Re: [ebsoa] Process-Oriented Architectures (POA)

[Steve Ross-Talbot <steve@enigmatec.net>]

Dear Chiusano,

The term POA is a derivative of POM (Process Oriented Middleware). 
Whereas POM is a genre of products that are just starting to reach the 
market, POA is the genre of application that can be said to have been 
created based on POM. At least this is one definition.

So what is a POA? In brief, my take at least, a true POA is a 
componentised distributed system in which the components are processes 
in a process algebraic sense. They encapsulate behaviour and enable 
sound connections to be made to themselves and with other processes. As 
such they provide the necessary information to be able to statically 
show certain liveness properties and show conformance to some 
specification from a behavioral perpsective.

Web Services are not there yet but work on BPEL and on CDL 
(Choreography) will get us there fairly soon.

Cheers

Steve T


On 6 Apr 2004, at 14:30, Chiusano Joseph wrote:

> I know that our concentration is to be service-oriented architectures,
> but at the same time I'm thinking about what will lie beyond (so that 
> we
> can best prepare). A term popped into my head on the way home yesterday
> (the DC Beltway apparatentely inspires me): Process-Oriented
> Architecture, or "POA".
>
> Has anyone heard this term used before? I Google'd it and found few
> hits, all of which seemed to be individual (rather than corporate)
> references.
>
> As you can tell from the term, just as SOAs enable (involve, pick your
> favorite word here) the use of shared services, POAs will extend SOAs 
> to
> enable the use of shared Web Services-based processes that are based on
> shared Web Services that are defined within SOAs, working in concert
> with each other. So for a US federal application (my primary client),
> this could mean a set of shared Web Services-based business processes
> for federal agencies, in a flexible, agile, process environment.
>
> Does this concept resound with anyone?
> -- 
> Kind Regards,
> Joseph Chiusano
> Associate
> Booz | Allen | Hamilton