Anders:
I agree with a lot of what you say but don't want to get into a "ours is better
than yours" discourse.
In full disclosure, I am currently an editor of a major document coming through
the OASIS process entitled the SOA Reference Archiecture Foundation (SOA-RAF).
The goals and target group of The Open Group's SOA ontology work may be
different to ours (I'm not familiar with the details of their stakeholders) but
in our technical committee we did set out with an explicit objective to explain
service and 'service-orientation' in ways that non-IT professionals could
understand and relate to.
Although our target audience probably won't include (many) hard-core semantic
web and OWL implementers (one of the reasons that we don't model beyond using
the diagram types provided by UML2), we certainly want to be sure that our
modelling stands up to scrutiny.
I'm not suggesting we've got it right, not yet at least, but we have
deliberately stopped short of 'over formalising' and tried to a focus on a
'narrative' that explains SOA in a way that allows all stakeholders - potential
clients and consumers, business decision-makers, project leaders, designers, as
well as IT architects and developers. For that reason, we include quite a large
section on governance of SOA-based systems and explanation of the idea of the
SOA 'ecosystem' and who is involved - these contributions may be closer to some
of the things you are looking for. (01)
All the best and holiday wishes too! (02)
Regards,
Peter (03)
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
| bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Anders Tell
| Sent: Thursday, 23 December 2010 19:49
| To: [ontolog-forum]
| Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: [New post] The Newest from SOA: The SOA
| Ontology Technical Standard
|
| I haven't studied the document carefully, so I may be off here and there.
|
| It seems to me as if this document is Yet Another IT- SOA vocabulary, made by
| and for IT professionals including IT oriented Architects.
|
| While such vocabularies of Interface oriented paradigms is useful for
|engineers
| and IT professional it miss key concepts of other professions. One can
|seriously
| question the approach fit-for-purpuse as Business-IT aligner.
|
| Im currently involved in a major industry project where SOA is supposed to be
|a
| core enabler. Unfortunately its hasn't been the great unifier, but quit the
| opposite. As a practitioner it consumes a lot a of energy, but as researcher
|Im
| preparing two case study since the project offers a great deal to study. Im
| personally interested in large scale Governance.
|
| Reading the document one can really ask, who, except for an IT professionals,
| can read, understand and practice it? (Top) management? lawyers? Business
| process owners?
|
| Is the definition
| “A service is a logical representation of a repeatable activity that
|has a
| specified outcome. It is self-contained and is a „black box‟ to its
|consumers.”
| the way other professions (above professions, + legislators) think about
| Services?
| An a black-box? In how many cases does a Consumer know absolutely nothing
| about the Providers activities or outcome?
|
| One of the problems with IT-SOA is that when the style is practiced there may
|be
| a tendency to treat everything (every information exchange) as Services. Then
| Service == InformationExchange. But isn't a Service, from a common sense
| point of view, related to someone that is providing a benefit to some? In this
| case not all exchanges are Services.
|
| And what happened to Service Remunerations? For many profession this is a
|first
| class concerns, relating to the essence of a Service.
|
| Another problem I've seen/is seeing is that IT Service professionals sometime
| sees themselves as Service designers while reducing Operational experts to
| providing requirements for service design activities. Hm, who is usually
|better at
| sourcing, IT- or Operational professionals? More than one profession discuss
| Services, obviously in different senses.
|
| A positive note: its good to see Events in a Service ontology. Occurrences are
| quite useful when discussing, describing Services, across professions. An
|proper
| process ontology such as PSL could also be a nice addition.
|
| Although I seriously wonder about the soundness of reasoning in section
|"4.3.1
| Service Consumers and Service Providers ".
|
| If a SOA ontology is considered as a candidate for a ontological killer
|application
| then IMO then business and legal concerns must be explicitly added otherwise
| the name should include a prefix IT-SOA or System-SOA or ...
|
| holiday wishes
| /anders w tell
|
| On Dec 20, 2010, at 9:20 PM, Research wrote:
|
| > That's a pretty sweeping statement, Todd Care to share why it is
| > "rubbish"? And if there are valuable lessons to be learned, I'd be
| > pleased to learn them
| >
| > Peter
| >
| > Peter F Brown
| > Independent Consultant
| >
| > Transforming our Relationships with Information Technologies
| > www.peterfbrown.com @pensivepeter P.O. Box 49719, Los Angeles, CA
| > 90049, USA
| > Tel: +1.310.694.2278
| >
| >
| >
| > | -----Original Message-----
| > | From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
| > | bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Todd J Schneider
| > | Sent: Wednesday, 15 December 2010 00:53
| > | To: [ontolog-forum]
| > | Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: [New post] The Newest from SOA:
| > | The SOA Ontology Technical Standard
| > |
| > | To all concerned or interested the SOA ontology put forth by the
| > | Open Group is rubbish for many reasons. I provided several pages of
| > | comments and justifications to an earlier draft and almost all of my
| > | comments were not accepted.
| > |
| > | However, there is some value in this work. It can be used as an
| > | example of errors that are commonly made.
| > |
| > | Finally, I'd like to commend Chris Harding in his efforts to
| > | reconcile very divergent views and opinions.
| > |
| > | Todd
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | From:
| > | Ed Dodds <dodds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| > | To:
| > | ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > | Date:
| > | 12/14/2010 06:46 PM
| > | Subject:
| > | [ontolog-forum] Fwd: [New post] The Newest from SOA: The SOA
| Ontology
| > | Technical Standard
| > | Sent by:
| > | ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | FYI
| > |
| > | Ed Dodds
| > | Collaboration Strategist
| > | Conmergence.com
| > | dodds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > | (615) 657-9359
| > | ed_dodds_skype
| > | ed.dodds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > |
| > |
| > | ---------- Forwarded message ----------
| > | From: clifford thompson <cliff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| > | Date: Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:03 AM
| > | Subject: Fwd: [New post] The Newest from SOA: The SOA Ontology
| > | Technical Standard
| > | To: Jim buckner <" James.Buckner"@state.ma.us>,
| > | kevin.x.geminiuc@xxxxxx, Services Oriented Architecture
| > | <soa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Steve Connolly < stconnoll@xxxxxxx>,
| > | "phil.barr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" < phil.barr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
| > | Jobst Landgrebe < jobstlandgrebe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| > |
| > |
| > | Hi,
| > |
| > | FYI
| > |
| > | Cliff
| > | Best Regards,
| > |
| > | Clifford Thompson
| > | CTO
| > | OntoSolutions LLC
| > | 704.257.4422
| > | cliff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > | http://ontosolutions.com
| > | http://semanticarch.com/wordpress
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | -------- Original Message --------
| > | Subject:
| > | [New post] The Newest from SOA: The SOA Ontology Technical Standard
| > | Date:
| > | Wed, 8 Dec 2010 13:42:42 +0000
| > | From:
| > | Open Group Blog <no-reply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| > | To:
| > | cliff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | The Newest from SOA: The SOA Ontology Technical Standard The Open
| > | Group Blog | December 8, 2010 at 5:42 am | Tags: architect,
| > | communication, enterprise, IT, Open Group, organizations, OWL, SOA,
| > | SOA Ontology, SOA standards, SOA Work Group | Categories: Cloud/SOA |
| URL:
| > | http://wp.me/p1cB5i-1L
| > | By Heather Kreger
| > | Open Group just announced the availability of the SOA Ontology
| > | Technical Standard.
| > | Ontology?? Sounds very ‘semantic Web,’ doesn’t it? Just smacks of
| > | reasoning engines. What on earth do architects using SOA want with
| > | reasoning engines?
| > | Actually, Ontologies are misunderstood — an Ontology is simply the
| > | definition of a set of concepts and the relationships between them
| > | for a particular domain — in this case, the domain is SOA.
| > | They don’t HAVE to be used for reasoning… or semantic Web. And they
| > | are more than a simple glossary which defines terms, because they
| > | also define relationships between them — something important for
| > | SOA, we thought. It’s also important to note that they are more
| > | formal than Reference Models, usually by providing representations
| > | in OWL (just in case you want to use popular tools for Ontology and
| reasoners).
| > | What would an architect do with THIS ontology?
| > |
| > | It can be used simply to read and understand the key concepts of
| > | SOA, and more importantly, a set of definitions and UNDERSTANDING of
| > | key concepts that you can agree to use with others in your company
| > | and between organizations. Making sure you are ‘speaking the same
| > | language’ is essential for any architect to be able to communicate
| > | effectively with IT, business, and marketing professionals within
| > | the enterprise as well as with vendors and suppliers outside the
| > | enterprise. This common language can help ensure that you can ask
| > | the right questions and interpret the answers you get unambiguously.
| > | It can be used as a basis for the models for the SOA solution as
| > | well. In fact, this is happening in the SOA repository standard
| > | under development in OASIS, S-RAMP, where they have used the SOA
| > | Ontology as the foundational business model for registry/repository
| integration.
| > | The Ontology can also be augmented with additional related
| > | domain-specific ontologies; for example, on Governance or Business
| > | Process Management… or even in a vertical industry like retail where
| > | ARTS is developing service models. In fact, we, the SOA Ontology
| > | project, tried to define the minimum, absolutely core concepts
| > | needed for SOA and allow other domain experts to define additional
| > | details for Policy, Process, Service Contract, etc.
| > | This Ontology was developed to be consistent with existing and
| > | developing SOA standards including OMG’s SOA/ML and BPMN and those
| > | in the Open Group SOA Workgroup: SOA Governance Framework, OSIMM,
| > | and the SOA Reference Architecture. It seems it would have been good
| > | to have developed this standard before now, but the good news is
| > | that it is grounded in extensive real-world experience developing,
| > | deploying and communicating about SOA solutions over the past five
| > | years. The Ontology reflects the lessons learned about what terms
| > | NOT to use to avoid confusion, and how to best distinguish among
| > | some common and often overused concepts like service composition,
| > | process, service contracts, and policy and their roles in SOA.
| > | Have a look at the new SOA Ontology and see if it can help you in
| > | your communications for SOA. It’s available to you free at this link:
| > | http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c104.htm
| > | Additional Links:
| > | SOA Work Group: http://www.opengroup.org/soa, publishes the SOA
| > | Ontology, SOA Governance Framework, OSIMM (Service Integration
| > | Maturity Model), and SOA Reference Architecture SOA Ontology
| > | project:
| > | http://www.opengroup.org/soa/projects/ont.htm#_Ontologies_for_SOA
| > | SOA Repository Artifact Model and Protocol (S-RAMP),
| > | http://s-ramp.org,
| > | http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=s-ramp
| > | OMG, http://www.omg.org, publishes the SOA/ML and BPMN standards
| > | work Heather Kreger is IBM’s lead architect for Smarter Planet,
| > | Policy, and SOA Standards in the IBM Software Group, with 15 years
| > | of standards experience. She has led the development of standards
| > | for Cloud, SOA, Web services, Management and Java in numerous
| > | standards organizations, including W3C, OASIS, DMTF, and Open Group.
| > | Heather is currently co-chair for the Open Group’s SOA Work Group
| > | and liaison for the Open Group SOA and Cloud Work Groups to ISO/IEC
| > | JTC1 SC7 SOA SG and INCITS DAPS38 (US TAG to ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38).
| > | Heather is also the author of numerous articles and specifications,
| > | as well as the book Java and JMX, Building Manageable Systems, and
| > | most recently was co-editor of Navigating the SOA Open Standards
| Landscape Around Architecture.
| > | Add a comment to this post
| > |
| > |
| > |
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