This is in response to your request on last week’s
conference call, if anyone has comments speak now. I also think that the
recent comments on clarifying sections are a reflection of my issues with the
specification.
I agree with the majority of points made/described in
ver 10. My issues are with what is not in this draft. Based on Fig 1 the Refe!
rence Model is guided by Reference Architectures, Concrete Architectures,
Profile & Related Models. They in turn account for requirements,
motivation & goals. This is creating a Reference Model from the bottom up.
I believe a Reference Model should reflect a top down
approach.
The Reference Model needs to reflect the environment,
the strategy and the priorities of the business/mission/collaboration.
This will impact the construction of services. A service is a business task or
activity that is realized through technology. The draft does a good job of
describing how that realization happens. But it doesn’t provide a sufficient
link between processes and services. The draft makes the point that the
central focus of! SOA is the task of business function—getting something
done. A business process is made up of tasks and activities to achieve a
goal (getting something done). The
concept of creating the service from the tasks and activities in a
process is important. For example, where on the continuum of fine grained to
coarse grained should a particular service be; this will affect interaction,
reusability. The relationship between processes and services needs to be in
the Reference Model.
While I saw that there is a note saying the glossary
is still in flux, since one of the objective of the Reference Model is a
vocabulary, having less in the glossary might be a better option. Is semantic
integration a guiding principle of SOA?
With respect to conformance there needs to be business
results. That is an SOA should provide demonstrable mission accomplishments,
e.g. ROI, match a competitors distribution channel. SOA is not a technology.
Conformance should provide operational accomplishments, these should be
measurable.
!