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Re: [ontolog-forum] The Open Group SOA Ontology

To: <edbark@xxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: c.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "Sharma, Ravi" <Ravi.Sharma@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:39:31 -0600
Message-id: <D09FFCFB3952074082D4280BC24EAFA801D3204B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Ed

 

1.      Regarding business Services in SOA, I am surprised to see your omission of Manufacturing, ERP, Supply and Value Chain related business services in vogue in Industry today that have emerged beyond what historically started as web services!

2.      Even for financial sectors (Basel II) in many areas such as for insurance and loans, the business services are being implemented.

3.      Yes there is some hype and the real danger is “spaghetti code” but business functions, business processes and business models as well as performance monitoring all benefit from business componentization and related services.

4.      Information services will be highly importance for cross agency communication and citizen services in the Governments.

5.      A comment on how manufacturing logistics and transportation costs are reduced by using (business) communications and information services and actual delivery of material at the point of use has a large information or business services component. In the days of no cell phones, one had to often trace a person by visiting or finding them if they were away from landlines thus cross service enterprises will continually increase use of business services for overall material cost reduction and for efficiencies in integration costs.

 

Thanks.

Ravi

 

(Dr. Ravi Sharma) Senior Enterprise Architect

 

Vangent, Inc. Technology Excellence Center (TEC)

 

8618 Westwood Center Drive, Suite 310, Vienna VA 22182

(o) 703-827-0638, (c) 313-204-1740 www.vangent.com

 

Professional viewpoints do not necessarily imply organizational endorsement.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ed Barkmeyer
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:25 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Cc: c.harding@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The Open Group SOA Ontology

 

Ravi Sharma wrote:

> SOA deals with all three at least, namely - Business - Information

> (applications and data) and Technical services to cater to the whole

> enterprise. The business services are catering to business components

> that can be grouped into business functions. Example of technical

> service is a web-service for message delivery or for notification or

> service for network related management, security services, etc.

 

This is the hype version of SOA, whose purpose is to sell webservice

implementations (read: "new software technology") to management, and

allow a bunch of pundits to sell books and "newspapers".

 

The services that we know how to implement with software, and the only

ones that are really implemented, are all relatively simple technical

services that are pure information technology.  There are two major

exceptions to this:

  - financial services -- because they are *entirely* information

technology (there hasn't been any substance there since the G7/8 went

off specie-backed currency, and the requirement for specie reserve

affects only financial policy, not financial transactions)

  - media (books, newspapers, music, video) -- because they are now also

entirely information technology (even though they are still evolving the

business practices to deal with the fact that there is no longer a need

for any physical media to change hands)

 

Business management in general isn't going to invest much in yet another

software networking technology -- we have had our 3 strikes.  So the SOA

folk have to say "business", even though what they can envisage never

gets out of the .com think of 10 years ago.

 

Ken Laskey got it right:

> I find it useful to differentiate between a business service and a SOA

> service.  Business services are described in the more traditional

> sense of providing a business function, yes with predictable business

> outcomes, i.e. real world effects.

                  ------------------

That is, there is some material or labor involved in changing the state

of the physical world.  The software itself does not do that.  It could

conceivably control devices that do such things, but the real-time

control community has had functional distributed systems technologies

for at least 15 years, and doesn't need the high-overhead re-invention

that is SOA technology.  And unsurprisingly, the same is largely true of

the finance industry and, more recently, of some highly visible elements

of the media business.

 

> A SOA service is an IT artifact that *may* be an effective way to

> realize that business function.

 

Specifically, when that function can be fulfilled solely by the

communication of information.

 

>  Conversely, SOA will be inappropriate

> and have no role in certain business functions.

 

Even though these functions can be implemented as "business services",

like building maintenance.

 

Thanks, Ken.

 

-Ed

 

P.S. I should say that this takes nothing away from the TOG and OASIS

work in producing clear models of the complex distributed systems

concepts that are now called SOA.  Such models will be of great value in

educating the technologists of the next decade.  And with luck, they

will stop the recurring reinvention of this wheel and the re-learning

that that makes necessary.  I just think responsible technologists

should separate the wheat from the marketing chaff when dealing with a

technical audience.

 

--

Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx

National Institute of Standards & Technology

Manufacturing Systems Integration Division

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263                FAX: +1 301-975-4694

 

"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,

  and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."

 

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