Re: [soa-rm-ra] Groups - Modification of Policy_Contract_Business diagram (OASIS_Policy-Contract_Diagram.JPG) uploaded

[michael.poulin@uk.fid-intl.com]

I have a strong impression that in our March discussion about Contract & Policies we  have agreed that Contract is not only more than a Policy but also more than a SLA. The SLA is explicitly measurable (run-time) set of service attributes/characteristics/actions while a Contract can contain Commitments of the contract participants that 1) are not visible through the service interface; 2) may be not measured at run-time. I guess, it is the time for me to show my version of a Service Contract Template we are discussing in my organisation ( I will be able to do it not earlier than on Tuesday next week).

I have described an example of such contract  in my article "Does Web Services makes a Service for SOA?" In particular, a service provider was obliged to gather audit info on all actions requested by particular client and failed in it because its database was not available for some time and several audit messages got lost.
If we are building high level RA, we cannot discard the scenario I've just described.
That is, Contract is an agreed container of all service related actions performed by the provider's SW system(s). With such definition, I do know what to do in IT with Service Contract.

Nevertheless, I am still unclear on Contract-Policy relationship issue...

- Michael