Major SOA Historical Milestone Today (Informal Discussion Among OASIS, T

Subject: Major SOA Historical Milestone Today (Informal Discussion Among OASIS, The Open Group, and OMG)

SOA-RM TC,

For those at the Symposium, hope you are all enjoying San Fran. I wanted to let you know that I participated in a cross-consortium conference call today between OASIS, The Open Group, and OMG on SOA and our respective "definitions" of SOA, and how we can provide the world with a better understanding of each of our views. Frank McCabe was also planning to attend, but was absent due the Symposium. I believe this call was truly a major historical milestone for SOA.

Frank and I will be representing OASIS on this bi-weekly calls going forward (Frank, hope I can speak for you on that:), so please consider us your liaisons (and your voice) in these discussions.

Here are highlights:

- This was an informal call, not launched from the higher levels of any of the consortiums. I represented OASIS on the call. The very informal deck that we discussed during our call is attached.

Here are some highlights:

- Participants were: James Odell (OMG), Harsh Sharma (OMG), Ed Harrington (The Open Group), Chris Harding (The Open Group), and myself (OASIS). We are looking for 1 or 2 participants from W3C - I have an action item to suggest suitable individuals.

- For those not aware, OMG and The Open Group each recently released their definitions of SOA.

- Though the call began with the context of harmonizing our definitions of SOA to have a single, shared definition, in discussion we realized that that would not be possible given the differences between the consortiums, the areas that we each focus on, and the role we each play in industry. We therefore decided that our goal would be to produce and help foster an understanding of each consortium's "treatment" of SOA, and the value of each treatment to users and implementers.

- I suggested that we think in terms of the "SOA lifecycle", and where each consortium's work might most apply (the suggestion was very well-received).

- We also realized that a consortium's definition of SOA goes beyond a glossary-type definition; for example, I pointed out that for OASIS the SOA-RM spec (as a reference model) is itself a definition of SOA, in its entirety.

- We discussed looking at the various "perspectives" (viewpoints) of SOA - e.g. business, architectural, data, etc. - and mapping each of those viewpoints to each consortium's treatment of SOA;

- There is a possibility that all of the call participants may participate in a panel session at The Open Group's July conference in Miami, to discuss this very subject (SOA and the various consortiums). Each individual will also have an opportunity to give a SOA pitch on behalf of their consortium, and we may jointly author a white paper in advance of the consortium on each consortium's treatment of SOA.

- The group will hold calls every 2 weeks in the small setting (we decided that the current number + 1 or 2 W3C reps is the best size), but with the understanding that each participant is acting as a representative and liaison for its respective consortium.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

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