The meeting followed on from the conference plenary, "Spotlight
on SOA", and the SOA stream of the conference, which together gave
three full days of high-quality presentations on topics including:
- Case studies of SOA implementation by major corporations
- Visions for the future of SOA
- Models and frameworks for architecting SOA
- SOA performance modeling and management
- Convergence of SOA and Web 2.0
- SOA and business process implementation
- SOA Governance
- SOA standardization activities
The meeting started with a session on the SOA
Working Group. All conference delegates were encouraged to attend,
and many of those present were new to the group and its
activities. Co-chair Tony Carrato of IBM gave a
presentation and led discussion on the SOA Working Group Status and Plans
that reviewed the group and its activities
in depth.
Steve Bennett of BEA Systems then led a session that discussed
the development of an Open Group Reference Architecture for SOA, covering:
- Definition of what a Reference Architecture is
- Project scope
- Input documents
- Linkages with other groups
The SOA Working Group was joined by The Open Group Security Forum
for a discussion of security issues in a service-oriented architecture.
A number of issues were identified and discussed by the SOA and security experts.
It was agreed that there is a need to:
- Identify and document the issues
- Develop guidelines and statements of best practice
- Collect guidance from the industry
At the Lisbon conference in October, The Open Group Governing Board
had approved the establishment of a technical team to work on an Open Group
Service Integration Maturity Model based on input from IBM.
IBM had then provided a baseline, derived from their own Services Integration Maturity Model.
Andras Szakal of IBM led a session that reviewed this baseline.
The meeting agreed that it is an excellent starting point,
and made a number of comments and recommendations for its further
development within The Open Group.
The SOA Working Group then joined The Open Group Architecture Forum
for discussion of their joint project to develop a Practical Guide to the
Development of SOA using The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
Project leader Dave Hornford presented the
results so far: that the TOGAF Architecture Development is valid for use
on SOA, but that it lacks detailed guidance and supporting materials.
The project aims to develop these, with planned delivery by the July
Open Group Conference in Austin, Texas.
The Working Group's SOA Governance project had met just prior to
the conference, on January 26-28. Mats Gejnevall of Capgemini, co-leader of that project,
gave a review of that meeting, which had agreed on the project definition
and scope, reviewed input material and related standards work, and developed
a work plan to deliver a draft SOA Governance document by the
April Open Group Conference in Paris, France.
Mats then led a discussion on Service-Oriented Infrastructure.
Following input from the SOA Alliance, there had been significant interest within
the Working Group, and it is proposed to form a project to address the topic.
Chris Harding, The Open Group Forum Director for SOA, led a session on
the Working Group's formal SOA ontology. A draft had been developed
that had been "socialized" with the OMG, the US Federal CIO Council Semantic
Interoperability and SOA Communities of Practice, the World-Wide Web Consortium, and OASIS,
and had been presented in the Semantic Interoperability stream of the conference on
Wednesday January 31. The session reviewed comments on the draft, considered some example
instantiations, and discussed further developments and extensions.
The aim is to have a version ready for publication by the July Open Group
Conference
in Austin, Texas.
In its final session, chaired by Tony Carrato, the Working Group reviewed
the results of a very successful conference and meeting, and confirmed its focus
and direction for the future.
