Meeting Reminder; EDXL-RIM & SOA-RA-2

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

(Note: This is the second of three messages I am sending out today 
relating to our meeting tomorrow. This one expands on how EDXL-RIM 
and the SOA Reference Architecture relate to each other at 
approximately the same "Level of Abstraction.")

Hi Folks,

My first message on this topic outlined how EDXL-RIM coming from a 
Bottom-Up approach, and SOA-RA coming from a Top-Down approach arrive 
at approximately the same 'Intermediate Level of Abstraction.'

So why is this important? Because SOA-RA lays out a set of 
relationships between service consumers and service providers and 
what it means to participate in a Service Oriented Architecture. This 
is actually very handy since it is likely to form the basis for the 
information-infrastructure of the future.

The SOA-RA is a work in progress, having a useful head start on our 
EDXL-RIM efforts, with the exception that we have a wealth of 
concrete lessons learned from earlier EDXL specifications which we 
can apply what SOA-RA is developing to facilitate aggregation and 
composition of services across organizational and jurisdictional 
boundaries.

Okay, so why is SOA important for EDXL-RIM? Because after the hype 
dies down, SOA is the model which is overwhelmingly likely to be 
adopted in depth by the federal government of the US, as it is 
already being adopted in large parts of the world, whether 
consciously or not. That last bit is the most important part.

(Note that the major IT vendors have adopted SOA as a mantra as well, 
regardless of how well or poorly their offerings operate or, most 
importantly, inter-operate.)

However, SOA is nothing new. It is just a reformulation of what we've 
been doing since we decided to divide the labors of life and set up 
shop in cities instead of roaming around as hunter-gatherers (at 
least most of of us did this, not all and it's wise to recognize that 
this is by no means universal).

Regardless, like so much else in our considerations, such as the 
place of ontologies in our formulations, we use SOA anyway, so we 
might as well be more aware of it and do it more efficiently and, 
most importantly, automatically wherever possible.

This assumes that our goal is to prepare for and respond to 
emergencies as quickly and efficiently as we can, and avoid the 
practice of throwing away any and all previous policies the moment an 
"emergency" happens.

Of course, we should pay attention to the entire lifecycle of 
emergencies from planning to demobilization and starting the planning 
process anew on the basis of whatever we learn as we strive to 
improve our abilities to prepare, respond and adapt to or mitigate 
the effects of natural and man-made emergencies.

Because SOA-RA and EDXL-RIM occupy the intermediate Level of 
Abstraction, the infrastructure that SOA-RA describes can provide 
useful information to EDXL-RIM.

This information can help us develop EDXL-RIM's specific constructs 
in ways that may be easier to adopt. This should help us with 
constructs such as Keyword-ValueListURNs, and adaptations of CIQ and 
GML in geo-oasis.

These constructs can be efficiently  matched up with the structural 
levels of SOA such as providing a common formulation for Service 
Descriptions (and WSDLs or RESTful Web Services) in SOA 
Registry-Repositories, using OASIS ebXML Registry-Repository 
Specifications, for instance.

The purpose is to fit our standards together in well-ordered and 
efficient information architecture.


Cheers,
Rex

-- 
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-898-0670