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Subject: RE: [soa-rm] Definition(s) of "service"
Frank, While I believe that the previously proposed definition is sufficient, I offer the following as a compromise. Hopefully, the notion of "capabilities" addresses your issue of needing to get things done. "A service is a set of behaviors to provide capabilities accessible via a prescribed interface." Ron -----Original Message----- From: Frank McCabe [mailto:frank.mccabe@us.fujitsu.com] Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:10 AM To: SOA-RM Subject: Re: [soa-rm] Definition(s) of "service" I hesitate to spoil this party ... but I'm going to :) 1. There is a distinction between action and result. (Just ask any roboticist) Behaviour sounds a child misbehaving with no discernible effect. Computer Scientists have a tendency to focus on the purely technical aspects of their work: bytes shuffling around at random within hopefully enormous memories. 2. Also, we have to bear in mind that nobody invests millions of $s (or even 100's of them) in systems that contemplate their navels or have no business payoff. I think that we have to directly address the reason that services are deployed. 3. One of the movitating best practice aspects of SOAs is that clarity and 'separation' between the providers of services and the consumers of services leads to more scalable and robust architectures. All of the above is fuzzy language; but, at the same time, "A service is a set of behaviors accessible via a prescribed interface." sounds a lot like bureauspeak. I believe that there is strong consensus on the following characteristics: a. The concept of service is 'at the boundary' between service providers and consumers. b. The service is 'there' to get things done; but doesn't itself denote the engine that performs the tasks. c. There is a reason for using a service. d. There is a lot of extra metalogical information about services that make it possible for third parties to develop partners for services. I, for one, would prefer a strongly anglo-saxon phrasing of the definition of service that speaks to these points. Frank
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