RE: [soa-rm] The riot act (toned down version)

["MATHEWS, Tim" <tmathews@lmi.org>]

Duane - 

I fully agree with your plan to move forward.  It seems like you have
heard these arguments before and that you have honed your defense!

In support of your manifesto:

1) In my mind there is no patent on the definition of what an SOA is, so
it is OK and a wise move to scope SOA as a 'software architecture' if we
ever want to get anywhere.  

2) The RA will address all of the concerns that I have been following on
the threads.

I guess my only loose end is within your #2 step, what does that step
translate to at a more granular level, e.g. do we have any idea as to
how far the current DRAFT specification is from consensus? What are the
steps to ratifying the spec?

My thoughts,

TM

-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Nickull [mailto:dnickull@adobe.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 12:41 PM
Cc: SOA-RM
Subject: [soa-rm] The riot act (toned down version)

TC:

I would like to defer on the current questions for a moment and reflect
on a few things.  Things are starting to heat up in the TC and if we are
going to make progress, we have to agree on something.

My observations is that we are all after the same goals (or hope we
are).  The high level goal is to define SOA.  In our charter, we have
agreed to do this by first building a Reference Model, followed possibly
by a RA.  This idea of two separate documents is in our charter.  The
current proposal for this is therefore conceptually in alignment, just
the names and details require sorting.

We also have a definition of Reference Model in our charter and some Q&A
further explaining it.  We all agreed to this when we signed up. 

"Reference Model - A reference model is an abstract framework for
understanding significant relationships among the entities of some
environment, and for the development of consistent standards or
specifications supporting that environment. A reference model is based
on a small number of unifying concepts and may be used as a basis for
education and explaining standards to a non-specialist. [1] A reference
model is not directly tied to any standards, technologies or other
concrete implementation details, but it does seek to provide a common
semantics that can be used unambiguously across and between different
implementations."

Here is the problem:

A TC needs some common ground it can stand on in order to operate. This
TC needs to have our charter and referenced materials as common ground 
to start.    At this point, I hope that no one challenges this 
definition of a RM.  If we do not have that as common ground, we have
some hard times ahead.

We also have defined Architecture in our charter:

"Architecture - Software architecture for a system is the structure or
structures of the system, which consist of elements and their externally
visible properties, and the relationships among them.[2]"

This appears to be in alignment with what several on this TC are calling
for WRT the second document (Which I am also in favor of since it
clearly has great value).  The RA (second document) is where things like
Service Consumers are going to be present, along with messages, security
etc.

SOA RM TC recap:

What is going well:

We have tons of very good talent in this TC and a huge number of active
participants with lots of ideas. 

What is not going well:

We have tons of very good talent in this TC and a huge number of active
participants with lots of ideas. 

In other words our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness.

So how do we move forward?

1. We have to have our charter as common ground.  If there is a serious
desire to challenge the tenets of what constitutes a Reference Model,
that argument does not belong in this TC.  That can be done elsewhere.  
It is out of order for this TC to do this and we need to rely on common
ground to move forward. 

2. Let's keep focused on the RM.

3. Let's start the RA soon.

Duane