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

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Gary Berg-Cross <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx>
From: Duane Nickull <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:48:35 -0700
Message-id: <C4A4D403.12BA9%dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
We chose the worde "Re-purposeable" rather than repeatable or reusable.
This word best describes the property one would look for in a service
candidate - the ability to use it for more than one process.  An LDAP
authentication is a good example of this - you can re-purpose that service
for login or sign on to all your enterpise applications.    (01)

Highly recommend people read the OASIS work as it really clarifies a lot of
what you are all talking about.    (02)

Duane    (03)


On 17/07/08 10:10 AM, "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:    (04)

> Gary,
> 
> I agree that being repeatable is a desirable property, but the word
> "repeatable" is highly ambiguous and misleading.  Do you want to
> repeat exactly the same service on exactly the same data?  Or do
> want to do something similar with some other data?  If the latter,
> how would you define 'similar'?
> 
> GBC> ... my models might focus on a repeatable (business) activity
>> where implementations based on service models might have some
>> practical payoff.  So it need not be repeatable in theory, but
>> in practice this is where I'm likely to focus my efforts.
> 
> I think that what you want is a *type of service* that can have
> an open-ended number of different instantiations for different
> clients with different data at different times.
> 
> In that case, I suggest that the word 'repeatable' be eliminated
> by talking about types of service that can be instantiated as
> needed.  That implies that we need an ontology (or at least a
> type hierarchy) of services.  That hierarchy should have one
> branch for SOA kinds of services and other branches for other
> common uses of the word 'service'.
> 
> I always recommend that anybody who wants to define anything
> should look at a good dictionary.  That doesn't mean one should
> adopt those definitions unchanged, but those definitions are
> written by professional lexicographers who have analyzed a
> large corpus of citations.  Even if they are not experts in
> SOA, they know how the words are commonly used.
> 
> For example, the first dictionary I picked up (MW 9th) gives
> the following as definition 4b:
> 
>     "useful labor that does not produce a tangible commodity"
> 
> This would apply to the services by a waiter in a restaurant,
> a nurse in a hospital, or what most SOA systems do.  But the
> word 'labor' would have to be stretched metaphorically before
> it could be applied to computer systems.
> 
> Longman's definition 1 is
> 
>     "work or duty done for someone"
> 
> That is followed by the following three examples:
> 
>     "spent a life in service to others"
> 
>     "died in the service of his country"
> 
>     "This old coat has seen a lot of service."
> 
> There are more examples in these and other dictionaries, but
> the general ideas can be summarized in the following points:
> 
>   1. Service is some kind of process or activity, which may
>      be considered work or labor or just some more passive
>      use or state, such as a coat's state of being worn.
> 
>   2. The server has a job, duty, or obligation to perform it.
> 
>   3. It is done for the benefit of someone else.
> 
>   4. It doesn't produce a physical product, but it may modify
>      or move physical entities or data.
> 
> These general points can be specialized in many different
> ways for different *types* of service by people, animals,
> computer systems, or even coats.
> 
> John Sowa
> 
>  
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