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Thoughts from my studies and work will be published here. Focus is on Service Oriented Architecture, Business Process Management, and Enterprise Architecture.
SOA - the consultant's magic answer
Comments (2) 28.03.2008. 09:58
Who are the real architects?
Architecture is one of these words, which all understand but no one can explain – of course besides architects.A friend, who is a real architect (his own words), was a bit insulted, when he was told what our thesis was about. The first thing he claimed was that SOA has nothing to do with architecture and he continued: "architecture is about planning and drawing structures of buildings and other physical elements."
It felt like the IT world’s adoption of the word architecture was really offending to the "real architects", despite the word architecture has been use for as long there has been computerized automation solutions. The quote from the "real architect" got me thinking of, what the term architecture in relation to IT really holds.
As the complexity of IT solutions increase so did the need for establishing an abstract model of the system and create some standardized frameworks and definitions of baseline application, which could act as template for others. At that point the need for architecting systems really arose and has been current matters ever since (Erl, 2005: 86-104).
At its very basic architecture is defined as: “The structure of everything - e.g. the architecture of a novel.” As an isolated term it normally connotate to drawing and modeling buildings. When put in relation to IT the term often refers to structuring and modeling systems . The IEEE Standard 610.12-1990 defines architecture as: “[…] the organizational structure of a system” (Krafzig et al., 2004: 76)
In our thesis the term architecture is perceived as the structure in which the system’s components are composited, the systems itself, and those principles, rules and guidelines, which drive the development of the architecture. It depicts the art of designing and maintaining shapes of structures.
To return to the real architect’s statement; after a long discussion we agreed upon that the term rightfully covers both professions. If you remove the words buildings and other physical elements from the definition he gave it resembles quite a lot the definition formed in relation to this thesis. So in the end the architect and the architect reached an agreement on what they each work with.
Comments (0) 25.07.2007. 10:00
What is a service?
The notion of service plays an important role in relation to SOA, which is why it is necessary to establish an overall understanding of the concept. The noun service isolated is a vague term meaning various things in different contexts. Therefore we start off with an overall formation of the notion. A Service, in general, is in the dictionaries defined as a denotation of: "The performance of a work (a function) by one for another".
Focusing on the term in relation to SOA, OASIS considers a service as: "[...] the mechanism by which needs and capabilities are brought together"(OASIS, 2006). In addition Bloomberg & Schmelzer (2006:102) labels a service, in this context, as "[...] a contracted interface to software functionality".
The definitions above mainly focus on the technology-side. The same authors also outline a business perspective on the term. Here a service is defined as a: "[...] output of a business resource, where some document external to the resource can sufficiently describe its capabilities" (Bloomberg & Schmelzer, 2006: 104).
A service, from the business perspective, represents an available resource. In other word a service is considered as a resource along with human resources and physical resources for the business to use in optimizing the business.
The overall idea of a service, in relation to SOA, is to view it as an abstraction of business functionality.
This has two sides. One is to perceive a service as an abstraction of underlying software components. However, it must also be thought of as a representation of a resource available for the business to consume. In this context a service can be associated with a business task – often with repeatable characteristic e.g. check customer credit or open new account. Thus, the term service, in relation to SOA, is situated in a cross field and must be capable of representing both the technological side and the business side. A service can then be seen as the arms length between the technology and the business. This means that a service or a range of services constitute the organ that provides the possibility for the two parties to meet on neutral ground (Bloomberg & Schmelzer, 2006).
To summarize; On a high-level, the term service refers to a supporting function of a part of or a total business process such as getting access to a database or making an airline reservation. In this way service is viewed as an entity that displays a distinct functional purpose encapsulating a high-level business concept.
Comments (3) 22.07.2007. 22:39