Service Oriented Architecture Concepts, Principles, Facts, Myths, Hype, Reality… Part 1 Adomas Svirskas Vilnius University September 2005

Agenda SOA as a moving target SOA from corporate point of view BEA SOA Domain Model and Strategy SOA from technical point of view

SOA is… The latest fashion in IT architecture “SOA represents the biggest change in enterprise IT since the advent of the Internet.” Infoworld SOA Executive Forum "Service-Oriented Architecture is an IT strategy that organizes the discrete functions contained in enterprise applications into interoperable, standards-based services that can be combined and reused quickly to meet business needs.“ Bill Roth, BEA Systems “SOA is a specific architectural style that is concerned with loose coupling and dynamic binding between services” [5]

SOA is... …a new approach to developing applications [4]

SOA Benefits (Promised) [6] Allows IT to deliver services faster and align closer with business Leverage existing assets Improved productivity, agility and speed for Business & IT Reduced development times and costs through re-use Decreased integration costs and risks Lower maintenance costs and higher data integrity Allows business to respond quicker and deliver enhanced user experience Enables new ways to relate to employees, partners and customers

SOA Expectations [4] Q: What are the critical business or IT problems your company hopes to address using SOA? Base: 261 respondents (those personally involved with SOA in their company) More effective use of external service providers Customer service initiatives Enterprise portal initiatives Composite applications Custom application development More effective integration with business partners Data integration Integration to existing applications Business process implementation More flexible architecture Employee self service Streamlined supply chain Global sourcing Tech points of pain Business points of pain Source – BEA sponsored research with InfoWorld, [4]

SOA Roots SOA has emerged as a consequence of business and IT drivers of the past decade Business factors –Outsourcing of non-core operations –Business process re-engineering IT factors –Importance of universal middleware –The Internet

SOA from Business Perspective Business processes (BP) of any company prescribe how products are manufactured and offered to the clients Speed of change in BP domain corresponds to the speed of change in product offers, i.e. affects chances of survival in highly dynamic markets Flexibility is reflection of company’s ability to adapt its BPs quickly

The Services The business partners offer their resources in the form of services A service is: –Some sort of publicised package of functionality –Composable –Discoverable based on describing metadata –Usable by a mutually agreed contract

The Services Taxonomy Component services: Simple atomic services potentially acting on single enterprise resource (e.g., database, code, etc) Data services: Service providing data querying, combination and transformation for multiple data sources. Business services: Atomic services composed of combinations of component services and rules. Workflow services: Long lived business processes coordinating other services with external interactions

Virtual Enterprises (Organisations) The need for speed and flexibility forces to outsource parts of the business, find the best partners on demand and manage a network of collaborations A company becomes a virtual organisation in its essence Mergers/acquisitions also create VOs Complex VOs are tricky to manage and operate without suitable framework

Virtual Enterprises (Organisations) VOs can exist inside a large company as well as cross company boundaries The partners inside a VO have no direct authority to control each other, as a rule The partners offer their resources (forms vary greatly) to other partners The collaborations between the partners include a number of business transactions The partners are loosely coupled

VO Lifecycle

To Function Well SOA Needs… Service Infrastructure Meta-data Repository Service Registry Management Messaging Services Monitoring Services Data Services Security Services User Interaction Services Business Process Services Composition Tools Web App Presentation Logic Application Client Browser Clients Databases Mainframes Data Legacy App Identity/ Policy Portal WSRP Web Services Web Services Data Layer Data Identity/ Policy Data Process Web Services Web Services Mobile … an infrastructure [4]

SOA Infrastructure User Interaction Integrated Composition Environment Security Services Data and Information Integration Message Services Process Orchestration Message Services Service Manager Message Management Service Registry Security Services Federated Identity Management Distributed Application Security Management User Interaction Portal Multi-channel Collaboration Interaction Management Monitor Compose Preview Integrated Composition Environment Update Process Orchestration Business Process Management Business Activity Management Enterprise Connectivity Business Rules Business Intelligence Composite Data Management Data and Information Services Unified Meta Data Repository Unified Data Modeling more details [4]

SOA Solution Components [3] Producers: A producer is an entity that offers a specific service or functionality Consumers: A consumer is an entity that makes use of the service offered by the producer Services: A service is an entity that performs a specific task when invoked Contract: A contract or an interface specifies a format in which the data needs to be provided to the service to perform the specific task Repository: A repository is a glorified version of a registry and includes the metadata relevant for the solution, namely service, service contract, data/object model, and so on

SOA in IT Context From Paul Lipton, Web Services Journal, August 2005

Governance Governance is the management of development artefacts (or assets), such as Java code, HTML, XML, deployment descriptors, WSDL, etc. Governance is primarily about tracking and controlling development artifacts through their life cycles; from creation to archiving (it is usually not a good idea to destroy an artefact).

Debunking SOA Myths [3] Myth #1: SOA is a solution (panacea, silver bullet) to all software problems Myth #2: SOA is like a product, and can be downloaded for trial Myth #3: SOA is a complete, off-the-shelf solution Myth #4: SOA software always needs to be developed using Web services

Debunking SOA Myths [3] Myth #5: Any software development using Web services is aligned with SOA Myth #6: Each service is always atomic in nature Myth #7: SOA is not aligned with any standards Myth #8: SOA is the same as EAI Myth #9: SOA is a very expensive solution

Debunking SOA Myths [3] Myth #10: SOA solution components (services, contracts) are completely reusable Myth #11: Services in the context of SOA are not explicit Myth #12: SOA is applicable only to specific industrial domains Myth #13: SOA can be sold to customers as is

Conclusions SOA has many shapes and forms Domain Models, patterns and best practices for SOA start to emerge The first SOA-based corporate solutions go live SOA will attract more attention in the next few years

References [1] Foster, I. et al. Open Grid Services Architecture V [2] Booth, D., et al. Web Services Architecture. W3C, Working Draft [3] Anantharangachar, R. Myths About Service-Oriented Architecture, Web Services Journal, August 2005 [4] Carges, M. Taking SOA from "Pilot to Production" with Service Infrastructure [5] Curbera, F. et al., Web Services Platform Architecture: Soap, WSDL, WS-Policy, WS-Addressing, WS-Bpel, WS-Reliable Messaging and More, Prentice Hall PTR, 2005 [6] Kamdal, M. SOA – Taking a Structured approach. BEA Architects Summit, Structured_Approach.pdf Structured_Approach.pdf [7] Roth, B. Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices, con.com/read/48032.htm