Re: [soa-rm-ra] participants, agents and actors

[Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com>]

Some definitions....

Stakeholder (no change)

   A stakeholder is an individual entity, human or non-human, or organization of entities that has an interest in the states of services and/or the outcomes of service interactions 

Actor

   An actor is an entity that has goals and is capable of action (i.e., applying intent to achieve a Real World Effect)

Agent

   An agent is an actor that acts on behalf of another entity. I.e., an agent can adopt one or more goals of another entity.

Participant

   A participant is a stakeholder that is acting in the context of a SOA-based system. A participant is also an actor.

The purpose of this would be to separate out the concepts of having an interest in services, being active, and actually doing things. 

Some examples:

Stakeholder: 

  Govt, Service providers, etc.

Actor

  Software entities such as security agents, publishing agents, service imlpementations

  Human service consumers

Agent

  Proxy agent, mediator, broker, software agent,...

Participant

  Service consumer, provider, 

I am not sure if this ends up splitting a few too many hairs. But on the other hand it also felt that the original terms were getting too overloaded.

Frank

On Jul 17, 2008, at 7:05 AM, Jeffrey A. Estefan wrote:

Frank,

 

Couple of quick questions:

 

1. Can you please provide the natural language definition of Actor?

 

2. Are the current definitions of Stakeholder and Participant and Agent to your satisfaction, given this new entity of Actor and the associated visual model?  How about Service Consumer, Mediator, and Provider?

 

3. You show multiple inheritance from Stakeholder and Actor to Participant.  Is this what you meant to model?  Maybe it will be a little clearer when you provide the formal definition of Actor.

 

Cheers...

 

 - Jeff

smime.p7s