SOA Grid

(prompted by http://www.soamag.com/I10/0907-1.asp)

This discusses technologies for scalability e.g. mid-tier caching, load balancing, and high availability through service-level grid enablement for high performance SOAs (SOA Grid) that may help enable enforceable SLAs across service portfolios (WS, messaging, enterprise
applications, mainframes)

It introduces some interesting architectural issues e.g. remote nodes to cache
the programming logic (as well as shared data objects)

This leads to a consideration of re-locatable BPEL: i.e. BPEL that dehydrates and then rehydrates itself somewhere else on the grid to execute closer to the service and instance data that it is operating on.

It could also lead to Business Rules/Decisions be dealt with in the same way if they were discretely partitioned.

Software factories and architectural frameworks

(prompted by "Mass Customizing Solutions" item in Fall 2007 Methods and tools)

Introduction
This item discusses the concept of Software Factories. While it is focused on a very specific sort of development I believe the principles it articulates have much broader application (if the approaches to development and integration are to be improved. It also describes the core thinking underlies the establishment of RHE's AMA (and the idea of instantiatable Development Approaches - DMAs). This lead directly to the need for multi-perspective modelling (e.g. as enable by a metamodeller) to make the management of the resulting knowledge viable.

It makes the point that the key intellectual content from a project is not the code. It is information (best held in models, and published in views suited to different audiences) that describes the requirements and design from many viewpoints.

Further, in my view, one of the key reasons business analysis does not mature as practice is the absence of a focus on quality (repeatability, consistenty). This is largely because there is not a focus on a consistent set of inter-related business domain viewpoints that can be explicitly captured (i.e. in a model) and people continue to think that the essay style is suited to conveying an sets of essays are useful for managing the knowledge.

Architecture frameworks
It item discusses Architecture Frameworks (e.g. Zachman):

• the key intellectual content of a project is not the code - "... interface design and functional factoring constitutes the key intellectual content of software.."
• this key intellectual content is captured in these frameworks - "Architectural frameworks capture the intellectual content using view points that identify, separate and interrelate well defined sets of stakeholder concerns"
• the frameworks have views for a variety of stakeholders (technical and non-technical) - "... stakeholders include business analysts, project managers, developers..."
• viewpoints include business rules, business info, business processes, UI workflow etc. - "Examples of viewpoints include business rules, business events, business information, business processes, user interface workflow and database design. Examples of stakeholder concerns include how business rules are enforced by a given process or how a physical database design supports a logical database design".
• viewpoints need to be able to be nested and adapted (i.e. a metamodeller is useful) - "The software factory schema is an architecture framework ... nesting viewpoints, specific to the solution family...dynamic [e.g.] new viewpoints are added.
• relationships between viewpoints are critical
• viewpoints imply artifact - "a viewpoint ... defines a set of related artifacts..., the activities that act upon the artifacts..."
• viewpoints/relationships support development - "Relationships between viewpoints are used to support the flow of development..."
• publishing information is key (that should be available from models) - "... publishing information about key processes and artifacts... This metadata is often readily available in the models used by factories."
• publishing information on requirements and design decisions is key - "...Two kinds of information are particularly important ... about requirements, sych as the information captured in feature models ..., about architecture"

Benefits
"The results are generally significant reduction in cost and time to market, significant improvement in the quality attributes, and greater consistency from solution to solution. Risk is also reduced..."

"When it is time to maintain or evolve ..., the metadata captured during its development is used to analyse the impact of changes in requirements and technologies.."

See other items related in one way or another
Enterprise data management
Business modelling with domain specific languages
UML not suited to requirements capture

BP modelling and SOA

Oracle
Oracle's BP Analysis Suite (Aris) shares a common process model format (an intermediate format based on shared metadata between the modeling tool and the implementation tool) with the Oracle SOA suite to allow round-trip engineering. Modeling is done in the BP package and then executed in the SOA Suite (BPEL).

Software quality

Coverity's Prevent SQS SAT engine (based on the concept of Boolean satisfiability) uses a representation of software to identify complex defects in source code. It is $35 annually.

Lattix uses interdependencies to create an accurate blueprint of applications, databases and systems. Developers can analyze systems in detail, edit the structure to create what-if scenarios, and specify design rules, allowing them to formalize and communicate the architecture.

BP, BR, SOA

Gradually people are starting to realise that Processes, Rules and Services are connected.

Intalio
Intalio BPMS 5.0 (built on top of the Apache ODE BPEL engine, and the Eclipse STP BPMN modeller) supports: use case design, process modeling, process simulation, complex human workflow execution, Web form generation, conditional logic mapping, advanced business rules design, and real-time process monitoring (BPMN, BPEL 2.0, BPEL4People). It has been integrated with Alfresco (CMS), Mule (ESB), Liferay (Portal), and OpenLexicon (Rule Engine). The modeller was re to support BPMN 2.0 specification, and the BPEL runtime optimized to support 100,000+ process models and 250,000,000 process instances deployed on a server, and the workflow framework extended to support BPEL4People and provide better support for BAM.

Fiorano and Adaptive Edge
Fiorano (BP integration and messaging) announces a partnership with Adaptive Edge in Aus (a provider of BPM/SOA solutions). Adaptive Edge will provide Fiorano customers with a rapid process deployment programme i.e. pre-packaged templates, discovery, modeling, integration and deployment, delivering a running process within 90 days.

BP modelling

(prompted by Metastorms purchase of Promforma)

Market consolidation
Over recent years, most of the other leading BPA/EA companies have been acquired e.g. Computas (Troux), Popkin (Telelogic/IBM), ProActivity (EMC). IDS Scheer (Aris) is now the clear pure play market leader. Others offering BP modelling are: Casewise, Mega, iGrafx, Savvion has a free, downloadable process modeller (downloaded 100,000 times), Lombardi has a Blueprint on-demand process modeller delivered through a SaaS model.

EA modeling and process modeling should help bridge the gap between strategy and execution (as would a connection of EA to Rules modelling, EA to ER modelling).

Further consolidation is expected in areas such as process simulation, BAM, and rules engines and convergence of BPM with BI (predictive analytics, visualization and activitybased costing). Likely future purchasers: SAP (IDS), EMC (from ProActivity), Oracle (above Collaxa), IBM (tying together Tivolli/Rational/WebSphere, HP, SUN (above JCAPS) etc.


Everyone thinks the are in the BP game - somewhere - see:













Metastorm and proforma
Proforma has a comprehensive suite of process libraries and reference models. Metastorm has Process Pods and Process Templates. These libraries will form packaged vertical and functional domain models.