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

[Danny Thornton <danny_thornton2@yahoo.com>]

In section 1.2, we took the definition Rex provided and worked it down to:

"Many systems cannot be understood by a simple decomposition into parts and subsystems – in particular when there are many interactions between the parts. For example, a biological ecosystem is a self-sustaining association of plants, animals, and the physical environment in which they live.  Understanding an ecosystem often requires a holistic perspective rather than one focusing on the system's individual parts."

I agree with Frank that we do not define how it has to be done, but rather provide understanding and predict how it will be done.  

Danny

--- On Mon, 5/11/09, Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com> wrote:

> From: Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [soa-rm-ra] So What is a Service Ecosystem Anyway?
> To: "Rex Brooks" <rexb@starbourne.com>
> Cc: soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org
> Date: Monday, May 11, 2009, 9:21 AM
> 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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