I hope we’re going to join this
discussion when we have our release candidate complete?
Barry
From: Jeffrey A.
Estefan [mailto:jeffrey.a.estefan@jpl.nasa.gov]
Sent: 06 August 2008 16:44
To: soa-rm@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [soa-rm] Fw: The Open
Group SOA Ontology
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, August 04,
2008 4:20 AM
Subject: Re: The Open Group
SOA Ontology
Hello, Jeff -
At 23:57 01/08/2008, Jeffrey A. Estefan wrote:
Hello Chris,
I have made a first cut draft at
capturing the set of working definitions used for principal and supporting
concepts in the respective SOA standard work of OASIS (OASIS Reference Model
for SOA - SOA-RM & Reference Architecture for SOA - SOA-RA), the OMG
(SOA-Pro submission to UML Profile and Metamodel for Services (UPMS) RFP, and The
Open Group SOA Ontology. Please see the attached Word document. If
you have any trouble opening it, please let me know.
This looks to be a very useful comparison! Do you intend to publish it, in due
course? If so, and if it is available before we publish the ontology, the
ontology could reference it. If not, would you have a problem with us including
material from it, with due acknowledgement, as an appendix to the ontology?
Ideally, we'd like to see every cell in the table filled in.
Again, I stress, this is a first draft. Feel free to update any cells for
the SOA Ontology column that I've missed.
I'll go through it in detail and send you comments.
Also, could you
provide the current version number of the SOA Ontology and publication date of
that revision? This would be the one you sent to the OASIS SOA-RA editors
and to our TC Chair, Duane Nickull. That way, I can update the table
entry accordingly. I took the date from the PDF properties file so I
don't know if this is accurate.
The ontology has not yet been published. We hope to publish in Q4 of this year.
What is on the web currently is a draft for comment. It is identified as Draft
2.0.
We have a couple of
volunteers on the SOA-RA team who are going through the SOA Ontology and that
will roll up into an official OASIS response hopefully in the next couple of
weeks.
That's great!
In the meantime, rest
assured that we fill having an industry standard SOA ontology represented in
OWL or other industry standard representation is a very good thing. What
we are mostly concerned with is alignment of at least the core SOA concepts;
specifically, the definition of "Service." It is very important
that we (the key Open Stds organizations of OASIS, OMG, and The Open Group)
collectively harmonize on some of the core SOA concepts; otherwise, we will all
be doing the practitioner and business stakeholder community at large a huge
disservice.
I agree that we need compatibility. We should recognise, though, that different
viewpoints often produce different definitions. For example, London
can be defined, from a political point of view, as "the capital of the UK" and, from a geographical point of view,
as "the lowest crossing point on the river Thames."
Both definitions are equally valid, and equally useful (and the connection
between them is interesting to historians). We shouldn't try to force everyone
touse the same definition.
An effort to
standardize on such core concepts was ratified back in Oct 2006 by OASIS and
that is the OASIS Reference Model for SOA. The Open Group SOA Ontology
does cite this resource and does utilize some key concepts such as Effects and
Contracts & Policies, but again, having a divergent definition of
"Service" for example, is probably not a good thing.
We had a project at around the same time to develop a definition of SOA, and
have based our work on what it came up with. I don't think that the Open Group
and OASIS definitions are incompatible, but they are from slightly different
viewpoints.
You are probably aware
of the SOA-Pro submittal from the OMG by now, but in case you have not seen it,
you can download a copy at the following URL:
http://www.omg.org/docs/ad/08-05-03.pdf
I would like to point your
attention to Annex B starting on page 98 of that draft standard, which shows
conformance to the OASIS SOA-RM. It would be very helpful to have a
similar Annex as part of The Open Group SOA Ontology. As my attached
table shows, we will likely all have varying degrees of definitions to are
concepts, but again, I think it's key that we at least line up on the very
core, principal concepts with somewhat minor variation. There are
additional supporting concepts that the SOA-Pro does a very good job that those
of us on the SOA-RA Subcommittee are taking a hard look at for possible
adoption. Similarly, your SOA Ontology introduces the notion of
"Activity," which is missing in our SOA-RA work and we will be
looking at that key concept as well in development of the SOA-RA.
We have a particular understanding of conformance in The Open Group, based on
our experience of defining and operating certification programs over many
years. We use the term "conformance" in relation to products and
standards, rather than in relation to models (or ontologies) and other models.
But an analysis of the relation between the ontology and the OASIS RM, as you
have started in your document, is very helpful.
I think I've rambled
on enough. Please feel free to share this information with your
respective SOA Working Group colleagues. If you have any questions,
please feel free to drop me a line.
Thanks! I'm forwarding this to our ontology project team.
Regards...
- Jeff
A. Estefan, Jet Propulsion
Laboratory
Office: (818) 393-5280, Fax: (818) 393-0028
Email: Jeffrey.A.Estefan@jpl.nasa.gov
Voting Member, OASIS Reference
Model for Service Oriented Architecture Technical Committee
Voting Member, OASIS Reference Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture
Subcommittee
Voting Member, OASIS Service Component Architecture - Assembly Technical
Committee
Regards,
Chris
++++
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THE OPEN GROUP
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