Patent Application
20100250294
The present invention generally describes methods, systems and devices for Technical Feasibility Exploration (TFE) techniques in a service-oriented architecture.
Current Technical Feasibility Exploration (TFE) techniques are designed to focus on application developments, and generally focus on a specific problem and address a potential solution in the context of a specific challenge or problem. More particularly, the focus of TFE is normally on a specific application, and a TFE is performed in the context of a silo'ed application focus, which may involve middleware components, adapters, and other relevant supporting infrastructure components.
A Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment is a business-centric information technology (IT) architectural approach that supports integrating linked and repeatable business tasks or services, services are designed and created leveraging functionality/capability from across applications which can be from same or different business domains. Realization decisions for SOA services that can be re-used across lines of business and channels in a consistent manner are not simple. There are potential risks, especially with respect to performance of a given service as there is interdependency not only upon performance or capabilities of other applications but all upon also the performance of various supporting middleware and infrastructure components. Current TFE techniques are deficient in meeting the needs of service enablement, design and development, within an SOA orientation.
Methods are provided for performing a technical feasibility exploration for a service-oriented architecture. A challenge associated with enabling a service-oriented architecture service is identified, and an impact of the challenge identified and analyzed. A potential solution of the identified challenge is identified as a function of analyzing the impact and analyzed to determine if a new challenge associated with enabling a service-oriented architecture service arises as a function of the potential solution. If determined that a new challenge arises, challenge identifying, challenge impact identifying and analyzing, potential solution identifying and the analyzing is repeated. If analyzing determines that a new challenge does not arise, a potential solution is used as an input during an implementation phase. Further, at least one of said identifying the challenge, identifying and analyzing the impact of the challenge, identifying the potential solution and analyzing the potential solution are performed by a programmable device configured by a logic component.
Some methods further comprise performing challenge identifying, impact of the challenge identifying and analyzing, potential solution identifying and analyzing the potential solution to determine if a new challenge arises as a function of a service-oriented architecture architectural principle, a functional requirement, a nonfunctional requirement and at least one service-oriented architecture aspect selected from the group consisting of a business goal, an architectural decision, a design/architectural pattern, a service dependency, a service choreography, a message specification, a message transformation, a state management, a cost effectiveness, and an existing asset analysis.
Service methods are also provided comprising deploying programmable devices or logic components or applications for performing a technical feasibility exploration for a service-oriented architecture according to the method steps described above, for example by a service provider who offers to implement, deploy, and/or perform functions for others. Still further, articles of manufacture comprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable program in said medium are provided. Such program code comprises instructions which, when executed on a computer system, cause the computer system to perform one or more method and/or process elements described above for performing a technical feasibility exploration for a service-oriented architecture. Moreover, systems, articles and programmable devices are also provided, configured for performing one or more method and/or process elements of the current invention for performing a technical feasibility exploration for a service-oriented architecture, for example as described above.
These and other features of the methods, systems and devices according to the present application will be more readily understood from the following detailed description of the various aspects of the embodiments taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The drawings are not necessarily to scale. The drawings are merely schematic representations, not intended to portray specific parameters of the invention. The drawings are intended to depict only typical embodiments of the invention, and therefore should not be considered as limiting the scope of the invention. In the drawings, like numbering represents like elements.
For convenience, the Detailed Description of the Invention has the following sections:
I. General Description; and
II. Computerized Implementation.
Examples of SOA aspects and governance processes according to the present invention may be found in the following commonly-owned and co-pending U.S. patent applications or issued U.S. patents, the disclosures of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference: “Identifying a Service Oriented Architecture Shared Services Project”, attorney docket no. END920080252US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Evaluating a Service Oriented Architecture Shared Services Project”, attorney docket no. END920080288US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Service Oriented Architecture Shared Service Inception”, attorney docket no. END920080289US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Service Oriented Architecture Shared Services Elaboration”, attorney docket no. END920080290US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Service Oriented Architecture Shared Services Construction”, attorney docket no. END920080291US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Transitioning to Management of a Service Oriented Architecture Shared Service”, attorney docket no. END920080292US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Service Oriented Architecture Shared Service Management”, attorney docket no. END920080293US1, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “Service Oriented Architecture Shared Service Escalation”, attorney docket no. END920080294US1, filed on (to be provided), and was assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “SOA POLICY VERSIONING”, attorney docket no. END920080316US1-IEN106616, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “FRAMEWORK FOR VARIATION ORIENTED ANALYSIS FOR SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE”, attorney docket no. END920080317US1-IEN106617, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “SOA LIFECYCLE GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT”, attorney docket no. END920080319US1-IEN106619, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “ENABLING SOA GOVERNANCE USING A SERVICE LIFECYCLE APPROACH”, attorney docket no. END920080320US1-IEN106620, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “CALIBRATION FRAMEWORK FOR EFFORT ESTIMATION”, attorney docket no. END920080321US1-IEN106621, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “SERVICE PORTFOLIO APPROACH FOR SOA GOVERNANCE”, attorney docket no. END920080386US1-IEN106642, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “SERVICE EVOLUTION APPROACH IN SOA”, attorney docket no. END920080387US1-IEN106643, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “CAPABILITY AND MATURITY-BASED SOA GOVERNANCE”, attorney docket no. END920080388US1-IEN106644, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); “PRIORITIZATION ENABLEMENT FOR SOA GOVERNANCE”, attorney docket no. END920080389US1-IEN106645, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided); and “SOA POLICY ENGINE FRAMEWORK”, attorney docket no. END920080390US1-IEN106646, filed on (to be provided), and assigned application serial no. (to be provided).
Within an SOA environment often a potential solution to a problem may lead to new challenges/new problems. Thus, the SOA-TFE model 40 provides for continuing or additional analysis process until each main and sub-challenge is addressed. More particularly, after the processes of identifying and describing one or more problems or challenges associated with enabling a service-oriented architecture service at 52, identifying and analyzing one or more impacts of the problem(s)/challenge(s) at 54 and responsively identifying one or more potential solutions at 56, at 58 the present invention further analyzes the potential solution(s) to determine if the potential solution causes a new challenge associated with enabling a service-oriented architecture and for any new problems or challenges associated therewith. If analyzing the potential solution(s) results in a determination at 60 that a new problem/challenge does in fact arise from the pending potential solution(s), then the process loops back again through the identifying/describing of problems/challenges at 52, the identifying/analyzing of impacts at 54, the responsively identifying potential solutions at 56, the analyzing potential solutions at 58 and the determining occurrences of new problems/challenges from the potential/proposed solutions at 60 until no further new problems are determined at 60, wherein the TFE is completed at 62 (e.g. by using the one or more potential/proposed solutions as input during an Implementation phase).
The present SOA-TFE model 40 thus helps reduce risks and development time, thereby increasing productivity during an S OA implementation phase. In another aspect, the present invention focuses on services, with key inputs from one or more of the 72 through 94 to the model 40 comprising information gathered during Services Identification and Specification phases of the architectural decisions 80 of an SOA Service Modeling process; in one embodiment, key SOA orientation aspect inputs used for this analysis include business goal modeling 78, existing asset analysis (e.g. for reuse) 94, nonfunctional requirements 76, service choreography (e.g. composition and service flows) 86, service dependencies 84, and state management (e.g. service component specifications) 90.
Analyzing a proposed solution at 58 may further comprise determining what enhancements need to be done to service flows, granularity and specific patterns and other choreography aspects 86 or message specifications 88 in order to meet business goals 78 and nonfunctional requirements 76. The present SOA-TFE model 40 thus helps mitigate risk during a Service Implementation Phase and also provide valuable input as to how to re-factor a service or existing asset to meet a performance requirement. It will also be understood that though the present SOA-TFE model 40 focuses on services, embodiments of the present invention may also be applied to any application development.
Thus is a first iteration or step 102, identified as No. 1 in column 106, the challenge column 108 identifies and explains the nature of a challenge associated with enabling a service which consists of multiple fine grained transactions to an enterprise information system (EIS). In the present example scenario, a middleware has to interact with the EIS multiple times using different messages, presenting a highly-conversational challenge due to fine-grained transactions involving the EIS which use inbound communication mechanisms. This would mean multiple specifications—one for each sub message for each fine grained transaction. The results from these sub messages must be collected and aggregated as the response to the service request. Thus, the impact indicated in the corresponding first step 102 impact column 110 of these fine grained transactions is poor performance due to increased message processing overhead and network traffic, which will also have impact on a response time nonfunctional requirement. In order to identify a potential solution, detailed analysis of existing assets is performed through the SOA-TFE model 40 to understand the business logic and mediation capabilities supported by middleware components. Data collected during identification and specification phases of service modeling provides a source of useful information for this analysis. Thus, the solutions column 112 for the first step 102 shows a potential solution determined for each of the corresponding first step 102 challenges 108: to cache reference data to reduce conversations to backend systems.
However, this solution leads to additional challenges. For instance, although caching of reference data may reduce conversations to back-end system (thereby solving the first step 102 challenge 108), data in the back-end systems may change and if that happens the cached data would be out of sync with the reference data, resulting in a service serving old information. More particularly, analysis of the first step 102 solution 112 (at 58,
Thus, the existence of a new challenge is recognized (at 60,
Using available patterns and best practices, the present example identifies a second step 104 potential solution 112 for this challenge (at 56,
Thus, the processes of the first step 102 and the second step 104 may be repeated until all challenges are resolved, wherein the process moves forward to an implementation phase. For example, in one embodiment, analysis of a current EIS environment may indicate that the second step 104 event-driven mechanism solution 112 is not supported, wherein a further, subsequent third, etc. step exploration/analysis on this newly identified challenge is preformed, etc.; thus, according to the present invention, if there are still open challenges, then it is indicated that the present solution(s) are not technically feasible solution(s), and implementation does not occur until the open challenges are resolved.
A power source 205 is configured to provide operative power to the device 200; examples include battery units 205 and power inputs configured to receive alternating or direct current electrical power, and other appropriate power units 205 will be apparent to one skilled in the art. A communication port or network link/node means (“com port”) 207 is also provided and configured to enable data and other communications as may be appropriate, for example as discussed above.
Referring now to
As shown, the computer system 304 includes a central processing unit (CPU) 312, a memory 316, a bus 320, and input/output (I/O) interfaces 324. Further, the computer system 304 is shown in communication with external I/O devices/resources 328 and storage media and systems 332. In general, the processing unit 312 executes computer program code, such as the code to implement various components of the process and systems, and devices as illustrated in
While executing computer program code, the processing unit 312 can read and/or write data to/from the memory 316, the storage system 332, and/or the I/O interfaces 324. The bus 320 provides a communication link between each of the components in computer system 304. The external devices 328 can comprise any devices (e.g., keyboards, pointing devices, displays, etc.) that enable a user to interact with computer system 304 and/or any devices (e.g., network card, modem, etc.) that enable computer system 304 to communicate with one or more other computing devices.
The computer infrastructure 308 is only illustrative of various types of computer infrastructures for implementing the invention. For example, in one embodiment, computer infrastructure 308 comprises two or more computing devices (e.g., a server cluster) that communicate over a network to perform the various process steps of the invention. Moreover, computer system 304 is only representative of various possible computer systems that can include numerous combinations of hardware.
To this extent, in other embodiments, the computer system 304 can comprise any specific purpose-computing article of manufacture comprising hardware and/or computer program code for performing specific functions, any computing article of manufacture that comprises a combination of specific purpose and general-purpose hardware/software, or the like. In each case, the program code and hardware can be created using standard programming and engineering techniques, respectively. Moreover, the processing unit 312 may comprise a single processing unit, or be distributed across one or more processing units in one or more locations, e.g., on a client and server. Similarly, the memory 316 and/or the storage system 332 can comprise any combination of various types of data storage and/or transmission media that reside at one or more physical locations.
Further, I/O interfaces 324 can comprise any system for exchanging information with one or more of the external device 328. Still further, it is understood that one or more additional components (e.g., system software, math co-processing unit, etc.) not shown in
The storage system 332 can be any type of system (e.g., a database) capable of providing storage for information under the present invention. To this extent, the storage system 332 could include one or more storage devices, such as a magnetic disk drive or an optical disk drive. In another embodiment, the storage system 332 includes data distributed across, for example, a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) or a storage area network (SAN) (not shown). In addition, although not shown, additional components, such as cache memory, communication systems, system software, etc., may be incorporated into computer system 304.
While shown and described herein as a method and a system, it is understood that the invention further provides various alternative embodiments. For example, in one embodiment, the invention provides a computer-readable/useable medium that includes computer program code to enable a computer infrastructure to implement methods, systems and devices according to the present application, for example as illustrated in
It is understood that the terms “computer-readable medium” or “computer useable medium” comprise one or more of any type of physical embodiment of the program code. In particular, the computer-readable/useable medium can comprise program code embodied on one or more portable storage articles of manufacture (e.g., a compact disc, a magnetic disk, a tape, etc.), on one or more data storage portions of a computing device, such as the memory 316 and/or the storage system 332 (e.g., a fixed disk, a read-only memory, a random access memory, a cache memory, etc.), and/or as a data signal (e.g., a propagated signal) traveling over a network (e.g., during a wired/wireless electronic distribution of the program code).
Still yet, computer infrastructure 308 is intended to demonstrate that some or all of the components of implementation according to the present application could be deployed, managed, serviced, etc. by a service provider who offers to implement, deploy, and/or perform the functions of the present invention for others, for example by licensing methods and browser or application server technology to an internet service provider (ISP) or a cellular telephone provider. In one embodiment, the invention may comprise a business method that performs the process steps of the invention on a subscription, advertising, and/or fee basis. Thus, a service provider can create, maintain, support, etc., a computer infrastructure, such as the computer infrastructure 308 that performs the process steps of the present application for one or more customers, and in return the service provider can receive payment from the customer(s) under a subscription and/or fee agreement and/or the service provider can receive payment from the sale of advertising content to one or more third parties.
In still another embodiment, the invention provides a computer-implemented method for enabling the processes, methods and devices according to the present application. In this case, a computer infrastructure, such as computer infrastructure 308, can be provided and one or more systems for performing the process steps of the invention can be obtained (e.g., created, purchased, used, modified, etc.) and deployed to the computer infrastructure. To this extent, the deployment of a system can comprise one or more of: (1) installing program code on a computing device, such as computer system 304, from a computer-readable medium; (2) adding one or more computing devices to the computer infrastructure; and (3) incorporating and/or modifying one or more existing systems of the computer infrastructure to enable the computer infrastructure to perform the process steps of the invention.
As used herein, it is understood that the terms “program code” and “computer program code” are synonymous and mean any expression, in any language, code or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a computing device having an information processing capability to perform a particular function either directly or after either or both of the following: (a) conversion to another language, code or notation; and/or (b) reproduction in a different material form. To this extent, program code can be embodied as one or more of: an application/software program, component software/a library of functions, an operating system, a basic I/O system/driver for a particular computing and/or I/O device, and the like.
Certain examples and elements described in the present specification, including in the claims and as illustrated in the Figures, may be distinguished or otherwise identified from others by unique adjectives (e.g. a “first” element distinguished from another “second” or “third” of a plurality of elements, a “primary” distinguished from a “secondary,” an “another”, etc.) Such identifying adjectives are generally used to reduce confusion or uncertainty, and are not to be construed to limit the claims to any specific illustrated element or embodiment, or to imply any precedence, ordering or ranking of any claim elements, limitations or process steps.
The foregoing description of various aspects of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed, and obviously, many modifications and variations are possible. Such modifications and variations that may be apparent to a person skilled in the art are intended to be included within the scope of the invention as defined by the accompanying claims.
