• Blog
  • About
  • Archives

elemental links

brenda michelson's technology advisory practice

Archives for May 2009

Curious about SoaML (UML Profile for SOA)?

May 27, 2009 By brenda michelson

At the March SOA Consortium meeting, Cory Casanave, CEO, Model Driven Solutions & ModelDriven.org, gave an overview presentation & demo on Enterprise SOA Modeling with the new OMG SoaML UML profile. (pdf)

SoaML is a UML profile and metamodel for the design of services within a service-oriented architecture.  SoaML can be used for architecture level modeling, or as part of a model driven architecture (MDA) process, starting with a business model and transitioning through logical and physical models, resulting in technology implementation. Since it is a UML profile, it is immediately compatible with existing UML tools.

Casanave began by setting context, describing the rationale and objectives of SoaML,  how SoaML views a service (agreement between parties to exchange something),  the  top-down (business-driven) and bottoms-up (legacy-aware) usage paths, and the mapping of those paths to model driven architecture (MDA).

To bring the specification to life, Casanave walked through the artifacts related to a claims processing scenario, including the services architecture model (see below), business process model, service contract, participant interaction model, message types, service interface, service usage, participant model, composite application structure and information model. 

[Click on Picture to Enlarge]

Included in the example was the iteration of model detail as the process moved from business concept to logical model to systems model.  In a follow-on demonstration, Casanave highlighted the transition from physical model to technology implementation using ModelPro, a new open source tool.

Even if you don’t have the time to listen to the podcast of Cory’s talk, I highly recommend flipping through the slide deck to see SoaML in the context of a real business example.  All of the artifact slides are nicely annotated like the one above.

To listen to the audio recording of the presentation portion of Casanave’s session and/or view the rest of the slides go here.  To view the entire SoaML specification, please go here. (200 page pdf)

 

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my company, Elemental Links.]

Filed Under: services architecture, soa

Business Outcomes from Services & Assemblies? Bragging rights on your S-O-A success

May 26, 2009 By brenda michelson

Did you hear SOA died again last week?  Does this make SOA more dead?   Finally dead?  Or, on par with Jason from Friday the 13th, deadish, but always lurking for a sequel?  Bad analogies aside, this time Anne is much more deliberate in separating “SOA” the marketing term, from s-o-a the practice:

"SOA" as a term has lost its luster, but "SOA" as a practice is essential for all organizations going forward” 

So, you could say I was right in my “cheeseburgers are dead, but demand for burgers with cheese is at an all time high” quip from January. 

This all brings me back to something I was talking and tweeting about last fall, that “it’s time S-O-A stood for services, outcomes and assemblies”.  As I shared with Dave Linthicum, I picked 2009 as the year organizations shift their SOA perspective from infrastructure to solutions.  And, that we’d start to hear more frequently from organizations that were early with this business-driven mindset.

This (finally) brings me to the point of this post… If you have a story to tell, now is the time.  The SOA Consortium and CIO magazine are once again partnering on a SOA case study contest.  Entries are open until June 26, 2009.  For more information on the contest, I’m excerpting my post from SOA Consortium Insights:

“Do you have a SOA Success Story?  Can you tie your SOA initiative to quantifiable business value and/or IT efficiency?  Have you learned lessons that others should know?  Did you find a way to persevere despite a tough economic climate and industry noise on SOA’s health?  Would you like an opportunity to share your story?  Garner industry-wide praise for your well-deserving team?  Then, look no further…

The SOA Consortium and CIO Magazine are proud to announce the 2009 edition of our Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Case Study Competition. The competition is open to organizations of all sizes, including government agencies, which have successfully delivered business or mission value using a SOA approach.

Similar to the inaugural contest in 2008, the goal of the SOA Case Study Competition is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing SOA adoption. To qualify for the competition, the SOA project must be complete with demonstrated business results.

Entries will be judged on the complexity of the business problem addressed, the ROI/Business Value achieved (Agility/Innovation/Flexibility/Optimization/Resilience), the level and sophistication of the cross-organizational collaboration (Business/Technical), the usage of SOA approaches and supporting technology and lessons learned. In addition to one overall winner, organizations will be recognized by industry/government.

To learn more about the contest and start your application, please visit the case study contest center on the SOA Consortium Site.

To read about last year’s winners go here.  And, for insights into the 2008 judging criteria, go here. 

To help us spread the word on real-world SOA success, please tell your colleagues and SOA community friends about our contest with CIO Magazine.

Fine print: Entries are open now through June 26, 2009.  Only entries from team members are valid.  [Translation: We will screen out vendor submitted marketing case studies.]”

 

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my company, Elemental Links.]

Filed Under: services architecture, soa

Insight from today’s event processing roundtable: improving business history

May 13, 2009 By brenda michelson

During today’s event processing roundtable on ebizQ, Joe McKendrick asked us to comment on the relationship, or continuum, between complex event processing and business intelligence.  I went first and spoke of a continuum (or flow) that exists with the introduction of an active information tier.  Instead of viewing CEP in silos for a particular business application, I advocate the creation of an “active information tier” which is minimally comprised of raw (unprocessed) events, notable (filtered, promoted, processed) events, event interpretations and event-driven action triggers.

Using this active information tier, you can take better-informed actions for your business today, and make better-informed decisions for your business tomorrow (future). 

An interesting point that David Olson of Progress made in his answer concerned the role of business past in making decisions about your future business.  As we all know, business intelligence / decision support is highly dependent on historical business data.  David pointed out that organizations employing CEP not only get the benefit of taking the right action today, the correctness of the action also contributes to a higher quality of business history, and therefore strengthens business intelligence results for tomorrow.

So, even if your active information tier (or CEP implementation) doesn’t initially extend to business intelligence, you are still improving business intelligence input, and one would hope, output.

Below is my quick attempt to illustrate the above.

 

Thanks Joe and David for the insightful conversation!

Filed Under: active information, circuit, event driven architecture, event processing

Cloud Watching in Vegas: Enterprise Cloud Summit @ Interop

May 13, 2009 By brenda michelson

Next week, I’m taking my cloud watching on the road to Vegas.  I’ll be attending and blogging from Interop’s Enterprise Cloud Summit in Las Vegas on May 18-19. 

“Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop is the industry’s only event focused on how traditional enterprises can adopt cloud computing models. Featuring panels of thought leaders, candid conversations with industry luminaries and hands-on real-world demonstrations that showcase the promise – and risk – of on-demand computing, Cloud Summit is a no-holds-barred reality check to help CIOs and senior IT management better understand enterprise cloud computing.”

As most know, my ‘Cloud Watching’ is part of a broader research strategy to convey and discuss the opportunities, issues and offerings of cloud computing with enterprise architects.  Consistent with the Elemental Links consulting and research philosophy, I’m considering cloud computing in the broader context of business, technology, people, and value attainment. 

With my enterprise architect lens, I’m specifically studying the connections between cloud computing and services architecture, business architecture, active information, business-driven IT profiles and IT capability delivery. 

As a consequence of my cloud watching, I’ve got quite the mindmap in progress on cloud computing in the large, and the connection points to the above.  Although I don’t plan to publish the mindmap ‘as-is’ (brain dump), I will be using it to drive my formal research agenda and in conversations with clients.

If you’d like to be on my cloud watching radar (events, offerings, community, thought leadership), or want to discuss your own cloud watching / cloud initiative, please send me an email, or connect on twitter.

Filed Under: circuit, cloud computing, Elemental Links, enterprise architecture

ebizQ Event Processing Roundtable, Wednesday, May 13, 2009

May 11, 2009 By brenda michelson

On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, I’ll be participating in an ebizQ roundtable discussion on Managing Events in an Eventful Year.  Fellow roundtable participants are David E. Olson, Director of CEP Product Marketing, Progress Software and Joe McKendrick, Contributing Editor and Analyst at ebizQ. 

Based on our quick introductory call last Friday, I can assure folks this will not be a CEP equals Algorithmic Trading discussion.  In addition to capital markets, we exchanged examples of event processing in energy management, logistics, risk management and ecommerce.  As well, we chatted about the ties of event processing with SOA, and I shared a little of my active information tier vision.

Since it’ll be a live conversation, incorporating attendee questions/feedback, I can’t say exactly where the conversation will go, but I know it’ll be interesting. Please join us.

If you’d like to schedule time to talk about your event processing initiatives or products, send me an email, or connect on twitter.

Filed Under: circuit, event driven architecture, event processing

Next Page »

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

(BIO)

  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Experts Sketch
  • PEW Research: Tech Saturation, Well-Being and (my) Remedies
  • technology knowledge premise
  • The Curse of Knowledge
  • better problems and technology knowledge transfer

Recent Tweets

  • “…where the process of drawing itself can take us. We can follow a suggestion, a squiggle, shadow, or smudge, and s… https://t.co/oRg0x2LoXG November 30, 2022 5:05 pm
  • On the waiting list for Post, join me (on the waitlist) via https://t.co/U8wYK707f6 November 24, 2022 4:17 pm
  • Meet the longtime librarian being honored at the National Book Awards : NPR https://t.co/S44VQeJg83 November 13, 2022 2:51 pm
© 2004-2022 Elemental Links, Inc.