OASIS has discovered the ecosystems
In the
Reference Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture Version 1.0 OASIS has discovered the relation between the SOA and what I call the Ecosystem Oriented Architecture. Some of the thoughts that have been made in three EU funded projects (
FESTIH,
DAFNE and
DBE) since 2001 have been reported in a
Cutter's Exective Report.
We hope that this will bring new impulse to the IT community about EOA and be considered seriously as an evolution of Service Oriented Architecure, and maybe also quote our work.
SOA Governance
Yes a SOA instance need to be governed because it is not self sustainable, but an EOA (
Ecosystem Oriented Architecture) instance has no governance: at least we can have regulations in an EOA. Hence this blog shall be renamed "EOA Governace"
But in any case, thinking of a governace for an EOA is a contradiction in term; it's not possibile to govern an ecosystem, any ecosystem, and also a DES (Digital Ecosystem) as such. What might have sense to consider is the governance of the maintenance process of the EOA product, i.e. the actual project that realize the EOA, not it's actual instance.
As an example; the DBE is a tool (rather complex ok) that might give rise to several instances (the vulgar term that be used instead is "installations").
The creation and maintenance of the first can be governed, not the latter that can at least be "regulated".
A comment from Mary
"I'm not an expert on SOA but I am involved and interested in governance and the DBE project.
From my point of view as a social scientist who studies technology, the distributed, de-centralised design philosophy of SOA (and therefore the DBE) challenges a lot of traditional assumptions about governance. That is to say, if the design principles of a peer-to-peer based SOA were carried over into the design of a governance or management structure, the outcome would be interesting, to say the least.
For most people, it is difficult to even conceive of an organisation that is not hierarchical or centrally controlled. The architecture of the DBE technology has proved helpful in this sense because it has created a certain way of thinking. As with other SOAs, the DBE architecture places emphasis on creating meta-models, as opposed to centralised reference models. This in turn has created an emphasis on diversity and the idea that there is more than one way of achieving the same end.
Could the same design philosophy be applied to governance? What would this mean? I guess it would mean encouraging multiple governance models, with an emphasis on ensuring lightweight mechanisms to ensure good inter-communication between models.
I'm aware that I’ve taken SOA as a metaphor here and that there’s a danger in extending metaphors too far. I’m also aware that there's a limit to how far you can talk about technology and humans in the same way. Perhaps technology and management structures are easier to compare. At their worst, both are about limitation and control and at their best, both are enabling and focused on creating opportunities for success."
Welcome to SOA Governance
This blog is exclusively created to discuss SOA Governance and related issues.
Digital Business Ecosystem Project is one of the largest open source projects funded by European Union. The main objective is to develop an open source Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to enable Small & Medium Software Developers (SME) to offer innovative software services, developed rapidly and at low costs. The architecture will enable the search & discovery and consumption of both software and real world services.
The key elements of DBE architecture are:
- Service Factory - DBE Studio comprising of Business Modelling Language (BML) Authoring Tool and Wizard, BML Editor
- Execution Environment - Semantic Registry and ServENT
- Evolutionary Environment - Service Recommender and Fitness Landscape
- Service Proxy - Technical architecture based on JINI
The pilot DBE architecture is being implemented in three regions of Europe: Aragon, Spain, Tampere, Finland and West Midlands, United Kingdom.
