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Subject: RE: [soa-rm] Service definition at nauseum (restarted)
I’m beginning to think that any attempt to come up
with a fully agreed upon, industry standard, mathematically precise definition
for “SOA service” is futile. This is largely due to the fact
that the interpretation really depends on one’s perspective (e.g., business
or technical) and, of course, the fact that there are a lot of smart people in
our community with very strong opinions. So without throwing in the towel just yet, let’s try
this thread… If the primary objective of the SOA paradigm is better
alignment of IT systems that implement the services a business provides, then when
we refer to SOA services, we need to be clear whether we are talking about the “business
service” itself (whatever that is) or whether we talking about the IT capabilities
that implement the business service? I know some feel they are the same
thing but that is an impractical position because the business and technical
communities have always been and probably always will be comprised of stakeholders
that come from different backgrounds, experiences, and formal training.
As a consequence, these stakeholders represent different perspectives. It
is a very rare individual who is able to fully grasp the key concerns of both
perspectives. If we focus our definition more toward the IT side
(with sensitivity to business), then perhaps we could state something to the
effect that “A service (in the context of SOA) is a business-aligned
capability …” or more specifically, “A service (in the
context of SOA) is a business-aligned IT capability …”. My
preference is the latter because it reduces the ambiguity and takes a stand on the
scope of the problem space we are trying to model. This makes sense if we think about the different delivery
channels for the banking example we all keep citing, i.e., the online or ATM machine
(self-service) delivery channels versus the bank teller (human-mediated) delivery
channel. In both cases, the IT capability that implements the banking services
needs to exist 24x7 in order to support all delivery channels of banking
services the financial institution (service provider) provides. So while
the delivery channels (and their availability) is different, the banking
services are the same and these banking services depend on IT systems to implement
the banking services. If we don’t choose a perspective, then we’re
going to have to develop a much more abstract definition that can be further
specialized into a business perspective or a technical one and I think that
would only lead to further separation of the two camps, which would be a bad
thing IMHO. - Jeff |
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