The Working Group has developed the SOA Source Book – a collection of
source material for use by enterprise architects working with SOA that
gives a snapshot of its conclusions up to the end of 2008. Some final
changes to this book were agreed during the conference, making it ready
for publication.
A session of the Working Group meeting was devoted to presenting and
reviewing the Source Book. Other sessions progressed work on the SOA
Governance Framework and the SOA Reference Architecture that the Working
Group is producing, discussed the overall state of SOA, reviewed the
results of the SOA Summit meeting that was held on Wednesday, and considered the relation of SOA to the overall
architectural work of The Open Group. In addition, a meeting between SOA
Working Group officers and members of the SOA Japan Working Group
discussed co-ordination of SOA work in English-speaking countries and
Japan.
The SOA Governance project team had produced a draft of the SOA
Governance Framework that was substantially complete. (The Source Book
contains an introduction to this Framework.) The meeting reviewed this
draft in detail and agreed on a number of improvements.
The SOA Source Book contains Reference Architecture sections that
describe conceptual building blocks, a high-level perspective, some
detailed building blocks, and supporting infrastructure. The Reference
Architecture project team is working on a complete set of detailed
building blocks to add to this, and on a Usage Guide. The meeting
discussed a substantial number of building blocks and a small practical
example illustrating the use of the Reference Architecture.
The discussion of the state of SOA took place in the context of a
recent analyst's report of "the death of SOA". The main
conclusion is summed up by the words "much exaggerated". SOA
is more difficult for enterprises than traditional architectural styles.
Some enterprises have not understood how to use it (believing, perhaps,
that SOA just means giving applications web-service interfaces), and
have given up trying. But enough enterprises have used SOA well, and
gained benefit from it, for the SOA style to flourish.
The SOA Summit meeting on the Wednesday of the conference included
participants in OASIS and OMG activities, as well as members of
The Open Group.
It agreed on the value of harmonizing the approaches to SOA of these
bodies. The SOA Working Group meeting the following day reviewed the
conclusions of the summit meeting, and agreed on specific actions to be
taken by the Working Group.
The San Diego conference marked a major milestone for The Open Group
– the launch of Version 9 of The Open Group Architecture Framework
(TOGAF).
The SOA Working Group discussed SOA in relation to TOGAF, made a
presentation to the Architecture Forum that described the current state
of its work program, and discussed with the Architecture Forum the SOA
component of TOGAF 9 and the wider implications of its work on SOA
Governance.
The SOA Japan Working Group was formed in May 2008 to promote and
support SOA in Japan. The main deliverables of the SOA Working Group are
generally not yet sufficiently developed for the SOA Japan Working Group
to use them, but the SOA Source Book can be an excellent initial input
to its work. The first output of the SOA Japan Working Group will be an
Executive's Guide to SOA, giving a high-level description of SOA in the
Japanese context.
