Proosd response for # and #4

------

Name: Marbux

Title: None

Organization: None

Regarding Specification: Second Draft Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture v1.0

Dear TC participants:

I have attempted to review the draft from the viewpoint of a layman. My comments reflect that viewpoint.

Lines 246-247. This new material presumes too much knowledge by laymen on the topic of Object Oriented Programming. SOA has been well explained earlier in the draft, complete with examples. However, fundamental relevant concepts of OOP are not explained, and the explanation of an "object" and its role is far too cursory; e.g., "packaging data with operations" and "melding of methods to a given data object."

The distinction drawn between the OOP and SOA paradigms is sufficiently explained for a developer to understand. But for a document that is intended to be understandable to laymen as well, a better explanation of OOP and easily recognizable examples of an "object" would be helpful. It should not be assumed that a layman is familiar with those terms.

Lines 344-345 contains a clause that likewise assumes too much knowledge on the part of the lay reader. "without the proper libraries being present the function call cannot complete." Laymen rarely know what a "library" is in the sense the term is used by programmers; a "function call" is another term of art not known to laymen.

I could provide more examples if it would be helpful. But I think it would be far more helpful if the TC could arrange to have a layman with good editing skills but no programming experience whatsoever supervise a complete rewrite. I support the TC's goal of making the document informative for both software developers and laymen. But the document has not succeeded in delivering a product that is useful to laymen.

But I still appreciated reading it very much. It did help me understand more of the relevant concepts.

As noted in section 1.3, the RM is intended to assist a wide audience, and that also implies a wide range of background. In some of the introductory sections, the TC tries to not only provide perspective but to answer recurring questions about SOA and its relationship to well known paradigms. The discussion of OO is one example of such a relationship. Unfortunately, it is impossible to include sufficient background material for every referenced technology without, in effect, writing reference models for those too. Section 3 of the RM provides the main body of the description of SOA and does not require an in depth knowledge of other paradigms discussed in the preceding sections.

We also note in the abstract section on the first pages that “While service-orientation may be a popular concept found in a broad variety of

applications, this reference model focuses on the field of software architecture”. We believe that this sets realistic expectations of all audience members that they have a basic understanding of terminology used within the software industry or they are able to use resources to facilitate an understanding of the concepts should they require such.

</response>

---

Ken Laskey

MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934

7515 Colshire Drive fax: 703-983-1379

McLean VA 22102-7508

soa-rm message