some comments inline.
On Nov 24, 2005, at 7:39 AM, wrote:
Ken,
While i agree a blueprint has to be simple and start with a context in
mind, majority of the time SOA implementation issue starts in the beginning
when the service defn itself is in a flux even in a single context. e.g
when a loan / credit appln says they are different or when overlapping
services exist. This issues will become more when the blueprint has to be
followed in scenarios where overlapping services offered in a multi vendor
scenario and where exactly an SOA appln is warranted.
SOA provides a way to connect capabilities; the decision on what capabilities to connect is still a domain-specific decision. Currently, there is probably a human in the loop but hopefully we will eventually create robust decision capabilities. SOA does not make domain-specific decisions and it is wishful thinking to say it will make intelligent decisions when humans haven't figured out what they would do.
As for an SOA blueprint, it can indicate the pieces that will be needed no matter what the domain decision. For example, you probably want to monitor what services are being used and how they perform. What level of security/access control do you want to see? What level of assurance do you want that messages go through?
In my opinion a blue print for a long running process and hence their
process defn should have the following in mind.
a. Should not stop the service implementation in stage 1 itself for want of
accurate service defn. The adaptive blueprint defn shared with us by ebsoa
group for the adaptive, basic and dynamic service pattern for collaborative
process may be adopted even in a single appln context.
This would seem to be a basic requirement for a blueprint.
b. The long running process by Ken example since it needs to be
able/capable of utilizing an atomic service, should in my opinion be
capable of sourcing plug in services. While a manual entry as stated by
Ebsoa comitte is o.k in a non mission critical appln , it may not be
desirable in a mission critical situation.
Would a BPEL let us do that?
In following the previous item, a blueprint should allow domain-specific service to be "plugged in" but we should consider the generic attributes of the long-running transaction.
c. The blueprint should also be able to relate pattern to an architecture.
Ex - one should be able to gauge from the blueprint what type of basic
service patterns could be used.
I think we need to decide the relationship between a blueprint and a (reference) architecture.
d. I would also like to know the opinion on interoperability of w3c
standard for microcommerce market viz a viz SOA basic service defn when
we like to apply it for portfolio charges.
Which W3C standard are you referring to? There was work several years ago on micropayments but that never resulted in a Recommendation.
regards
Ken Laskey
<[email protected] To: <>, <>,
rg> <>
cc: (bcc: radha.arur/Polaris)
23/11/2005 21:09 Subject: RE: [soa-blueprints] Primer
OK, now we're getting to some meaty issues :-)
It would seem that a useful pattern would be a long-running business
process, where the "business" could as likely be technical as
commercial. What are the requirements of such a process? What
assumptions do we make about the process? What are the notional
pieces of a solution? How do these pieces notionally work
together? Where are there alternatives? Finally, what combination
of completed standards, specifications within standards committees,
and private specifications will likely enable such a blueprint?
Note, part of the output of this thought process could be feedback to
existing committees on what is needed from their specs or how the
process needs to be curtailed to fit the current and evolving standards.
Ken
At 10:24 AM 11/23/2005, wrote:
Jinu these are good points.
Something I would say to this would be that in most implementations
of SOA there are basic structures that could be followed with the
variation being the actual business logic.
Even within a certain space there are multiple blueprint needs.
For instance,
- Fulfilling a loan may be a long running process that might take
into account a workflow with certain security requirements etc...
- While making a wires transfer would have to be highly available
and have routing based on fraud and security rules without the need
of long running process
To apply them to some of the cases within the soalogic approach you
could see the following:
1. Based on the process of developing a product within soalogic they
need a managed long running process. This pattern without the
specific business logic could be applied to the loan case. Or could
even be applied to strategic budget planning, etc...
2. The retail store is using a pos process that needs to be secure
and have fraud detection for purchases made by the customer this
could be applied without the specific business logic to a wire transfer
case.
The actual blueprints could be extracted for 1 that state:
- WS-BPEL - manage the long running process
- Transport types that could apply (HTTP/HTTPS/MQ)
- WS-Security - for managing who is able to update from a client
auth perspective
- WS-Coordination - to coordinate with different SORs
- WS-Notification - to alert either an operation or customer service
agent of an issue within the process through an intermediary service
- WS-Profile - for indentify the service
- WS-CAF - to provide context around who the requestor is
- Fault Management - how and what type of responses would happen,
sending an WSN event?
- XACML - for determining the rights of the user invoking the service
- etc...
So what you end up doing is creating a stack of patterns that could
be applied to a problem area that involves long running operations
or short fast operations, etc...
Of course the specific technology may not be decided upon within the
blueprint but the concepts within WS-BPEL will be abstracted with an
example implementation of how WS-BPEL fulfills the specific request.
Essentially think of the types of services you have ever created and
think about a lot of the common problems you had to solve along the
way to get specific business logic to be invoked within a service
context. There are a lot of problems that are common across
implementations such as security, event management, auditing, even
in some cases accounting to chargeback for a service invocation to a
specific customer or internal client. Some of these could be in a
ESB or some could reside with the service and it may be worthwhile
to come up with a sample deployment for each blueprint that may
determine the type of system needs associated with the blueprint.
I'll try and come up with an example at the end of the week or next
week so you don't think I am crazy :)
- Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 7:58 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [soa-blueprints] Primer
Hi Folks
I am just thinking aloud here. I feel that while a blueprint does give a
kind of basic map while moving into uncharted territory, it still has the
following limitations
- Blueprints as discussed are limited to a category of contexts. Going by
the house analogy the blueprint i need for the house will be dependent on
who I am and where I want to build the house. If I am the President of the
United States, then I cannot build the house using the same blueprint that
you and me would use, Similarly if I would use different blueprints to
build my house in the Sahara Dessert and my house in Antarctica. What I
am
trying to say is that the Blueprint might applicable for a type of system
and may not be useable for all software systems wanting to go the SOA way.
The SOA blueprint for the Financial Services Systems used by Banks would
be
different from that used by Corporates for their Inventory Management
System.
- Trying to make a generalized blueprint will lead to such a high level of
abstraction that the blueprint itself might not be of much use. Going back
to the house analogy trying to make a generalized blueprint might lead to
the blueprint only containing guidelines like, there should be a
foundation, there should be a ceiling, there should be windows etc...
- What I feel is that we should have SOA blueprints based on software
segments such BFSI segment, ERP segment, Services like Utilities etc.
What do you say ??
Regards
Jinu Joseph
Polaris Software Lab Ltd
e-mail:
<marchadr@wellsf
argo.com> To:
<>
cc:
<>, (bcc: jinu.joseph/Polaris)
23-11-05 03:53 Subject: RE:
[soa-blueprints] Primer
AM
See comments below. Good feedback Ken.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Laskey [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 12:07 PM
To: Marchant, Dan R.
Cc:
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] Primer
At 09:50 AM 11/22/2005, wrote:
Ken these are questions that I am sure with be concretely
established by this tc. Here is my take (keep in mind I am on
a
blackberry so it might be more terse than normal).
1. A blueprint in my mind is to establish a structure to an
other wise disorganized approach to developing software. I
have
typically called blueprints a reference architecture (not to
be
confused w/reference model).
2. Think of the scenario of buying building blueprints from a
house designer and than having though blueprints tweaked by a
local architect of the house. Maybe for your requirements you
need the kitchen closer to the family room or a water closet
turned into a walk in closet. Whatever the changes the basic
structure is defined for what you need to accomplish building
a
house with N number of rooms that each have a function.
You might find this analogy interesting:
Go back to our house analogy. The RM captures concepts related to
what makes up a house, e.g. room, window, door. It might include
the concepts of food preparation area and personal hygiene area
and
the relationship that there should be physical separation between
the two. Note that this provides a very North American/western
Europe reference and not necessarily one that covers a tent. So a
given RM already provides a perspective.
Given RM concepts, various RAs show how these concepts can be
arranged in a useful pattern. So RA examples would be (sorry for
the American terms) a colonial, a split-level, a rambler, etc.
You
can play with the pattern but one can say that any given pattern
serves a particular set of purposes (e.g. a rambler is on one
level
for those who want/need to avoid stairs).
An architecture is then a specific plan to build a house or set
of
houses. There can still be some variations but you don't do
things
like moving fireplaces or structural walls, else you have a new
architecture.
[Marchant, Dan R.] Sounds a lot like the movie "Kitchen Stories"
about the period of time where sweden was conducting studies on the
usability of a kitchen to identify patterns of usage. In some ways
the development of a blueprint is similar in nature to the kitchen
studies in the 50s.
Is a rambler a ranch style house? I agree with the structural
statement creating a bit of constraints that take care of the
reduntant nature of developing an SOA. Everyone in the US probably
has a water closet (bathroom) in the master bedroom a pattern that
is
identified based on the experience of the architects in finding the
needs of the consumer of the house. Likewise the blueprints can
evolve by building on the reference model.
3. To establish direction or rudder the ship. You need to
establish the pie in the sky and a blueprint can help get a
handle on that pie.
If you have a ship without a rudder, you are likely beyond being
saved by a blueprint :-)
4. There is a type of tracability that can be accomplished
through following a blueprint. Also it may be important to
use
a third-party blueprint to establish a motive for changing
the
way a business does things, not sure if this applicable for
everyone but there is definely value in having something to
refer too.
Good points. Now can someone craft those into a paragraph or two
that any of us can present to a client and they would feel they
know
something they didn't know before?
[Marchant, Dan R.] Wiki ?
My take is this on the blueprint roadmap so to speak.
1. Establish a couple different scenarios where services
would
help and how the service would be structured within that
context and including supporting services.
2. Take the scenarios and generalize them into patterns with
some technology choices as and example of implementing
pattern.
3. Establish an overview of how all the supporting services
could be structure to support the various patterns.
It would essentially turn into a type of framework, a service
could follow and establish the need for supporting services
in
a formal way.
Step 2 after you define a blueprint is to lay out how you would
create one. Your roadmap looks like a good initial approach, both
for motivating a blueprint and showing how one blueprint
can/should/might support more than one scenario.
I could see it on the same lines of developing anything
spring
or a portal. You have a set of facilities that are applicable
for certain scenarios that than could be implemented of
configured appropriately.
The great unknown being what business logic is performed but
most of it could be generalized into some type of pattern.
For
example, transaction based, inquiry based, aggregation, or
even
everyone's favorite semantic service.
Thoughts from the group?
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Laskey <>
To: Marchant, Dan R. <>
CC:
<>
Sent: Mon Nov 21 22:42:48 2005
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] Primer
I have not been following the email carefully enough, so
forgive me if this has already been established but
1. Exactly what is a blueprint?
2. What purpose does it serve?
3. Why should I think one will be generally applicable?
4. Why do I care?
Do we expect that a blueprint will be a sort of turnkey
formula? How do we determine the limits of applicability for
a
given blueprint? Are there underlying assumptions that all
blueprints have in common, or is each blueprint fundamentally
different (a very possible construction), or are there
fundamental groupings with multiple non-redundant examples in
each group?
I think agreeing on a clear strawman definition of blueprint
is
essential. It can be modified as we learn more but we need a
clear starting point.
Ken
On Nov 21, 2005, at 9:12 PM, <>
<> wrote:
One question to pose to the group is maybe the case study
actually becomes a type of primer for the blueprints once the
blueprints are defined.
Thoughts?
Dan
---
Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive fax:
703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508
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