and so forth. So it goes...



Joshua Lieberman wrote:
Dr. Harding,
Your interest in feedback for an SOA ontology is appreciated, but taking a quick look at the definition of SOA on which it is based, I have to raise the question why it includes only two of the three legs on which service-based architecture was developed. The role of service discovery, trading, and matching is conspicuously absent. Indeed, this makes the ontology perfectly suitable for modeling any application stovepipe and fails to explain why efforts at interoperability, in fact at the information-hiding aspects of services at all, are important.
It would certainly be very interesting to learn whether this omission is deliberate or represents an intermediate stage of ontology development. It might also be a good topic for SICoP discussion. There is some question whether definitions of SOA are currently broadening to the point where they are not particularly useful any more.
Regards,
Joshua Lieberman
Principal, Traverse Technologies Inc.
tel +1 (617) 395-7766
fax: +1 (815) 717-981
On Dec 21, 2006, at 5:16 AM, Chris Harding wrote:
Hello -

The Open Group is developing a formal ontology for SOA, and we have
now reached the stage where we have a draft that we would like to
share with other organizations that are working on SOA, in order to
obtain feedback and comment. We believe that a common ontology for
SOA can be a very valuable resource for everyone to use, and we
therefore wish to receive input from as wide a constituency as possible.

I think that this will be of interest to the SICoP as well as the
SOACoP, and we would appreciate input from both groups. This call for
input is going to both lists, and we would appreciate comments from
all members of them, either directly to me (c.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
or to one or both of the lists. (Comments to both lists will generate
the best debate!)

The current draft is draft 0.6 and is available from our web page at
simple example ontologies that import it. Perhaps the best starting
point is the presentation at
which I delivered at the recent OMG meeting. This explains the
ontology and how we think it will be used.

We will produce a new draft in January, and will address the comments
in that draft.

All the best for Christmas and the New Year!

Regards,

Chris
+++++

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Dr. Christopher J. Harding
Forum Director for SOA and Semantic Interoperability
THE OPEN GROUP
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Member Meetings: January 29 - February 2, 2007
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Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive                        fax:        703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508




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