Annotated contents

[Francis McCabe <fmccabe@gmail.com>]

3. Service Ecosystem View
Understand SOA from a using and participating perspective.

3.1. Social Structure
Who the participants in a SOA ecosystem are, what are the important relationships. 

In "Who is doing what to whom", the primary objective of 3.1 is to understand "who". This involves understanding that identity is not simply a matter of identifying a body (sic) but understanding the relationship that body has to others. E.g., knowing that you are fred is not enough; knowing that fred is the accounts manager for your important customer gives context to your interactions with him.

There are many kinds of social structure, the two big ones (for SOA) are 'enterprise' and 'market'; i.e., fundamentally hierarchic and fundamentally peer-to-peer.

3.1.1. Actors, delegates and participants

Basic who.

3.1.2 Roles in Social Structures

Formalizing (partly) key relationships within social structures. Empowerment is a key concept in understanding interaction. Roles are a way of organizing the different kinds of relationships possible within a social structure.

3.1.3 Shared State and Social Facts

Participants have partial knowledge of the complete state of the ecosystem. State that is shared is a way of expressing that. Social state calls out the fact that a large part of the shared state has to do with the social structure itself; i.e., is connected to relationships between participants as opposed to being connected to holes in the ground.

3.1.4 Ownership

A corollary of the ecosystem is the fact that there are multiple spheres of control - that is what an ecosystem is, in some sense. Ownership and ownership boundaries calls out some of the important aspects of what this means. Ownership, control and responsibility are intimately tied together.

3.2 Acting in a SOA Ecosystem model
It is the "doing" part of "who is doing what to whom".

3.2.1 Action and Joint action

Doing in a SOA ecosystem is inherently a joint activity. This section unpacks this.

3.2.2 Real World Effects

Actions are performed for a reason: both the originators of actions and the responders of actions have their reasons for doing things. This is unpacked into adoption of goals (a.k.a. objectives) and adoption of responsibility.

3.2.3 Trust, Risk and Willingness

A prerequisite for joint action is willingness to participate. This in turn is predicated on trust and risk.

3.2.4 Transactions and Exchanges

Many actions in the ecosystem focus on changes of ownership.

3.2.5 Communication for Action

We use communication as the means of mediating action in the ecosystem.

Communication is also action in its own right.

This section draws the connections between these two concepts.


3.3 Architectural Implications
Who is doing what to whom
You need to have ways of establishing who the participants in a SOA ecosystem are, what the key relationships are and what they are doing.

The role of policies
The ecosystem functions when the participants can reasonably predict the effect of their actions. Policies are a way of codifying what kind of expectations participants can rely on. 

Communications as a means of mediating action
By definition, in a SOA ecosystem participants require the active collaboration of other participants in order to achieve their goals. Communication is the means by which this collaboration is mediated.

Communication is action, and it is also the means by which actions are performed.