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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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