Service-Oriented Architectures - Report Example

Service Oriented Architectures I am a technical professional serving in the IT Dept. of a large organisation -- IBM which is equipped with a substantial IT infrastructure based on the present client-server technologies. There is a general consensus that majority of the software capabilities will be given and used as services. This implies that the point of usage i.e. to the portal, to the device, to another endpoint etc will be using a service-based interface. The service is an important construct for publishing and ought to be utilised at the point of every important interface. Service Oriented Architecture -- SOA facilitates in managing the usage viz. the delivery, acquisition, usage etc as regards, and in groups of, associated services. This will put huge allusion for the manner in which the software life cycle is managed starting from the specification of requirement of services, design of services, buying and outsourcing of services, asset management of services and the like. (Understanding Service Oriented Architecture) SOA has similarities with Object Orientation -- OO and Component-based Development -- CBD. Akin to objects and components, services symbolises natural building blocks which facilitate to organize capabilities in manner that is known. In the same vein as objects and components, service is a basic unit which (i) combines information and behaviour (ii) Encapsulates the internal workings from the external interference (iii) Shows a comparatively simple interface to the remaining if the organism. According to the World Wide Web Consortium -- W3C, SOA is a collection of components that can be invoked, and whose descriptions of interface can be published and found out. A lot of similar description is being used at other places; it is an extremely technical viewpoint wherein the architecture is regarded as a technical implementation. (Understanding Service Oriented Architecture) SOA is an IT architectural approach focussed on business that helps in integrating the business as networked, repeatable business assignments, or services. SOA assists the users in creating composite applications that are applications which takes functionality from a number of sources inside and beyond the enterprise to support horizontal business systems. SOA’s growing popularity in business and IT can be attributed to the fact that it has interoperability between heterogeneous systems, reuse of components, and flexible and efficient business processes. (Why Service Oriented Architecture and IBM) It is a fact that modelling and simulation of business processes is a strong capability for the analysis of business solutions within a SOA. At the time of the design phase, the analysis of SOA framework changes the business process model that is explained with additional information, into a highly granular model by the application of a basic middleware model which explains all the middleware components inside an SOA. The consequential model can thereafter be assessed as regards performance and cost is concerned. Enterprise architectures are heterogeneous and need integration of new technology with various types of available technology in a flexible way, concurrently fulfilling business performance requirements. (Analysis and simulation of business solutions in a service-oriented architecture) To assuage the requirements of regular change, the enterprise architecture must deliver a layer that is platform-independent in order to build loosely coupled application services. In this method, SOA will be able to integrate business processes within and business enterprises with the people and data which are needed for their implementation. Web Services provide a particular approach to execute service-oriented architectures. A Web Service -- WS splits the interface specification from its execution from the implementation and can be assessable from a network by means of standardized XML -- Extensible Markup Language messaging. It delivers a programming model that is platform-neutral which can be utilised to fasten loosely attached business systems. (Analysis and simulation of business solutions in a service-oriented architecture) Building solutions for SOA implies reconsidering the types of systems being built today, reconsidering the available skills present within the organization, and redefining the means in which members of the team join forces. The most crucial part being that adopting a service orientation to the development of solutions needs extensive review of the outcome of this orientation on the manner in which the solutions are designed, what are the implications to assemble them from disparate services, and the manner in which deployed SOA are managed and evolved. As regards tool vendor perspective is concerned, these areas are concerned with the technology support which are given in three areas. These are (i) The SOA Life Cycle: The detection and description and quick application maintenance tenets imply the life cycle of services and the manner in which they are located, applied and evolved, and maintained. It is the tool vendors who more and more provide means to store, catalog, search and retrieve services. (Realizing Service-Oriented solutions with the IBM Rational Software Development Platform) The support for the current evolution of service remains a crucial aspect of this process, resulting in several versions of services. (ii) SOA platform and programming model: The “service-based interoperability and integration” principle indicates the way services can be linked, positioned and managed within a specific runtime platform. The important platform vendors are supporting SOA straightaway as a constituent of their middleware runtimes and evolving their runtime programming models to provide service ideas as first-class elements. The outcome might be that solutions may be thought, designed, implemented, and managed from a unitary service-based perspective. (iii) SOA practices and tools: The “composition and “adaptive proves management ideals imply the manner in which services are built and accumulated in the perspective of changing business requirements. Tool vendors favour the gathering of present applications to find out potential services, binding present functionality in order to make those capabilities assessable as services, building of new services and networking of services by linking behaviour exposed through their interfaces. Central to this is the presence of clear guidance and best practices for devising service-oriented solutions in repeatable, predictable manners. (Realizing Service-Oriented solutions with the IBM Rational Software Development Platform) The primary advantage of SOA is its adaptability to react more rapidly and efficiently to transforming market conditions. In order to attain this stage of business flexibility, a lot of companies are executing a SOA. An SOA delivers the flexibility to handle business processes and the basic IT infrastructure as a safe, standard component i.e. services which are capable to be reused and combined to deal with the transforming business objectives and priorities. To take an example, IBM Rational Software Development Platform assists companies to a business-centric development environment for SOA by supplying instruments and process guidance which are able to leverage industry-standard and new programming models to ease and speed up business process modelling and the design, construction and assembly of SOA. For instance the Rational Software Development Platform assists companies to (i) guarantee business needs propel services design and construction (ii) model and assemble SOA applications that automate business processes (iii) Repurpose the available assets as services to broaden their utility and build them into new solutions (iv) provide high quality services-based solutions in a timely fashion and on budget. (SOA Design and Development) Another form of advantage of SOA remains the on-demand Operating Environment which is based on the ideals of the SOA. A SOA considers every application or resource as a service executing a particular, identifiable collection of functions. Services interact mutually by exchanging structured information-messages or documents. Their potential are described through interfaces declaring messages which they can produce or use, policy explanations declaring quality of service needed or provided and choreography annotations showing behavioural constraints which must be appreciated in service interactions. The real implementation is encapsulated from the requester of a service, therefore SOA are a suitable means to attain application integration by permitting new and available applications to be rapidly combined into new contexts. Available applications are ‘adapted’ to service declarations. The interaction of services can be direct, or can be interceded by means of an intelligent infrastructure which is known as Enterprises Service Bus -- ESB. (On demand Operating Environment: Creating Business Flexibility) SOA approach has been enabled a great deal by the rising acceptance of the XML application to provide a standard representation of structured information and of ‘Web services” standard which is sometimes called as WS-standard. The conceptual model of a SOA is applicable to the virtualization of business operations as well as physical infrastructure. It covers the construction of applications as also their installation and management. A client is able to see solely the collection of the business services, and is concerned in the quality of services, but is encapsulated from the details of the application assembly and service delivery by means of the on-demand Operating Environment. (On demand Operating Environment: Creating Business Flexibility) Another advantage of SOA is service connectivity which is an IT-centric entry point to SOA designed to assist your IT settings with a more safe, dependable and scalable manner to link within and beyond the business. SOA links people, processes and information in the business with an unhindered flow of messages and information from any place at anytime using anything which is true connectivity. SOA delivers novel levels of flexibility to such linkages. (SOA Entry point: Service Connectivity) The disadvantage of SOA does not lie in its usage per se, but a large part of the integration difficulties needs execution of the long-running offline business processes. In this aspect, Event-driven Architecture -- EDA, not SOA, is the best practice undertaken in the industry. As opposed to SOA, EDA constitutes the design vision for long-running process which is not synchronous. In EDA, a process node posts an event. In EDA, posting an event shows results of some previous processing and the poster of the event is severed from the processors of the event in case of any. However SOA does not deliver the following erroneously attributed advantages. These are “(i) Simple software engineering (ii) Free integration or interoperability (iii) Technology independence (iv) Vendor independence and the final architecture for the new enterprise”. (Service Oriented Architecture Scenario) Reference Brown, A. W; Delbaere, M; Eeles, P; Johnston, S; Weaver, S. Realizing Service-Oriented solutions with the IBM Rational Software Development Platform. IBM Systems Journal, vol.44, no. 4, 2005. Kano, M; Koide, A; Liu, T; Ramachandran, B. Analysis and simulation of business solutions in a service-oriented architecture. IBM Systems Journal. vol.44, no. 4, 2005. Natis, Yefim. V. Service Oriented Architecture Scenario. 16 April, 2003. On demand Operating Environment: Creating Business Flexibility. SOA Design and Development. SOA Entry point: Service Connectivity. Sprott, David; Wilkes, Lawrence. Understanding Service Oriented Architecture. The Architecture Journal. January, 2004. Why Service Oriented Architecture and IBM. Read More