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Subject: RE: [soa-rm-ra] A general comment on the SOA RA


Frank,
There is no such thing as useless calculations. On another hand there is
a lot to be said about usefulness of a service.
For example, there is a definition of a service Litmus test in
http://www.gse-nordic.org/Working%20Groups/WebSphere/Conferences/2006/ri
ga_presentation/d2t4s1.pdf 
Business Alignment: The service must be traceable back to a business
task or goal or it may not yield benefits required for SOA
implementation.
1: Does the service provide a required business functionality that
supports business processes and goals? Is there a business goal that
this service directly (versus "inherits" from its children) supports?
2: Is the business willing to fund the service through its lifecycle:
provisioning, management, governance, and maintenance?
3: Is the business willing to share the service internally or externally
with clients or business partners? For example, implications may be
additional costs, business secrets, security, and so on.
Composability: Composability is defined as an attribute that enables the
service to participate in a service composition.
1: Does the service meet the required QoS attributes as defined in the
composition's NFRs?
2: Is the service stateless?
3: Is the service self-contained? (Can it be deployed independently to
meet a business goal although it may cooperate with other services at
run-time to perform business processes? There are no implicit
dependencies of the service on other embedded functionality. All
dependent services are either replaceable or self-contained.)
4: Is the service's implementation technology neutral? Technology
neutral means that the service does not impose support of non-standard
(and unknown to the consumer) protocols or devices; for example, the
constituent component requires intervention through a non-standard
application interface.

Another variation of Litmus test -
http://ea.typepad.com/enterprise_abstraction/2006/08/service_litmus_.htm
l 

Essentially, ask the questions, is (or can) the component in question
be:

    * stateless
    * discoverable
    * autonomous
    * loosely coupled
    * composable
    * abstract

If the answer to any of these is no, then you probably are not looking
as something thats an appropriate service.  

And finally from
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0706_col_simmons
/0706_col_simmons.html 

The Service Litmus Test is a defined set of criteria to resolve whether
a candidate service should be exposed. The criteria fall into four major
areas:

   1.Business alignment: Focusing on business relevance of the service,
the presence of a funding model to support development and maintenance,
and the ability to share the service across the organization.
   2.Composability: Focusing on consistency with non-functional
requirements at the composite level, consideration of state management
aspects, identifying service dependencies, and supporting
technology/platform neutrality.
   3.Externalized service description: Focusing on the presence of an
external service description (such as WSDL), the ability to support
service discovery and binding via the service description, and providing
meta data as part of the service description.
   4.Redundancy elimination: Focusing on the ability to reuse the
candidate service across multiple composite scenarios where the specific
function is needed.

Through this set of questions and optional extensions and
customizations, as appropriate for the specific organization, the design
team can make appropriate architectural decisions regarding which
services should be developed, exposed, and managed as service
implementations.



-----Original Message-----
From: Francis McCabe [mailto:frankmccabe@mac.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 9:25 PM
To: Lublinsky, Boris
Cc: Estefan, Jeff A; soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [soa-rm-ra] A general comment on the SOA RA

Boris
  The calculation performed by turbotax is a great deal more than  
'mere' calculation -- the entire business model is predicated on this.
  In any case, I challenge you to introduce a meaningful dividing line  
between meaningful calculations and meaningless calculations.
  Anyone can say "I pronounce you man and wife", but only in certain  
situations does it convey a real world effect.
  Frank
On Apr 6, 2009, at 5:55 PM, Lublinsky, Boris wrote:

> Jeff, I looked quickly through the previous version and did not find  
> two
> much changes, compared to the current one. Yes you renamed the
> viewpoint, but it even in the previous version, the word business was
> there as just a name. The content was very similar to what it is now:
>
> "View focuses on what a SOA-based system means for people using it to
> conduct their business.9 The mode of business in a SOA-based system is
> characterized in terms of providing services and consuming services to
> realize mutually desirable real world effects."
> The word real world effect is vague enough to mean anything. Besides,
> and here is a kicker, service invocation does not really have to  
> create
> a real world effect to be useful. Here is an example of using Turbotax
> service online (very appropriate timing wise). When you use this
> services you submit your financial documents and receive back the  
> amount
> of tax that you owe or government owes to you. This is quite useful
> service, but a pure calculational one. It does not change anything in
> the world - just massage numbers. One can of course, say that  
> returning
> back a tax amount is a real world effect, but is it really? And  
> there is
> quite a few services like that, for example, calculating insurance
> quote. On another hand, if I am using a banking service to do money
> transfer, this one has a true real world effect - amounts are changing
> in my accounts. But I consider all of these service useful services.
> Now let's take a notorious example of temperature converter. From the
> outside it seems like a valid service, but in reality you will  
> rarely (I
> think never) use this service in your SOA implementation. The reason  
> is
> twofold:
> - I would be hard pressed to consider this one a useful business
> service;
> - The granularity of this one is so low, it does not make sense.
> So if I am developing SOA I need to know:
> -what constitutes a good service?
> -how do I ensure that my services are aligned and supporting my
> business?
> -how do I decide, which services makes sense for my business?
> -Do I grow my services organically - bottom up or do I try to develop
> overall enterprise model - top down.
>
> I think that in order for RA to be successful this considerations  
> should
> be part of the document, even if they are just asked, not necessary
> answered. There is plenty of sources concentrating on this issues.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Estefan, Jeff A [mailto:jeffrey.a.estefan@jpl.nasa.gov]
> Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 12:20 PM
> To: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [soa-rm-ra] A general comment on the SOA RA
>
> Folks,
>
> Here is a link to our Public Review Draft 1 (PDR1) version of the RA
> released almost a year ago (I can hardly believe it!):
>
> http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.pdf
>
> In it, you will see the former name of the first viewpoint and
> associated view, which was referred to as the "Business via Services"
> viewpoint/view.  It was renamed to the "Service Ecosystem"
> viewpoint/view based on feedback from the tutorial given at last  
> year's
> OASIS Symposium and post subcommittee discussions.  I would encourage
> you to have a look at the content of the former viewpoint reflected in
> PRD1 to if the spirit of the message has been lost given all the  
> changes
> that have been made this past year; far too many in my opinion.  I  
> think
> we strayed from the 'business' focus of that viewpoint/view into a far
> too an abstract perspective leveraging the ecosystem concept.  Those  
> of
> you on the subcommittee already know that I have expressed my  
> opinion on
> this matter a number of times.  I think what Frank had captured in the
> PRD1 variant was closer to the mark but too many folks taking shots at
> it have muddled the message.  Once again, I suggest it is time to
> re-assess.  Wasn't that an action item a few months back?  We simply
> dropped it.  Shame on us.
>
> Finally, we need to be very clear about the distinction between the
> organizational principle of "service orientation" versus SOA.  I see a
> lot of the former in the recent threads.
>
> Cheers...
>
> - Jeff
>
>
>
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