1.1.1 Actors, Delegates and
Participants
Figure 5 Actors, Participants and Delegates[KL1]
Actor
An actor is an
entity, human, non-human or organization of entities, that is capable of engaged in [KL2] action.[1]
The concept of actor encompasses many kinds of entities,
human and corporate participants, even semi-autonomous computational agents. Two
important kinds of actor are participants
and delegates. Note that we
admit non-human agents that have no identifiable representative as an extreme
case: the normal situation is where participants are either human or
organizations.
Stakeholder
A stakeholder in
the SOA ecosystem is an individual entity, human or non-human, or organization
of entities that has an interest in, or concerns relative to, the state [KL3]effectiveness,
scalability, or confidence in use of the ecosystem.
Participant
A participant is
a stakeholder that is an actor in a SOA ecosystem.
A participant is a stakeholder whose interests lie in the
successful use of and fulfillment of services. However, human participants
always require representation in an
electronic system – they require mechanisms to facilitate their interactions: they
require delegates.
Note that we admit non-human agents that have no identifiable
representative as an extreme case: the normal situation is where participants are
either human or organizations.
Non-Participant
Stakeholder
A non-participant
stakeholder is any stakeholder
who is not an actor in the
ecosystem.
Stakeholders do not necessarily participate in service
interactions; indeed, the interest of non-participant
stakeholders may be in not acting directly but in still realizing the
benefits of a well-functioning ecosystem and not suffering consequences of
unintended real world effects. For example, a government may have an interest
in the outcomes of commercial services deployed in a SOA ecosystem for the purposes
of collecting tax from one or more of the participants. A government may also be
interested in regulatory compliance as it affects service interactions.
There are two main classes of such non-participatory
stakeholders: third parties who are affected by someone's use or provisioning
of a service, and regulatory agencies who wish to control the outcome of
service interactions in some way (such as by taxation). For example, a
government may have an interest in the outcomes of commercial services deployed
in a SOA ecosystem for the purposes of collecting tax from one or more of the
participants. A government may also be interested in regulatory compliance as
it affects service interactions. An example of an affected third party may be someone using
the service infrastructure whose activities are impeded because an errant
participant is consuming excessive bandwidth in another interaction.
Delegate
A delegate is an
actor that is acting on behalf of a
participant.
[KL4]A
fundamental aspect of the SOA ecosystem is the use of resources that are owned
by someone other than the immediate consumer. Service interactions occur when the service consumer passes
a request to the service provider, expecting that the service of interest will
produce the real world effects enumerated in the service description. The service provider acts as a delegate
of the service consumer in carrying out specific actions, the details of which
may not be known to the service consumer.
The concept of the delegate
and its effect on willingness and trust are discussed later in the SOA ecosystem
view.
[1] Note that there is potential confusion between the concept of Actor in UML2.0 and an actor in an ecosystem. Section 3.2.1 defines the concepts of role and an actor adopting a role.
[KL1]This figure indicates a Delegate is not a Participant. It has Delegate replacing Agent from a previous version of this figure, and the straight substitution is not accurate. We previously agreed to use the text below in defining Agent, including the caveat that we would not explicitly include Agent in the discussion unless it introduces something unique.
[KL2]If an actor “capable of” action or “engaged in” action? It would seem that some non-participants would become actors if they felt the circumstances warranted.
[KL3]State is an open item how to define but suggested change would tie back to section 2 goals. It also ties in non-participants better.
[KL4]Delegate was meant to be a participant acting for another in a business context, not an electronic intermediary role. We need to reserve the term delegate for our elaboration of Willingness.