Re: [soa-rm-ra] Service description bits

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Ken,

What I have been asking for when I keep mentioning "gap analysis" is 
that what we are missing in SOA is a decent service consumer 
description, so that consumers who all have their own individual 
requirements can, in a way similar to publishing a wsdl, publish 
their requirements to make the initial selection of services or 
"pre-qualified services" possible. Right now the onus is on the 
consumer to make choices amongst the bewildering, and often 
under-specified, service providers and while what we have is far 
ahead of what we had a few years ago, with developments like Ajax in 
combined server-side and client-side processing, we are always 
back-filling against innovations that get a head start on us.

So what I am looking at is perhaps tasking the W3C with developing 
the consumer-side equivalent of WSDL, and that is why I asked about 
the W3C Choreography effort, since that is where I would start 
nibbling at the ankles of the problem.

Just FYI in general, I am bringing this up because I need it in both 
the Emergency Management and Health Informatics arenas, and Medical 
Banking, too. Of course, I don't have the personal bandwidth to 
pursue this the way it deserves.

Cheers,
Rex

At 6:37 PM -0400 10/9/06, Ken Laskey wrote:
>I've taken responsibility for service description and will hopefully 
>get to revising shortly.  But in case that shortly slips, here are 
>some key thoughts for advance discussion.
>
>- Description is very important both for the consumer and the 
>provider.  This includes abilities, protocols, formats, policies, 
>... and differences need to be resolved to establish an execution 
>context.  This is alluded to in the RM but not explored.  I will 
>probably expand on that here.
>
>- All interactions with a service must be based on informations 
>contained in or referenced by the service description or by further 
>information established during an interaction initiated solely on 
>the basis of the service description.  The consumer may know more 
>(there is no way to guarantee a limit on knowledge) but SOA would 
>say the additional information should not be used.  If this 
>additional information is critical (or just very useful), it should 
>somehow be included in the service description.
>
>- The description must somewhere convey technical assumptions, i.e. 
>the world is like this and that is why you can expect real world 
>effects as described.
>
>- Is sufficiency of description that which would support automated 
>use, assuming the contained information can be unambiguously 
>included, understood, and used?
>
>Ken
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Ken Laskey
>
>MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934
>
>7515 Colshire Drive                        fax:        703-983-1379
>
>McLean VA 22102-7508
>
>
>
>Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:smime 273.p7s (    /    ) (00195E6D)


-- 
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
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Berkeley, CA 94702
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