Business Object Component Design and Implementation IV: From Business Objects to Complex Adaptive Sy

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Business Object Component Design and
Implementation IVFrom Business Objects to
Complex Adaptive Systems
OOPSLA98 Workshop 8
http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/

• Organizers Jeff Sutherland, IDX Systems
• Dilip Patel, South Bank University
• Joaquin Miller, MCI Systemhouse

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Important Announcements

• OOPSLA96 97 98 Proceedings available from
  Springer in early November
• Contact jeff.sutherland_at_computer.org
• Call for papers for OOPSLA99 Business Object
  Component Design and Implementation V will go out
  immediately.
• Focus will be on Business Components and
  Interoperability.

http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/
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Agenda

• 1. BUSINESS OBJECTS
• From Business Objects toward Adaptive Agents by
  Pam Rostal, Compuware Professional Services
• The Business Component Approach by Peter Herzum
  and Oliver Sims, SSA
• Business Object Component Architectures A Target
  Application Area for Complex Adaptive Systems
  Research by Jeff Sutherland, IDX Systems Corp.

http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/
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Agenda

• 2. WORKFLOW
• Structuring Specification of Business Systems
  with UML (with an Emphasis on Workflow Management
  Systems)
• by Pavel Hruby, Navision Software, Denmark
• Building Workflow Business Objects by Marc-Thomas
  Schmidt, IBM Software Group

http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/
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Agenda

• 3. MODELLING AND FRAMEWORK ISSUES
• Organization in a Chaotic World by Chris
  Marshall, SES Software Inc.
• Adaptive Framework for the REA Accounting Model
  by Hiroaki Nakamura and Ralph E. Johnson,
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Business Procedures are not Represented
  Adequately in Business Applications and
  Frameworks! by Hans Albrecht Schmid, FB
  Informatik and Fernando Simonazzi, LIFIA, UNLP,
  La Plata, Argentina
• A Business Object Framework Architecture by Hans
  Albrecht Schmid, FB Informatik, Matthias
  Riebisch, Deutsche Post AG, Torsten Heverhagen,
  Informatik, University Essen, Harald Liessmann,
  Wirtschaftsinformatik University
• "Ride The Mainstream!" with MACK Business Objects
  and Escape the Divine Programmer Syndrome by
  Christopher Spottiswoode, Metaset, South Africa

http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/
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Agenda

• 4. The User Experience
• Business Object Transitioning by Lenny Estrin
• Working with Business Objects A Case Study by W.
  Hordijk, S. Molterer, B. Paech, Ch. Salzmann,
  Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität
  München
• A Dynamic Business Object Architecture for
  Supporting Strategic Management Planning by Kitty
  Hung, Tony Simons, University of Sheffield

http//jeffsutherland.org/oopsla98/
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Business Object Component Architectures A Target
Application Area for Complex Adaptive Systems
Research
OOPSLA98 Business Object Workshop IV

• Jeff Sutherland
• IDX Systems Corporation

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cas
Chaos Fragmentation
Unpartitioned Object Systems
cas Self Organization
Components Business Objects
Smalltalk Java
Frozen
C COBOL
Classes Procedures
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cas - Complex Adaptive Systems

• Composed of interacting agents which respond to
  stimuli.
• Stimulus-response behavior can be defined in
  terms of rules.
• Agents adapt by changing their rules as
  experience accumulates.
• Agents can be aggregated into meta-agents whose
  behavior may be emergent.

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Enterprise Software Systems are cas

• Business entities are often used as examples of
  complex adaptive systems.
• Modification time is on the order of months or
  years, roughly time to change software.
• Automating business processes renders parts of
  the business in software.
• A business system has a severely constrained rule
  set, making it an ideal test bed for cas
  concepts. 

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Hollands Key Concepts in cas

• Aggregation (property)
• Tagging (mechanism)
• Nonlinearity (property)
• Flows (property)
• Diversity (property)
• Internal models (mechanism)
• Building blocks (mechanism)

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Aggregation

• Aggregation is a basic mechanism in object
  modeling
• Forming components out of objects is aggregation.
  
• More important are emergent properties
• Meta-agents (an enterprise)
• aggregates of agents (enterprise systems)
• emergent behaviors (revenue, profitability, and
  cash flow, the indices of value creation).

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Tagging

• Facilitates the forming of aggregates XML, CORBA,
  COM, EJB
• Facilitates selective mating, messaging.
  Firewalls use tagging to preserve boundaries
  between aggregates.
• Componentize object models. Enable filtering,
  specialization, and cooperation.
• Develop hierarchical aggregates that exhibit
  emergent behaviors (like an operating system).

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Nonlinearity

• Catastrophic and chaotic behaviors like traffic
  flow on the Internet.
• Brownouts, system loadings, scalability effects
  are often nonlinear.
• Predator/prey interactions
• Arrival, proliferation, and destruction of
  viruses on the Internet
• Revenue prediction in an enterprise financial
  system
• Rate of construction of software

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Flows

• Workflows
• Tags condition flows
• Flows typically have a multiplier effect.
• money injected into the economy
• email or other message flows on a network.
• Recycling effect
• individual pieces evolve, die, replaced, reused
• living software is constantly changing due to
  flows, as rivers change their course.
• dead software is eventually detritus that is
  expelled from the enterprise organism.

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Diversity

• Persistence of an individual agent depends on the
  ecosystem of agents that surround it.
• Evolution of agents causes convergence of system
  architectures.
• Emergent patterns that reappear again and again
  in widely disparate environments.
• Usefulness in business object systems arises from
  interactions between diverse agents as in human
  societies.

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Internal Models

• Utility of cas is enhanced if the system can
  learn from experience and adapt behavior.
• System must develop and act on internal models
  that simplify the external world.
• System infers results of actions before they are
  taken to choose actions that have productive
  results.
• Prospects for longevity of software systems
  depend on this capability, just as in living
  systems.

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Building Blocks

• Reuse is dependent on building blocks.
• Basis of Moore's law in hardware production.
• Could be the basis of dramatic improvements in
  software productivity.
• Building blocks are the basis for generation of
  internal models and are essential to the
  construction of adaptive enterprise systems.

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Company's "digital nervous system" will respond
to planned and unplanned events.

• Requirements are
• object model convergence (across applications)
• Internet integration (W3C Document Object Model)
• data representation (W3C XML, XSL)
• componentization (exposing internals, reuse)
• enhanced user involvement (powerful scripting
  languages)
• Aggregation, tagging, nonlinearity?, flows?,
  diversity?, internal models, building blocks

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Bottom Line

• BOCAs would benefit by application of cas
  concepts because they are larger in scope and
  broader in application than current work.
• Fundamental breakthroughs in how to build cas
  could translate directly to BOCAs.
• Business Object community could provide best
  testing ground for cas concepts, filling major
  deficiency in production systems.
• cas concepts provide criteria for analysis and
  evaluation of diverse BOCAs.