To me, the Service in SOA and the Service in Building Services
(of BSP fame) are *precisely* the same. This conception of mine is part
of
-
My focus on the services derived from the application of IT in building
space rather than yet another list of libraries/offices/schools/dorms/…
-
My attempts to hide building system process, which is
ill-defined and not performance oriented and expose a service/surface only
-
My frustrations that we are as I see it broadening our scope /
diluting our effect.
Wikipedia states that SOA is “a computer systems architectural
style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services”. I
want a “systems architectural style for creating and using building
system processes, packaged as services”
More from Wikipedia”
“SOA also describes IT infrastructure which allows
different applications to exchange data with one another as they participate in
business processes. The aim is a loose coupling of services with operating
systems, programming languages and other technologies which underlie
applications.[1] SOA separates functions into distinct units, or services[2],
which are made accessible over a network in order that they can be combined and
reused in the production of business applications.[3] These services
communicate with each other by passing data from one service to another, or by
coordinating an activity between two or more services. SOA concepts are often
seen as built upon, and evolving from older concepts of distributed
computing[3][2] and modular programming.”
In the SOA world, the logistics function provided by UPS lets
Amazon report where your books are right now, without even needing to know about
the drivers/radio transmitters /trucks/scanners/planes/hand-held signature
devices. The Performance metrics are simple; on-time delivery, percent lost or
delayed packages, percent damaged packages. The service is invoked by Amazon’s
services contacting UPS’s services.
We have complex systems that are interactive throughout buildings.
No one cares about how they work (except for the guys with ladders on their
trucks). No one cares what protocols they use. No one cares how they make their
loop tuning decisions, or how they prevent mold growth. No one cares if they
short cycle or not. No one cares how the alarm system detects metal oxide on
the sensors and so discounts false alarms. No one cares what technology is used
to compress video to scenes in which movement or unknown faces are detected
only. No one, outside the specific engineering and maintenance domain for each
system cares about the process at all.
Everyone cares if the service falls down. Everyone cares if the
service is provided at an uncompetitive energy budget, or if moisture damages
the archived materials or furnishing, or if false alarms ring too often and
real alarms not enough. These are the building services. Deborah, I think you
observed the other day that some associates did not realize that healthful
office environments for alert workers was a service provided by the building.
I think we will discover some service primitives. I think that
there will be a maximum ventilation service primitive, a no ventilation service
primitive, and a service primitive for effective ventilation for (n) occupants.
These primitives will be reused in different service domains, appearing in the Alert
Tenant Service and the Emergency Weather Response service of Michelle, and in
others besides.
I n the buildingSmart alliance last week, I shared some
documents on service, and systems architecture. I am re-sharing them here.
One is Pat Helland’s Metropolis article, in which Helland
uses the built world as an analogy to explain service oriented architectures to
the IT world. Metropolis provides a metaphor for the evolution of information
technology into the world of service-oriented architectures," What
is fascinating to me is that this same article can go back to the built world,
and explain not only how we should organize access to information from the BIM,
but how we should think of the services provided by buildings.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480026.aspx
Another article that I highly recommend is the SOA Reference
Model developed by OASIS. It is a tight description of Service Orientation that
is vendor and technology agnostic, while describing how to think about these
systems. It formalizes what Steve has described below and defines the semantic
for understanding and discussing the services which BIM/BuildingSmart must grow
into to meet their full potential. As gaining a common understanding of the
words is the first hurdle on the path to a meeting of the minds, I highly
recommend anyone who is interested on intrigued by Steve’s observations
should also download and read the SOA reference model.
http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/v1.0/soa-rm.pdf
I hope what we are doing is naming SOA services, to then
creating IDMs around those services….
tc
"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so
long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which
has opened for us." -- Alexander Graham Bell
|
Toby Considine
Chair, OASIS oBIX TC
Facilities Technology Office
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
|
|
Email: Toby.Considine@
unc.edu
Phone: (919)962-9073
http://www.oasis-open.org
blog: www.NewDaedalus.com
|
From: bsp-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bsp-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Deborah
MacPherson
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 2:52 PM
To: BSP Forum
Subject: [bsp-forum] Fwd: [ontolog-forum] [Fwd: The Open Group SOA
Ontology]
Does the.....high level concept
of Activity (which we believe to be substantially the same as the BPMN concept)
with concepts of Service and also of Architecture.
Have relevance to BSP? If so, does anyone have any comments? Just FYI, even
though of course the aim is to work with NBIMS, OBIX, Fiatech, OGC -
everything...the BPMN guidelines for NBIMS are attached for reference.
Deborah
---------- Forwarded message
----------
From: Ed Barkmeyer <edbark@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 12:38 PM
Subject: [ontolog-forum] [Fwd: The Open Group SOA Ontology]
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
FYI.
From Chris Harding of The Open Group:
For some time now, The Open Group has been developing a formal
ontology for SOA. We made an early version available for comment by
OMG members over a year ago - indeed, I came to one of your meetings
at the end of 2006 and presented our then-current draft. We have now
reached the stage where we believe that it is almost complete, and
are exposing it to outside bodies for review and comment prior to
its final review within The Open Group.
The ontology is a formal OWL ontology, but the draft also includes
extensive heuristic explanations of its concepts. It should be of
particular interest to the OMG, firstly because of its relevance to
Model-Driven Architecture, and also because it relates, at a high
level, a concept of Activity (which we believe to be substantially
the same as the BPMN concept) with concepts of Service and also of
Architecture.
The draft is publicly available at
http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-ontology/doc.tpl?gdid=16940
We would very much appreciate input from OMG members, and will
address comments received at this stage before creating the draft
for final Open Group review. [OMG is invited] to review the draft
and send comments to [Chris].
========================================================================
Dr. Christopher J. Harding
Forum Director for SOA and Semantic Interoperability
THE OPEN GROUP
Thames Tower, 37-45 Station Road, Reading RG1 1LX, UK
Mailto:c.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone (mobile): +44 774 063 1520
http://www.opengroup.org
========================================================================
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
*************************************************
Deborah L. MacPherson CSI CCS, AIA
Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC
**************************************************