Waiting for SOA (was Enterprise Web Integration Using .NET 3.5)

Ian Robinson, ThoughtWorkshttp://iansrobinson.com/

• Mature SOA discourse• BUT - Many organisations remain inexperienced in SOA

• Gentrification

Two worlds

• Competing forces• Seemingly overwhelming size and complexity• “You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on”

Beckett’s dilemma

• Connect upstream producers with downstream refiners• Frequent touch:

• Haulage• Blending• Asphalt

• Synergies between services• Acquisitive• 50+ significant systems

• Approx half vendor/package, half custom

Case study: Midstream oil and gas company

• Lack of business process agility• Implications of database replication architecture

The challenges

• Developing a service-oriented competency• Composition of well-understood, simple techniques

Initial engagement

• Make early interventions• Learning what to defer

Goals

• Collaborative: business and IT stakeholders• Sample significant business processes:

• Production movement• Customer exposure• Shipping services• New employee hired

Workshops overview

Example: Production movement workflow

Map to existing systems

A moment of insight

Back to basics: Entities, actors and actions

Production, Diluent, Truck, Terminal

Dispatcher, Driver, Operator

Dispatching, Hauling, Analyzing, Blending

Production states and events

BlendConnectPickup

Crude connected to terminal

Diluent connected to terminal

Lab analysis available

Awaiting haul Being hauled BlendedIn storage

Mapping events onto the system estate

Quality of service

When Haul of crude production to terminal completed

Consumers Terminal balancing

Information Order numberTerminalTankVolumeReceipt number

Timeliness < 5 minutes

Frequency Approx 15,000 per month

Peak periods 7am to 8pm

Reliability Guarantee delivery

Existing replication strategy

Existing Applications

Existing Applications?

Relieving the replication burden

Logistics

Existing Applications

Operations

Existing Applications

Increasing process agility

Logistics

Existing Applications

Operations

Existing Applications

Lab Analysis

Existing Applications

Shipper Services

• Host for one or more business functions • Useful only insofar as they are consumed• Business-meaningful events will continue to occur no

matter the systems that come and go

Services

• Bad integration• Good integration

Integration

• Sequential workflows quickly become overly complex• Folk IT • Tolerate a moment of crisis

Workshop observations

• Look for business-meaningful behaviours and events• Identify service consumer expectations• Iterate over business process descriptions• Encourage wide-ranging ownership of a service-oriented

competency

Conclusions

Thank you