Re: [soa-rm-ra] Interacting w/Services Model Updated (a start on EDA & event-driven SOA)

[Ken Laskey <klaskey@mitre.org>]

Catching up on email traffic and Jeff's additions to Interaction.

I missed the live joint action discussion, so I can use some clarification.  Is a request-response considered a joint action because I have two participants and by definition of the MEP I need both the request and the response to qualify as the resulting RWE?  Is everything a joint action except for me sending a message to which I expect no response?

Most of the material Jeff added about joint action applies equally to (simple?) action.  However, my processing of the words in the wiki gets the sense that in a joint action a (some?) service has more of an initiating role.  Am I reading in more than is intended?

Also, saying a message "denotes" both an action and an event seems like an overload for very different message intents.  The online Free Dictionary gives the following definitions for denote:

1. To mark; indicate: a frown that denoted increasing impatience.

2. To serve as a symbol or name for the meaning of; signify: A flashing yellow light denotes caution.

3. To signify directly; refer to specifically.

Does UML have a more precise meaning in context for denote?  Otherwise, the connection between message and action seems to be invoke (and in the reverse direction, Action is realized by Message); with respect to Events, it appears a Message notifies a participant of an Event, and an Event enters a participant's awareness through a notifying Message.  (I was going to say "becomes visible" but I didn't want to confuse with more inclusive Visibility under RM.) 

We've tried to differentiate between Event and RWE but other discussions in this thread seem to say that Event reporting RWE is too limiting for Event.  To me, Event connotes something happening and is a subset of RWE.  So RWE could be the Event of sending a command to decrement an inventory and the final decremented inventory.

Minor question: is RWE a set of effects or each individual effect or both?  Is there a need to differentiate?

Ken

On Mar 19, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Francis McCabe wrote:

Michael

 You have misunderstood the connection that we looked at before here.

 An event cannot cause anything. Least of all an action.

 By definition, an event is a report f something that has happened that is of interest to someone.

 An action is the application of intent (I personally prefer the term force over intent, but that riases more potential for misunderstanding) on a target to achieve an effect.

 Actions may (but then again may not if the action was unsuccessful) give rise to events. An event may be interpreted by an agent as a reason for initiating actions.

 Messages may be used to denote events and actions. More accurately:

We use message exchange as the realization of communication of actions and events.

 More accurately still, following from Herbert Clark's notion of joint action:

Participants send and receive messages (which are inherently individual actions) in order to participate in joint actions (the exchange of a message, the performance of an action, the reporting of an event).

In our architecture, actions and events are both realized via message exchange. A message may be used to denote an action and/or an event.

Frank

On Mar 18, 2007, at 3:13 PM, michael.poulin@uk.fid-intl.com wrote:

Replying to the Jeff's question about relationship between Event and Action, let me suggest that an Event can cause an Action directly or indirectly; plus, in some cases, one Action might be not enough to cause particular Action. All this looks complex.

Would it be easier to define that an Event can relate to the Action via a Message? On the UML diagram, the 'denote' relationships might be bi-directional... In other words, I propose using following UML construct here:

      :EVENT  ------x-------->  :ACTION

                    !

                    !

                    !

                    !

                 :MESSAGE

- Michael

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Ken Laskey

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