Re: [soa-rm-ra] So What is a Service Ecosystem Anyway?

[Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com>]

The point that I was trying to make was that my intuition is that the  
natural ecosystem was more likely to be accurate than our prior  
conception. In particular, I am becoming suspicious of 'service  
chains' and 'service composition' as the primary means of adding value  
within the SOE.

For one thing, I have consistently heard business folk express  
skepticism of dynamic discovery of services. The reason being that  
deciding which service to use is primarily a business decision that is  
not going to be automated soon.

On the other hand, if you look at how people actually leverage off of  
each other's work, it often does not fit into a tidy 'play by the  
rules' model; on the contrary, some of the most creative and important  
leaps have jumped off existing platforms and created their own rules.   
This is like a hawk eating a prairie dog: using Web services to share  
personal information, using Facebook to build a CRM platform, using  
Salesforce to run a political campaign.

Personally, I think that 'action at a distance' remains fundamental.  
But some of the 'flattening' that we have implied with common  
description models and common interaction mechanisms will not survive  
the test of time.

This is no reason to stop what we are doing. On the contrary, I think  
that a well designed RAF will be more important, not less. But an RAF  
is not the same thing as an abstracted concrete architecture (sic). A  
proper RAF should try to elucidate what is really going on, what is  
really of the essence.

On May 11, 2009, at 9:00 AM, Rex Brooks wrote:

> Good point. I wasn't actually asserting that the correspondences  
> were exact, just that if you remove the previous words and use the  
> meaning of the substituted words, the new meaning applies. Of  
> course, I didn't take the time to say that, but I have now. So,  
> without the original words, it reads:
>
> A Service Ecosystem is a unit consisting of all services, service  
> providers, and service consumers in an area functioning together  
> with all of the business factors of the environment. A service  
> ecosystem is a completely independent unit of interdependent  
> entities which share the same habitat. Service ecosystems usually  
> form a number of service chains which show the interdependence of  
> the services within the ecosystem.
>
> It could definitely stand some refinement, for instance habitat is  
> not the best fit, but I only intended to offer it as a starting point.
>
> Cheers,
> Rex
>
> At 8:23 AM -0700 5/11/09, Francis McCabe wrote:
>> That is kind of nice :)
>>
>> But I think that there are some crucial differences.
>>
>> A service chain is not the same kind of thing as a food chain. A  
>> prairie dog does not want to be food for the hawks.
>> Frank
>> On May 11, 2009, at 7:52 AM, Rex Brooks wrote:
>>
>>> Frank asked the question in the Subject Line in last week's  
>>> meeting, and I thought it might be wiser to discuss a possible  
>>> dealbreaker on the list rather than in the next meeting. I suspect  
>>> that this suggestion is the result of reaching a point where we're  
>>> getting stale or stalemated after slogging away at this so long.  
>>> Regardless...
>>>
>>> I reviewed what I thought was the most relevant section of the RAF  
>>> that deals with this: Section 1.2 Service Oriented Architecture --  
>>> An Ecosystems Perspective. I still don't have a specific problem  
>>> with this as the consistent perspective that informs the rest of  
>>> the document as a foundation for more specific or solution- 
>>> specific RAs.
>>>
>>> However, if anything might need to be added to that section I  
>>> would add a brief reworking of the Wikipedia's citation from  
>>> "Christopherson, RW (1996) Geosystems: An Introduction to Physical  
>>> Geography Prentice-Hall Inc. (I have substituted SOA RAF terms for  
>>> those in square brackets "[]")
>>>
>>> A Service Ecosystem [ecosystem] is a [(sic)natural] unit  
>>> consisting of all services, service providers and service  
>>> consumers [plants, animals and micro-organisms (biotic factors)]  
>>> in an area functioning together with all of the business [non- 
>>> living physical (abiotic)] factors of the environment. A service  
>>> ecosystem is a completely independent unit of interdependent  
>>> entities [organisms] which share the same habitat. Service  
>>> ecosystems usually form a number of service chains [food webs]  
>>> which show the interdependence of the services [organisms] within  
>>> the ecosystem.
>>>
>>> (addition) It is important to note that the Service Ecosystems  
>>> Perspective in this context concerns itself mostly with the  
>>> relationships and transactions that span enterprise boundaries.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Rex
>>> --
>>> Rex Brooks
>>> President, CEO
>>> Starbourne Communications Design
>>> GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
>>> Berkeley, CA 94702
>>> Tel: 510-898-0670
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:smime 1055.p7s (    /    )  
>> (0173E17A)
>
>
> -- 
> Rex Brooks
> President, CEO
> Starbourne Communications Design
> GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
> Berkeley, CA 94702
> Tel: 510-898-0670
>
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