But you cannot do that without getting into implementation specifics. The
tradeoffs are very often vendor specific. We will have to get into gory
detail to do this.
Michael
At 10:31 AM 1/24/2006, wrote:
I
guess the point is...
Can you get the group to adopt
your house blueprint?
What would be the motivation for everyone to build a house like
yours?
One thing that people may see
value in is how you decorated or some of the layout ideas your house has
to incorporate into their house, but I doubt anyone would adopt your
blueprints room for room... facet by facet.
I still like to use the analogy
of the kitchen studies from the 1950s they study a variety of kitchens to
see what worked and what didn't.
The final report was on best practices of designing kitchens for optimal
working based on the task of cooking.
Is this making sense?
- Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Laskey
[mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:21 AM
To: Marchant, Dan R.
Cc: ;
;
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed
Not to beat the housing analogy too much but, yes, there is iteration
of a sorts in building a house. We had an addition put on and the
contractors realized there was a vent in a wall they were cutting through
and that vent would have to be rerouted. Did they invent new
windows? No, but they did swap out some "standard"
components when the "implementation" indicated a better
approach. Finally, did they update all the blueprints? Come
on, when does the documentation ever catch up?
As we noticed in SOA-RM, non-IT analogies are very valuable and there
are more parallels in life than you sometimes expect. However, if
you try to work out every twist of the example to the work at hand, you
will have a frustrating, never-ending iteration.
Ken
On Jan 24, 2006, at 10:12 AM,
<>
wrote:
It is very interesting how a lot of software professionals equate
building software with building a house or building. Does this mean the
practices are the same between construction and software I think not.
When have you had a finalized business specification to build from, is it
iterative? Can you iterate construction?
The practices are very different. One thing that does seem to be
similar is that both have a bill of materials for planning and best
practices of how to build sections of the subject. For instance, a
blueprint in construction is most of the time not going to invent a 3
quarter weld approach or to redesign the lintel or basement approaches.
It has some set patterns or "reference blueprints" on sections
of the blueprint. It puts all the "reference blueprints" for
specific problem spaces within it's blueprint to make up the specific
blueprint.
A construction blueprint also does not invent the materials it uses,
have you ever seen anyone invent a new window for a building, with a
variance on the process. It is not in the best interest of a contractor
of a building to invent new materials or approaches, it means he has to
find different resources than his normal operations to fulfill these
tasks.
The same approach is something we should develop as the blueprint.
Make it more of a reference blueprint that can be applied in a domain as
an example of use. Coming up with domain specific blueprints will
distract the TC as they will tend to think that all banks fall in the
specific banking example. Has anyone ever seen an example of banking
within development and software design books? Did it meet what the
specific bank was doing? Probably not. Mergers and acquisitions changes
domains in a slight way that could be addressed through SOA but most of
the time the expense versus the business as usual is a major factor in
purifying a technical architecture.
The way most of the approaches have been to SOA is to componentize
your software thereby making it easier to slap a service on it. Well
welcome to reality if you where to componentize every system you have
before moving to an SOA that could be a huge expense that in most cases
becomes busy work if the system is working.
Those are my 2 cents before a cup of coffee.
- Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stiefel
[mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 6:50 AM
To: Jones, Steve G; Marchant, Dan R.;
Subject: RE: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed
Actually architects do specify the actual building materials and
their
strengths when coming up with a blueprint. They have to make sure the
buildings they design can stand up. Engineering companies may check
and
validate the architect's choices.
The real point, I think, is those intermediate documents that you
refer to
are architectural documents that belong to a reference architecture,
not a
blueprint which deals with an implementation. Implementation means
getting
vendor specific which I think is something the TC wants to avoid. We
might
want to come up with reference architectures, or concrete
architectures
which then could be implemented with a specific vendors technology
(as with
Generico).
But call it a blueprint, or a reference architecture, we still have
to
decide the domain of discourse. In other words, we have to decide
what
types of documents we want, and why we want them.
I am not sure how one goes about doing that.
Michael
At 05:20 PM 1/23/2006, Jones, Steve G wrote:
When an architect sketches out the original design for the building
it
outlines the principles and practice and puts in place the areas
where more
refinement is required. These areas are further refined by the
architects
team they become an outline blueprint that defines the major
elements, this
is then passed to an engineering company who determine the actual
materials
and strengths, and its probably these folks who produce the
final
construction blueprints and these can be modified.
At each level the blueprint has become more and more detailed from
the
initial sketches on the architects desk. For me its this
process that is
mirrored in SOA blueprints, if your project is only 20 people or so
they
might be one document put out at the start, if however you are trying
to
move an entire organisation towards SOA its more like building a
small town
so there are lots of levels of blueprints. Even in one building
there are
blueprints for the building and then blueprints for each floor, each
at
different levels of abstraction.
I might have taken this metaphor as far as I can go, but the point is
that
when you are planning any major construction project whether in
software,
buildings or planes you have various levels of abstractions to
communicate
different levels of concepts and break down the problem for
different
audiences.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stiefel
[mailto:]
Sent: 23 January 2006 22:02
To:
;
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed
A blueprint is detailed instructions on how to implement a
particular
design. Construction blueprints are modified as the building is
constructed
to reflect the actual decisions the contractor made in the
field.
In building construction, of course, one can have a plan that is
distinct
from the artifact itself. In the software world, detailed
instructions on
implementation is very often identical to writing code.
I suppose one could describe a particular SOA in terms of service
inputs
and outputs and orchestrations, etc. without reference to a
vendor
implementation. This is some soft of architectural document, not
a
blueprint.
I understand what a reference architecture is. I understand what
a
concrete
architecture is. I have no idea what an abstract blueprint is.
Michael
At 12:49 PM 1/23/2006,
wrote:
To All,
Here is what I gather from the group as a whole:
1. Need a context on what we are doing.
- 2 cents: A problem statement would be a great start with
audience,
etc...
2. Need to defining use cases to provide context on the blueprints
defined
- 2 cents: establish a use case document that can be expand on this
and may have domain related spin offs
3. Need to establish what a blueprint is.
I think everyone should start adding to this list and adding opinions,
etc...
This may help to create a bit of focus or strategy.
Thanks,
Dan
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