Service Oriented Architecture Platform Research Articles

Business value assessment of services re-use on SOA using appropriate methodologies, metrics and models

The main advantage of service re-use for the companies includes retaining a competitive advantage. The expectation of greater service re-use is one of the core benefits of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Besides the top drivers for SOA adoption include business flexibility, simplification and speed of integration. So, in order to maximise the intended benefits of SOA implementation, organisations need to develop a well-articulated SOA quality strategy to promote trust and re-use. However, the shift to this strategy does not come easy and cheap. Building an effective SOA platform requires tight integration between new and existing product categories, and it may require large investments. The same applies for developing re-usable services. For this reason, conventional investment valuation methods need to be combined with other modern techniques to reflect service re-use’s long-term strategic investment nature, the inherent uncertainty and the managerial discretion. Many value-based analytical methodologies have started to be developed. Thus, in this paper, we explain the role of SOA for services re-use and focus on the methodologies, metrics and models that are able to measure the business value of service re-use.

SOA investment decision-making using real options analysis

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is still among the top priorities in IT investment planning. However, selecting proper evaluation methods to capture for flexibility and uncertainty associated with SOA implementations remains a major issue. This paper investigates investment methods and analyses the application of real options models in a particular SOA context. We explore and classify key criteria and embedded options for evaluating multi-stage SOA investments as sequential compound options. The determinants and value drivers for SOA platform acquisition and SOA application development projects are examined and general conclusions with regard to SOA investment decision-making are drawn. In this paper, we identify both the limitations of commonly used techniques as well as the concept’s importance. A visualisation of the analysis is presented through a SOA management decision-framework explaining the relations between the steps of this framework and serving as guidance for SOA investment decision-makers.

Dynamic SOA Framework to Support Ad Hoc Enterprise Alliance Formation

Collaboration among businesses is needed to successfully fulfill a given task and goal. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been regarded as an efficient platform to support flexible interoperability among various enterprises by discovering, selecting and composing services. However, since a large number of enterprises have been participating in this SOA platform, relationships among these enterprises are getting too complicated to obtain flexibility and scalability for efficient collaboration. Thereby, in this paper, we propose a dynamic SOA platform to discover service chains for building ad hoc enterprise alliances where the only relevant enterprises are sorted out and merged. As a result, given an event, decision makers can find out which enterprises (and services from the enterprises) might be selected for their collaboration. The proposed SOA platform has been applied to mobile advertisement application as a case study. With respect to two indicators (i.e., precision and agility), we have shown that the proposed SOA outperforms traditional enterprise collaboration schemes.

Design and Implementation of Network Management Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

Traditional NM (Network Management) techniques can not be applied on WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) due to its features of low computing ability, tiny memory space, and limited energy. A new NMA (Network Management Architecture) for WSN is needed. In this paper, we design a loosely coupled NMA of WSN based on SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), and have well defined NM interfaces. Finally, we develop a SOA platform for WSN operations according to the NMA. Based on SOA platform, users can compose and use various NM Web Services by internet depending on their requirements. Heavy tasks which need a great deal of computing resources and storage are executed on the SOA platform. Thus, energy consumption and node computation can be decreased. Moreover, external applications use Web Services to integrate SOA platform for WSN. It lowers the difficulty in integrating different sensor platforms and heterogeneous devices.

Using Aspects for Platform-Independent to Platform-Dependent Model Transformations

This paper presents an aspect-based approach for realizing a transformation from platform-independent to platform-dependent models in the context of a model transformation chain that generates queueing-based performance models from UML design models of serviceoriented applications. The purpose of generating such performance models is to evaluate the performance of the system under development in the early software lifecycle phases, in order to insure that it will meet the performance requirements. The paper presents the model transformation chain PUMA4SOA, which transforms automatically a UML model of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) system extended with MARTE performance annotations into an intermediate model, Core Scenario Model (CSM), which in turn is used to generate a Layered Queueing Network (LQN) performance model. Aspect-oriented modeling is used to represent different services offered by the underlying SOA platform to the SOA application. The paper discusses and compares different alternatives for composing the platform aspect models with the platform-independent model (PIM) of the application throughout the model transformation chain.

Development and evaluation of SOA-based AAL services in real-life environments: A case study and lessons learned

IntroThe proper use of ICT services can support seniors in living independently longer. While such services are starting to emerge, current proprietary solutions are often expensive, covering only isolated parts of seniors’ needs, and lack support for sharing information between services and between users. For developers, the challenge is that it is complex and time consuming to develop high quality, interoperable services, and new techniques are needed to simplify the development and reduce the development costs.This paper provides the complete view of the experiences gained in the MPOWER project with respect to using model-driven development (MDD) techniques for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) system development in the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) domain. MethodTo address this challenge, the approach of the European research project MPOWER (2006–2009) was to investigate and record the user needs, define a set of reusable software services based on these needs, and then implement pilot systems using these services. Further, a model-driven toolchain covering key development phases was developed to support software developers through this process. Evaluations were conducted both on the technical artefacts (methodology and tools), and on end user experience from using the pilot systems in trial sites. ResultsThe outcome of the work on the user needs is a knowledge base recorded as a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model. This comprehensive model describes actors, use cases, and features derived from these. The model further includes the design of a set of software services, including full trace information back to the features and use cases motivating their design. Based on the model, the services were implemented for use in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) systems, and are publicly available as open source software. The services were successfully used in the realization of two pilot applications. There is therefore a direct and traceable link from the user needs of the elderly, through the service design knowledge base, to the service and pilot implementations.The evaluation of the SOA approach on the developers in the project revealed that SOA is useful with respect to job performance and quality. Furthermore, they think SOA is easy to use and support development of AAL applications. An important finding is that the developers clearly report that they intend to use SOA in the future, but not for all type of projects. With respect to using model-driven development in web services design and implementation, the developers reported that it was useful. However, it is important that the code generated from the models is correct if the full potential of MDD should be achieved.The pilots and their evaluation in the trial sites showed that the services of the platform are sufficient to create suitable systems for end users in the domain. ConclusionsA SOA platform with a set of reusable domain services is a suitable foundation for more rapid development and tailoring of assisted living systems covering reoccurring needs among elderly users. It is feasible to realize a tool-chain for model-driven development of SOA applications in the AAL domain, and such a tool-chain can be accepted and found useful by software developers.

The SOA platform for small businesses: a conceptual framework

The ever expanding service economy presents small businesses with unique challenges as well as new opportunities. Due to high development and maintenance costs, a sophisticated IT infrastructure is difficult to attain by small businesses. Through assessment of real-world use-cases, we have identified managerial and informational challenges facing small businesses. Moreover, from a synthesis of a single use-case, we propose an on-demand delivery of IT services to small businesses, the nature of which transcends both organisational and geographical boundaries. Our proposed on-demand IT services system involves a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is structured to align business processes and information technology/systems. Moreover, our proposed SOA approach is supported by two underlying technologies: virtualisation and application service provider (ASP). The net result of our approach is one that offers small businesses access to a sophisticated IT infrastructure that might otherwise be unattainable. We conclude this paper with managerial implications and future research.

Business process modelling in the context of SOA – an empirical study of the acceptance between EPC and BPMN

The successful introduction and use of service oriented architecture (SOA) is based on its symbiosis with the business process management (BPM). A precisely targeted usage of process modelling is an integral part of BPM. Event-driven process chains (EPC) and the business process modelling notation (BPMN) are the first choice for the process-oriented modelling. Business process execution language (BPEL) processes can be generated from both these models. They orchestrate the services of the SOA platform, thus, leading to the new IT applications without much expensive programming. The following contribution will introduce the results of an empirical survey on the acceptance comparison of EPC and BPMN.

Semantic-Based Mashup of Composite Applications

The need for integration of all types of client and server applications that were not initially designed to interoperate is gaining popularity. One of the reasons for this popularity is the capability to quickly reconfigure a composite application for a task at hand, both by changing the set of components and the way they are interconnected. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has recently become a popular platform in the IT industry for building such composite applications with the integrated components being provided as Web services. A key limitation of solely Web-service-based integration is that it requires extra programming efforts when integrating non-Web service components, which is not cost-effective. Moreover, with the emergence of new standards, such as Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi), the components used in composite applications have grown to include more than just Web services. Our work enables progressive composition of non-Web-service-based components such as portlets, Web applications, native widgets, legacy systems, and Java Beans. Further, we proposed a novel application of semantic annotation together with the standard semantic Web matching algorithm for finding sets of functionally equivalent components out of a large set of available non-Web-service-based components. Once such a set is identified, the user can drag and drop the most suitable component into an Eclipse-based composition canvas. After a set of components has been selected in such a way, they can be connected by data-flow arcs, thus forming an integrated, composite application without any low-level programming and integration efforts. We implemented and conducted extensive experimental study on the above progressive composition framework on IBM's Lotus Expeditor, an extension of an SOA platform called the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) that complies with the OSGi standard.

Building Enterprise Architecture Agility and Sustenance with SOA

Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA) is primarily regarded as a technical architecture consisting of tools and service specification to build loosely coupled applications. At another level it is also a means to leverage flexibility and agility to system services as it offers a hierarchical framework to coordinate simultaneous business process design and implementations using loosely coupled service infrastructures. SOA has been debated both in the academy and industry and misinterpretations of its nature impede its adoption. We summarize its historical origins and current evolutions. We review technologies that underlie SOA. In particular, we address how to integrate SOA initiatives with current technology platforms, and how to enforce reuse during the design of loosely coupled systems. We also analyze SOA design methodologies and platforms, and what are their roles in the application integration. Finally we outline challenges and future research directions for SOA.