Putting SOA Into Perspective Hype

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Putting SOA Into PerspectiveHype Hope vs
Reality

• Kate Behan
• Kerandan Pty Ltd
• kerandan_at_optusnet.com.au
• ACS PD Board - Education Across the Nation -
  May/June 2005

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ACS Certification Program

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Updating Technology Trends

• Almost every futurist includes Service Oriented
  Architecture as a trend to watch
• I needed to come to terms with SOA to update
  content for the Certification subject Technology
  Trends.
• Identified good introductory articles for the
  study guide, selected from a possible 151.
• Selected a textbook from six possibles.
• Devised an assignment which covers all related
  developments well look at that later.
• Wrote an ACSLearn e-lesson which well look at
  later.
• Went to Ark Group SOA Conference in Sydney where
  I found some answers and more questions

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Where does SOA start?

• Terminology is misleading
• Web Services and all the WS-standards
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Services-Oriented Architecture
• Can have SOA without web services and can use web
  services without an SOA
• Theres also REST Representational State
  Transfer. A method of building apps by sending
  XML documents using existing Internet protocols
  (Amazon.com uses this approach)

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Back to the beginning

• It all starts with a desire to digitise business
  processes
• Isnt that weve all been doing for the past 30
  or so years?
• Whats new?
• The Services in SOA are business services
• Services are linked together to implement
  business processes
• Services are reusable and supplied or consumed by
  many
• The really new bit is vendor agreement on
  standards (or nearly all vendors on some
  important standards.)
• Connectivity and functionality are truly
  separated
• Loosely coupled
• Offers reusability at a higher level
• Favours business flexibility over technical
  efficiency

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What is an SOA?

• Architecture that uses open standards to
  represent software assets as services
• Standard way of representing and interacting with
  software assets
• Individual software assets become building blocks
  that can be used in developing other applications
• Used internally to create new apps out of
  existing components
• Used externally to integrate with apps outside
  your organisation

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More than technology

• SOA is not just a services architecture seen
  from a technology perspective its the policies,
  practices, and frameworks by which you ensure the
  right services and provided and consumed to
  provide business value.
• http//www.sys-con.com/story/print.cfm?storyid488
  14

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SOA - NAB architecture team

• SOA is an application architecture within which
  key business functions are implemented as
  re-usable services with well-defined, invocable
  interfaces which can be called in a defined
  sequence to form business processes
• Focus is on business processes
• Business processes as services

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Why SOA? NAB architecture team

• Easy for business to understand
• Relatively easy to implement
• Vendor support for standards
• Lowers barriers to heterogeneous interoperability
• Can expose functionality from legacy systems as
  services

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The Hope

• Communicate with all business partners using just
  one universal set of protocols, documents and
  business processes
• Loosely couple organisations so that they dont
  need to know the internals of one anothers
  business processes or technologies
• Change components without breaking anything
• Respond to changing business conditions in a fast
  flexible manner

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More hope

• Adapt functions and services to fit different
  business processes in an agile manner
• Share data, information, and knowledge more
  readily through open standards and common
  protocols
• Decrease infrastructure and people costs, reduce
  testing, fewer resources needed to manage IT
• Simplify.Leverage..
• Support security-enhancing environments and
  identity management

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Whos moving to SOA?

• Forrester Research April 2005

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More on whos doing SOA

• Infoworld Research Report on SOA
• Link is in the SOA e-lesson at ACSLearn
• Check out ACSLearn e-lessons on
• Web Services
• SOA
• at http//www.acs.openlab.net.au

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An extract from the SOA e-lesson at ACSLearn

• SAP, IBM help drive SOA adoption is a short
  article on these vendors involvement with SOA.
  At the same link youll find (as at April 2005) a
  link to an Infoworld survey on SOA adoption. You
  need to register to get this 25-slide
  presentation with February 2005 data on SOA
  adoption. The link is http//www.infoworld.com/ar
  ticle/05/04/04/14NNsapsoa_1.html?PROFESSIONAL20SE
  RVICES
• Theres a longer (19-pages) but useful, CBDI
  Report Service Oriented Architecture An
  Introduction for Managers by David Sprott
  available at http//www.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/pd
  f/soa-cbdi-report-2004-july.pdf

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Some terms in SOA

• Composition
• Making a composite of existing applications/servic
  es
• Example Airline/car rental/hotel reservation
  Develop independently, then compose into a new
  service to co-ordinate all three.
• Orchestration (internal)
• Message exchange sequences
• Choreography (external)
• Executable processes
• Many web services projects set up a service, but
  dont take the next step of dynamically linking
  services into business processes

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Its a bit like music

• Just as there are only a set number of plotlines
  for literary artists to manipulate, there are
  only a set number of keys and rhythms for
  musicians to work with. Once the primary moves
  have been made, combination rather than
  origination becomes the mark of artistic genius
• Ray Charles Gospel and RB
• Bob Dylan Folk and ?
• Source The Australian, Imres column

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SOA - Its bigger than it seemed

• Processes
• Services
• Composite applications
• Integration
• Standards
• Business agility
• Leveraging existing technology assets
• Architecture
• Choreography
• Orchestration
• and its more complex than it may appear

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SOA evolution

• Reuse
• BPM
• E-Commerce
• ERP Backlash
• Y2K
• Compliance
• Governance
• Workflow

• Internet
• EDI
• Cybercash
• CORBA, DCE etc
• EAI
• XML
• Web services

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SOA in pictures

• The next few slides are from
• http//www.cbdiforum.com/public/events/workshops/C
  ommunicating_SOA_files.php
• You can download these slides, but you need to
  register at the site. Reuse of these slides is
  encouraged by CBDI, provided their source is
  acknowledged.
• We also look at some very good SOA pictures from
  Peter Campbell, an enterprise architect at ANZ
  Bank who was a panelist in Melbourne
• Peter has also approved the use of his slides.
• Reusability is a good thing but it requires
  collaboration.
• Thanks to both sources.

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Architectural Layers
Business Process Layer
Order
Account
Employee
Customer
Service Layer
Finance
LotusNotes
Application Layer
ERP
CRM
Directory
HR
IBMCICS
Technology Layer
Microsoft.NET
Linux
J2EE
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Provider and Consumer Architectures
Consumer
CompositeApplicationArchitecture
ServiceArchitecture
Provider
ComponentArchitecture
ComponentArchitecture
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SOA Layers
Service
Service
Composite Business Services
Composite Application
Business Service Bus
Enterprise Service Bus
Service
Service
Service
Service
Service
Service
Implementation-Based and Utility Services
Other Service Providers
Service Enablement
Providing Resources and Implementations
Internal and External Resources
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Enterprise Service Bus
Business Service Bus
Enterprise Service Bus
Management
Transport
Security
Orchestration
Transformation
Middleware and/or Platform Resources
JCA, etc
JMS, etc
SecurityServer
OrchestrationServer
WSDM
EAI Server,XMLTransformer,
MOM,and other Transports
WSM,SystemsManagement
Existing Application Resources
ERP
CRM
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SOA Maturity Model
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Enterprise SOA Roadmap
Early Learning
Integration
Reengineering
Maturity
Planning Managing
Managed and unmanaged organizational
learning Short term ROI on primarily technical
solutions Visioning, planning and
communicating
Common enterprise service bus capabilities
Existing capabilities exposed as
services Consistent use of services across the
organization Cost reduction from (reuse)
efficiency Increase in business agility from
contract / trust based systems Provider /
Consumer Organization
Secure, transactional services environment Busine
ss processes reengineered as services Services
federated across business ecosystems Monolithic
systems reengineered as components Real time
data currency and business intelligence
Real time business services Service is basis for
virtualized resource management Federated
services management
Architecture
Infrastructure
Process
Resources
Project Steering
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The integration challenge for an enterprise
The Wiring Diagram

• IT systems evolve and become more complex like
  this over time
• Every enterprise has a picture like this
  (sometimes it is not drawn!)
• This includes an Enterprise Service Bus
• SOA offers the potential to simplify integration
  using standard interfaces

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SOA definition
The policies, practices and frameworks that
enable application functionality to be provided
and consumed as sets of services published at a
granularity relevant to the service consumer,
which are abstracted away from the implementation
using a single, standards based form of interface.
Source CBDI Implementing SOA Enterprise Wide
Policies
Practices
Frameworks
Consumers
Standards-based interface
Service implementations
Application functionality
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Services and business processes

• Services are linked to form business processes
  using process orchestration
• Business services can utilise service
  orchestration

Author Peter Campbell, ANZ Banking Group
Australia
Business Process
Open account for customer
Presentation user interface
Business Process Orchestration
Locate account type
Add account to customer
Get customer details
Business Services
Coarse Grained
Service Orchestration (Process Orchestration)
Locate customer record
Check customer status
Create Customer- Account record
Lookup account type table
Retrieve account details
Technical Services
Fine Grained
Author Peter Campbell, ANZ Banking Group
Australia
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Process orchestration

• Business processes are implemented by
  orchestrating services (e.g. using BPEL)
• Process orchestration can include services
  triggering manual processes
• A manual step in a process may make it slower and
  less robust than a fully automated process, but
  humans are really great computational units
• Manual processes may impact quality of service
  (QoS)

Process Orchestration
Process level Management
Work item placed on work queue
Work item completed notification
Business Service 4
Business Service 1
Business Service 2
Business Service 3
Service level Management
WSDL
Workflow
Automated processes
Service level management NOT available but status
via workflow is
Manual Process

• Workflow handles management of manual processes
• Process orchestration handles management of
  automated processes

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SOA standards stack example
Wire
W
D
Description
Discovery
Di
Consumer
D
Single standard desirable
D
W
Provider
D
D
D
Multiple standards acceptable
D
W
There will be more . .

• NOTES
• WS-I basic profiles are important for ensuring
  interoperability and version levels of standards
• SOA and services are independent of transport
  protocols

 
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SOA and Web services

• SOA can be implemented without Web services, and
  Web services can be used for non-SOA (e.g. RPC)
  interactions. However, Web services delivers key
  standards for implementing SOA.
• The WS- family scales to meet integration
  challenges intra-enterprise (enterprise
  application integration EAI) and
  inter-enterprise (business to business B2B).
• XML is an ideal candidate for loosely coupled
  inter-application data sharing. XML is not
  self-describing, but XML Schema can be be used to
  constrain message layout and content.

• RPC interactions
• Binary XML

• Services architecture
• Service contract
• Message based
• Service directory
• Protocol independent
• Coarse grained document centric

• Web services specs
• WSDL
• SOAP XML
• UDDI
• HTTP
• Doc literal binding

• Process orchestration (BPEL)

Web Services is the stack of standard web
technologies required at both consumer and
provider ends to implement the pipe for shipping
XML messages between them.
You don't have SOA until you build/buy services
and compose them to implement business
functionality.
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Getting ready for SOA
Top down and bottom up considerations need to
be balanced.
Business
Architecture
Governance
Business Ownership

• Principles
• Patterns
• Architecture
• Skills

• Measurement
• Management
• Rewards

Top down
Funding
Technical Ownership
Repository
SOA
Design and Development Skills
Technology Enablers
Bottom up
Proof of Concepts
Select SOA tools
Simple Web Services
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Example Simplification and reducing testing
Current transaction management
Current State
Changes
Changes
Consumers
Legacy and Shared Systems
Many tightly coupled interfaces
NOTE This example only applies to a subset of
existing transactions
Development to testing ratio 1 9
End-to-end testing required to cover all the
interdependencies
Consumers
Proposed
Simplified transaction management
Legacy and Shared Systems
Changes
Standard interfaces
Reduced change dependencies yield reduction in
testing in this specific example
Development to testing ratio 13 (best practice
target)
Testing is only required against the standard
interface
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IS SOA New?

• Not really, theres new standards that make it
  easier to implement
• The services in SOA are business services, e.g.
  update a loan but not update a record
• Linking services creates business processes,
  business process engines and languages make this
  easier
• Business partners can use each others services
• Favours flexibility over efficiency
• Services are not tied to user interfaces,
  interfaces invoke services.
• Gives new life to legacy systems
• Check out John Reynolds Blog (ACSLearn e-lesson)

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The assignment

• Answer the questions in the integration survey in
  Section 3.1 for your case organisation (5)
• Sample questions
• In the past 12 months how often asked to
  integrate information held in disparate systems?
• What of these requests could be met in
  timeframe of the business?

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More on the assignment

• Explain the current IT architecture (5)
• Identify and justify the maturity level of your
  organisations enterprise architecture (5)
• Identify any business challenges the current
  integration architecture and integration
  approaches create (10)

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More of the assignment

• Examine how a move towards a service-oriented
  architecture would address these challenges
  (15)
• Identify any technical and/or organisational
  challenges associated with introducing an SOA.
  (15)
• Identify the core services that your organisation
  could offer as services in a SOA.(15)

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But wait..theres more

• Explain which, if any, of the international IT
  guidance standards are in use in your
  organisation. (5)
• Make recommendations as to which of the standards
  are relevant and suitable for the organisation.
  (5)
• Prepare a 10-minute presentation suitable for
  senior business executives in your organisation,
  the title of which is Do we need
  service-oriented architecture. (20)

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The Reality

• Panel
• Short break for 2 minutes.
• Talk among yourselves about the questions you
  want the panel to answer.