There has been a long discussion on the Federal CIO Council's SOA Community of Practice around SOA and Knowledge Management and how to actually put together a meaningful SOA demonstration. One of the (many) valuable pieces that is emerging from this discussion is:
How to differentiate between Web Services as yet another point to point integration tool/pattern and Web Services as a realization of SOA.
First, we're recognizing that SOA must ultimately address the challenges of information sharing. Ultimately, the technical dimensions of the problem are the easy ones. The harder ones (even) to understand are not technological at all. Rather, they are the very same challenges that must be faced every day, in every line of business. IT, in general, and SOA technologies, specific to this context, are no exception.
The challenges are:
COMMUNITY
*Dedication throughout a community to overcome challenges to information sharing.
GOVERNANCE
*Agreements upheld by all stakeholders to identify information and capabilities to share (exchange).
PRIVACY
*Sharing and dissemination protocols consistent with privacy laws and regulations impacting all participating agencies.
CULTURE
*Overcoming community and personnel concerns that prevent effective sharing.
TECHNOLOGY
*Leveraging existing technology to integrate knowledge, consistent with the established rules of governance.
LEGAL
*Navigate the various laws and regulations impacting dissemination of sensitive and/or case-specific information.
I would suggest that any services (thus Web Services also) expressed as part of SOA must exhibit several dimensions as part of a litmus test for determining when a collection of web services evolves from a collection to SOA.
The proposal currently on the table from Paul Prueitt (see the mailing list):
Web-services (expressed with a SOA) must have the following dimensions
1) re-use that is measured against community transparent utility functions
2) agility measured as the ability to respond in novel circumstances, and to novel requests
3) governance that is open to inspection from stakeholders
4) commonality within a community or community of communities
5) competency that is measured at several levels including competency
Too often we see existing systems or information being “service enabled” simply by generating WSDL from the existing code used to gain access to the information. One of the key challenges is to get folks to understand why that type of step != SOA. As a first step, perhaps a demonstration that web services which are in fact a realization of the technical aspects of SOA must exhibit these dimensions BECAUSE they address the challenges set out above:
COMMUNITY
*Dimension 4
GOVERNANCE
*Dimension 3
PRIVACY
*Dimension 5
CULTURE
*Dimension 4,5
TECHNOLOGY
*Dimension 1,2
LEGAL
*Dimension 3,5
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1 comment:
Rebekah, you seem to be focused on Web Service's based SOA as a mechanism for information sharing.
While I whole-heartedly agree with you on that aspect, I would say that an even more important aspect of it is the reusability and automation of processes that are made possible by the vendor neutral technology that is web services.
And to get to that point of the game requires an understanding of the processes that drive an Enterprise, the ability to break it down into its component bits and see what can be delivered as services such that they can be leveraged across the Enterprise.
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