RE: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed

[<marchadr@wellsfargo.com>]

It is very interesting how a lot of software professionals equate building software with building a house or building. Does this mean the practices are the same between construction and software I think not. When have you had a finalized business specification to build from, is it iterative? Can you iterate construction?

The practices are very different. One thing that does seem to be similar is that both have a bill of materials for planning and best practices of how to build sections of the subject. For instance, a blueprint in construction is most of the time not going to invent a 3 quarter weld approach or to redesign the lintel or basement approaches. It has some set patterns or "reference blueprints" on sections of the blueprint. It puts all the "reference blueprints" for specific problem spaces within it's blueprint to make up the specific blueprint.

A construction blueprint also does not invent the materials it uses, have you ever seen anyone invent a new window for a building, with a variance on the process. It is not in the best interest of a contractor of a building to invent new materials or approaches, it means he has to find different resources than his normal operations to fulfill these tasks.

The same approach is something we should develop as the blueprint. Make it more of a reference blueprint that can be applied in a domain as an example of use. Coming up with domain specific blueprints will distract the TC as they will tend to think that all banks fall in the specific banking example. Has anyone ever seen an example of banking within development and software design books? Did it meet what the specific bank was doing? Probably not. Mergers and acquisitions changes domains in a slight way that could be addressed through SOA but most of the time the expense versus the business as usual is a major factor in purifying a technical architecture.

The way most of the approaches have been to SOA is to componentize your software thereby making it easier to slap a service on it. Well welcome to reality if you where to componentize every system you have before moving to an SOA that could be a huge expense that in most cases becomes busy work if the system is working.

Those are my 2 cents before a cup of coffee.

- Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stiefel [mailto:development@reliablesoftware.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 6:50 AM
To: Jones, Steve G; Marchant, Dan R.;
soa-blueprints@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed


Actually architects do specify the actual building materials and their 
strengths when coming up with a blueprint. They have to make sure the 
buildings they design can stand up. Engineering companies may check and 
validate the architect's choices.

The real point, I think, is those intermediate documents that you refer to 
are architectural documents that belong to a reference architecture, not a 
blueprint which deals with an implementation. Implementation means getting 
vendor specific which I think is something the TC wants to avoid. We might 
want to come up with reference architectures, or concrete architectures 
which then could be implemented with a specific vendors technology (as with 
Generico).

But call it a blueprint, or a reference architecture, we still have to 
decide the domain of discourse. In other words, we have to decide what 
types of documents we want, and why we want them.

I am not sure how one goes about doing that.

Michael


At 05:20 PM 1/23/2006, Jones, Steve G wrote:


>When an architect sketches out the original design for the building it
>outlines the principles and practice and puts in place the areas where more
>refinement is required.  These areas are further refined by the architects
>team they become an outline blueprint that defines the major elements, this
>is then passed to an engineering company who determine the actual materials
>and strengths, and its probably these folks who produce the final
>construction blueprints and these can be modified.
>
>At each level the blueprint has become more and more detailed from the
>initial sketches on the architects desk.  For me its this process that is
>mirrored in SOA blueprints, if your project is only 20 people or so they
>might be one document put out at the start, if however you are trying to
>move an entire organisation towards SOA its more like building a small town
>so there are lots of levels of blueprints.  Even in one building there are
>blueprints for the building and then blueprints for each floor, each at
>different levels of abstraction.
>
>I might have taken this metaphor as far as I can go, but the point is that
>when you are planning any major construction project whether in software,
>buildings or planes you have various levels of abstractions to communicate
>different levels of concepts and break down the problem for different
>audiences.
>
>
>Steve
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Stiefel [mailto:development@reliablesoftware.com]
> > Sent: 23 January 2006 22:02
> > To: marchadr@wellsfargo.com; soa-blueprints@lists.oasis-open.org
> > Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed
> >
>
> > A blueprint is detailed instructions on how to implement a particular
> > design. Construction blueprints are modified as the building is
> > constructed
> > to reflect the actual decisions the contractor made in the field.
> >
>
> > In building construction, of course, one can have a plan that is distinct
> > from the artifact itself. In the software world, detailed instructions on
> > implementation is very often identical to writing code.
> >
>
> > I suppose one could describe a particular SOA in terms of service inputs
> > and outputs and orchestrations, etc. without reference to a vendor
> > implementation. This is some soft of architectural document, not a
> > blueprint.
> >
>
> > I understand what a reference architecture is. I understand what a
> > concrete
> > architecture is. I have no idea what an abstract blueprint is.
> >
>
> > Michael
> >
>
> > At 12:49 PM 1/23/2006, marchadr@wellsfargo.com wrote:
> > >To All,
> > >
> > >Here is what I gather from the group as a whole:
> > >
> > >1. Need a context on what we are doing.
> > >     - 2 cents:  A problem statement would be a great start with
> > audience,
> > > etc...
> > >
> > >2. Need to defining use cases to provide context on the blueprints
> > defined
> > >      - 2 cents: establish a use case document that can be expand on this
> > > and may have domain related spin offs
> > >
> > >3. Need to establish what a blueprint is.
> > >
> > >I think everyone should start adding to this list and adding opinions,
> > etc...
> > >
> > >This may help to create a bit of focus or strategy.
> > >
> > >Thanks,
> > >
> > >Dan
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
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