RE: OASIS SOA-EERP Whitepaper

["Bashioum, Christopher D" <cbashioum@mitre.org>]

I sort of agree, except that the RM doesn’t state what you just did.  The service is “the mechanism by which needs and capabilities are brought together”.  It explicitly distinguishes the mechanism for access from the capability itself – it does not state that using the capability makes it a service.  It’s a fine distinctinction, but an important one.

 

So ... back to my original concern.  I think the reason there has not been more adoption of the RM is that folks don’t know how to tie it to the capability, and many folks have been using the term “service” to apply to the underlying capability vs. the ability to bring that capability to bear for “anyone’s” need.  I.e., the business service as distinct from the SOA service.  

 

From: Peter F Brown (Pensive) [mailto:Peter@pensive.eu]
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 4:45 PM
To: Bashioum, Christopher D; soa-rm@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Laskey, Ken
Subject: RE: OASIS SOA-EERP Whitepaper

 

I don’t think that is correct.

 

A capability addresses a need – it is a *potential* to perform a service - the need is satisfied by using the capability: the service.

 

Capabilities don’t “perform” anything, they just “are”. The performance of a service – delivering a real world effect – depends on there being a capability but is not the same thing.

 

Cheers,

Peter

 

From: Bashioum, Christopher D [mailto:cbashioum@mitre.org]
Sent: Thu, 01 April 2010 11:09
To: soa-rm@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Laskey, Ken
Subject: [soa-rm] OASIS SOA-EERP Whitepaper

 

Has anyone else from the SOA RM TC reviewed the OASIS SOA-EERP whitepaper

 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-eerp/whitepaper/EERP-Model-UseCase-WhitePaper-cd03.pdf

 

They reference the RM, however, there is one paragraph that caught my attention:

 

Services are performed by people, machines, and hardware/software applications, and represented by SOA services. The qualities of a business service are expressed by means of the Business Quality of Service (bQoS) specification. The nature of bQoS varies across industries and services.

 

The RM would change this to

Capabilities are performed by people, machines, and hardware/software applications, and represented by SOA services. The qualities of a business service are expressed by means of the Business Quality of Service (bQoS) specification. The nature of bQoS varies across industries and services.

 

I think we may need to do something about addressing the idea of a capability that is intended for “others”, i.e., a business service – which is enabled in Software by a SOA service in front of a capability.  We’ve talked about it, but I think a whitepaper on this will be useful. 

 

Note that such a whitepaper would also go a long way towards helping to navigate the SOA Standards landscape, as I think the main issue between the various SDOs on SOA is about using the term “service” to mean “functionality intended for others” vs. as an IT artifact that enables access to such funtionality (which is the RM view).

 

Thoughts?