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Analysis and Design of Service Processes

Kiersten Fox

MBA 731

October 22, 2007

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History of Service-Orientation

• Definition of Service-Orientation: A design paradigm that specifies the creation of automation logic in the form of services

• Thomas Erl first publisher of service-oriented design process from and industry perspective in his book, “Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design”

• As part of Erl’s process, services produced by the service-oriented analysis process are used as input for service-oriented design

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What is Service-oriented analysis and design (SOAD)?

• Created by IBM• No formal definition• An approach to software modeling and

development specially designed for service-oriented architecture (SOA)

• As introduced by Mark Colan, SOA is an emerging architectural style for crafting next generation enterprise applications

• In SOA, applications can be structured from reusable components, instead of creating one huge application

• SOA adds additional themes such as service choreography and service repositories

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Existing Approaches to Analysis and Design

• Existing Approaches– Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD)

– Enterprise Architecture frameworks (EA)

– Business Process Modeling (BPM)

• Assist with identifying and defining appropriate concepts within an architecture

• However, may not be adequate for SOA when used independent of each other

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BPM, EA, and OOAD Positioning (from IBM)

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Shortcomings of Existing Approaches

• Enterprise architecture– Usually generic– High-level architectures fail too broad for developers

• BPM– Can be used as a starting point– Not synchronized with design-level use case

modeling

• OOAD– Too specific– One use case model created per problem– Big picture problem unclear – Use case models are not synchronized with their

BPM counterparts

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Need for New Approach

• OOAD, EA, and BPM only cover part of the requirements needed to support SOA

• SOA approach reinforces general principles, but also adds new themes such as service choreography, service repositories, and the service bus middleware pattern

• SOAD– Hybrid of approaches

– Combines OOAD, EA, and BPM and new themes

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SOAD, EA, BPM, and OOAD (from IBM)

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Example from IBM: Automotive Work Order

• Process of how an automotive maintenance company manages its customer operations

• Business scenario

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Flow of Work Order Process (from IBM)

                                                                            

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Services Model (from IBM)

                                                                                  

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BPM for Work Order (from IBM)

                                                                      

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SOAD (from IBM)

                                                                                          

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Strengths and Weaknesses of SOAD

Strengths

• Built on strong foundation

• Innovative

• Meet-in-the-middle approach supporting analysis and design

Weaknesses

• No formal definition of SOAD

• Notation and processes are not defined

• UML may continue to be notation of choice on the process side

• Will require further enhancements

• Why not build on a previous approach instead of adding complete new one?

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Why do we care?

• Besides difference in modeling…

• Systematical difference between traditional approach and SOA approach

• In traditional approach, business systems analyst compiles information and hands it over to architect

• In SOA projects, business systems analyst and developer define conceptual design together to ensure business logic is accurate

• SOAD is a “meet in the middle approach”– Fills in gap between business perspective and IT

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References1. “Service-oriented analysis and design.” Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_analysis_and_design.

2. “Service orientation.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-orientation.

3. Saran, Cliff. “SOA Toolbox.” Computer Weekly. Com. 17 May 2007. <http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/05/17/221766/soa-toolbox.htm>.

4. Erl, Thomas. “SOA Methodology: Mainstream Processes for Service-Oriented Analysis & Design.” http://www.soamethodology.com.

5. Gee, Clive, Pal Krogdahl, and Olaf Zimmerman. “Elements of Service-Oriented Analysis and Design.” 2 June 2004 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-soad1/.