The meeting started with an open session that all conference
delegates were invited to attend. In this session, Working Group co-chair
Tony Carrato gave a presentation
on the Working Group and its projects. He was assisted by
leaders and activists in the projects. The presentation was followed by
a brief discussion in which Tony and other Working Group
members answered questions.
This was followed by discussions of the Reference Architecture project, the
SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide project, information
architecture for SOA, the Working Group's forward plans, and
a book on SOA to be developed by The Open Group.
There were no sessions on the Ontologies for SOA project,
which has agreed on and
is preparing its document for publication, or on the Service-Oriented
Infrastructure project, whose team will meet on March 18 and 19.
The SOA Governance
project held a
meeting just before the conference. The SOA and Security
project is a joint project of the Working Group
with the Security Forum;
its meeting is covered in the Security Forum meeting
report.
Prior to the Working Group meeting, there had been an informal
meeting of Japanese conference delegates with the SOA Working Group
co-chairs and Forum Director. This had agreed to try to establish
a Japan SOA Work Group.
The Reference Architecture project is producing
a standard open reference architecture
for SOA. A planning meeting earlier in the week had set the
project direction and agreed to hold an intensive face-to-face
meeting in late February or early March, and possibly to follow this
by a three-day project meeting just before The Open Group conference in April.
This session reviewed progress to date and potential available
volunteer effort, and planned the next steps to be taken by the project.
The SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide project is a joint project of the
SOA Working Group with the Architecture
Forum. It is producing a practical guide
for the use of The
Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) to
develop Service-Oriented Architectures. Phases A-D of the TOGAF
Architecture Development Method (ADM) are the main areas where guidance
is needed. The meeting reviewed the project's interim
conclusions on these phases, which had been presented
in the TOGAF and SOA track of the conference by
project co-chair Awel Dico.
The SOA Working Group met jointly with the Semantic Interoperability Working Group to discuss
Information Architecture for SOA. The SI WG had held a Workshop
on Semantics for Enterprise Architecture earlier in the
conference. The results of this workshop were discussed. The
places where the TOGAF ADM should address information architecture
were considered, and a strategy for describing this in the
SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide was agreed.
The session on forward planning reviewed the current state
of all the projects. Although some are behind their original schedules,
they are all progressing. It was agreed that there was no need
to change the Working Group's direction or forward plans
at this point.
The Open Group is planning to produce a book describing an
overall framework for SOA. This will not be a project, it will
simply be a joint work by a group of authors. It will leverage
the work of the SOA Working Group project teams. The aim is to publish it
at the end of 2008. The meeting discussed the authorship of
this book and a draft list of contents.
The next steps on the SOA Japan Work Group will be taken by the Japanese
delegates. The current aim is to hold an initial meeting in May.
The Reference Architecture project will:
- Complete the comparison of its base document with other
reference architectures
- Identify and describe the Architecture Building Blocks
in each of the reference architecture's layers
- Complete the definition of the reference architecture
- Develop a guide to the use of the reference architecture
The Practical Guide project will produce a draft of its Guide
for review by the SOA Working Group and the Architecture Forum.
The Semantic Interoperability Working Group will prepare
a draft description of the steps required in the TOGAF ADM
to address information architecture in the context of SOA.
A meeting will be arranged, possibly in Glasgow just before The Open Group conference that will take place
there in April, to discuss this draft.
There will be further discussions in the SOA Working Group Steering
Committee to agree the contents of the book on SOA. The authors
will then work to produce an initial draft by the April conference,
a draft with significant material in all sections by the July
conference, and a review draft by the October conference.
