Re: [soa-rm] What Is A "Metaservice"?

[Ken Laskey <klaskey@mitre.org>]

 From an SOA standpoint, unless it is vital information that would  
somehow be made known through the service description, there is only a  
service and we neither know nor care whether it is atomic or meta.

re another comment, I see no reason to generate a worthless definition  
just to beat someone else's worthless definition to the punch.

Ken

On Feb 13, 2006, at 11:00 AM, Bashioum, Christopher D wrote:

> I just now read the actual blog, and I think Dave L. is right-on with
> regard to the overall intent of better describing services in a
> consistent way.  In fact, I've been working on such a meta-description
> for services for the DoD for a number of months now.  My problem is
> with the term.  I made the following post to his blog
>
> <Post>
> Agree with the article, but not the term metaservice.  We are using the
> term "service definition framework" for the added information used to
> describe the services.
>
> I would submit that most of this additional information should exist
> within the WSDL framework, most of it in the abstract portion.  In
> WSDL-2.0, it would generally be children of the Interface element.
>
> My problem with the term "metaservice" is that it sounds more like a
> type of service (like a stock quote service, or a weather service).  It
> does not communicate what you are looking for.  A better term might be
> meta-description, or a meta-interface, or something like that
> </Post>
>
> That being said, Joe's original comment to the SOA-RM list about a
> metaservice being a "service about services" would also have another
> name, depending on what it did.  E.g., an aggregation service, an
> orchestration service, etc.  To call it a metaservice doesn't really
> describe what it does.  On the other hand, any service that uses other
> services may be a "type" or "class" of service that uses other
> services.  In which case a service that is itself an aggregation of
> other 'lower-level' services would be a metaservice.  This might be
> helpful in distinguishing between atomic services and metaservices.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 10:39 AM
> To: McGregor.Wesley@tbs-sct.gc.ca; soa-rm@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [soa-rm] What Is A "Metaservice"?
>
> Good point Wes,
>
> Would it make an errata? Just to pre-empt the obvious.
>
> Regards,
> Rex
>
> P.S. What would the equivalent be in a bus or a fabric? Can I build a
> server for it? Does it do Windows?
>
> At 9:57 AM -0500 2/13/06, <McGregor.Wesley@tbs-sct.gc.ca> wrote:
>> Hi Joe,
>>
>> The definition of "meta-service" would be dependent on the context
>> in which it is used IMHO.
>>
>> I would note however that some company will define it soon, publish
>> it, and that definition (even if erroneous) may be THE definition.
>>
>> To simply ignore the inevitable is to put our heads in the sand.
>>
>> A service about services seems logically equivalent to data about
> data.
>>
>> Do we need to say more?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Wes
>
>
> --  
> Rex Brooks
> President, CEO
> Starbourne Communications Design
> GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
> Berkeley, CA 94702
> Tel: 510-849-2309
>
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Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934
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