Not only in the recent Forrester Research study on the subject to calculate the standard 115 associated with the SOA and WebServices, and it found that only confirmed what vendors support which standards almost impossible. But the CIO to meet the business needs to constantly promote the SOA project. General Motors of the IT architecture and standards chief architect and director of Hong Zhang, constantly advancing the SOA in the work of balancing the plight of the standard has been for years.
Zhang said that many of the standards on the SOA is a good thing. "This indicates that the extensive use of the software industry is moving in SOA direction," he said. "The challenge is not there a common, consistent framework to guide the structure of the evolution of these standards, improved and integrated. Many standards are not mature."
Before these standards mature, CIO how to wading the beach mud then? Technology officials and industry experts give this advice: closely monitor the development of standards and efforts to ensure your choice is open, but must not delay critical SOA projects start. Some strategies can help you avoid falling into the standard dilemma.
First of all, when you do your SOA planning, you can create a list of key criteria, not a comprehensive list of criteria. Forrester Research analyst Randy Heffner said, for example, such as SOAP and WSDL standards have been widely adopted, including standards such as WS-Security will be widely adopted. However, some other high-quality services need to build and operate the WebServices norms - such as management, trading and advanced safety standards - just ripe for the technology adopters with the spirit of adventure, he said.
For SOA emerged and WebServices standards, Heffner said, some of CIO should note the following: SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 or 1.1, UDDI 3.0.2, WS-Security 1.0 or 1.1, WS-BPEL 2.0, BPMN, WSRP 1.0, XML Schema 1.0, XSLT 1.0, XPath 1.0, XQuery 1.0, XML Signature and XML Encryption.
CIO should support standards-based SOA, rather than the local agreement, Heffner said, "but not for just any application using the standard must be at the expense of quality of service (quality of service, abbreviated QoS)." If an application must have a ratio of WebServices can provide higher QoS, "so do technical modifications, these modifications can be maintained and the emergence of standardized design model closely," he said. CIO is necessary to know which vendors support which standards? "Do not fully understand," Heffner said. "But the need to make the major decisions of the software infrastructure vendors CIO candidate should master the current and future support for SOA and WebServices specification chart." You also need to understand your company's plan now, he said. Otherwise, you may not risk investing in long-term business goals to meet the organization's SOA strategy or technology.
Many organizations will find a temporary solution - such as middleware - to overcome the difficulties of the lack of mature standards. "From the CIO's point of view, they are risking a lot of pressure to a middleware platform used to fill the lack of standards, but a certain degree, it would not lock them into it," Jim Stogdill said that he SOA project is to help customers start the defense and energy consulting firm Gestalt LLC of the CTO.
But the important thing is not to spend too much of a middleware vendor, "because it would bring too much after the conversion of a split," he said.
Stogdill proposed organization adhere to commonly used standards such as SOAP and WSDL, "and pay attention to your business applications that provide services to manufacturers: Then through the use of non-interference in the middleware interface of these services integrated with business applications.
Talked about the story of General Motors in its early attempts to learn to identify SOA for the company trying to achieve what the standard is the most important. In 2000, GM launched its first SOA project, a project called the Northstar, as its global online automotive display service (GM global purchasing power). Northstar goal: the establishment of a global common SOA plan flexible enough to support the dynamic nature of business GM, Zhang said. To achieve this goal, GM designed a framework for the business functions from business processes (business functions to be implemented in order) separated. The company also the physical location of business data using the data from the separate business functions, and the user interface from the business processes, business functions and business data separately, Zhang said.
In 2001, GM successfully deployed in over 40 countries of the Northstar structure. This framework to help GM to achieve a variety of business needs quickly, such as data location to meet regulatory, treaty-based business to change business processes as well as to cultural differences of each country to changes in end-user's software experience, Zhang said.
Since then, the company also other consumer-oriented online services using SOA, including GM's OnStar service, which plans to develop an enterprise-wide strategy and management plan to the internal and external partners in the broad deployment of SOA, Zhang said. GM next generation of SOA as part of the implementation plan, he also assess the latest standards and technologies.
Today on GM, the most important specification is the service that help in cross layer (presentation layer, business process layer, etc.) to standardize the service interface specification. Second most important is that each service layer to help the realization of standardized service norms.
As part of the development enterprise SOA strategy, the company is that it needs around SOA standards identify what is mature, which should be monitored, and that which is mandatory. In these standards, GM concerns WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 as an enterprise-wide interoperability. After that, the company will be able to make a clear decision, which manufacturers and products in its use of SOA projects.
In addition, a SOA adopters, TD Banknorth, has adopted a strategy to give priority to industries recognized in the SOA market leader (eg webMethods) and standards adopted by several key standards organization recognized standard. The bank is using a service-based architecture for application integration web service development framework, according to CIO and Executive Vice President John Petrey said. TD Banknorth in 2004, initially using SOA, the deployment of the webMethods Fabric suite to use the web service to simplify the process of customer address changes.
This is being implemented web service, allowing TD Banknorth branch in the call center agent or employee of the address changes and automatically make these changes take effect in the customer's account. Today, TD Banknorth is planning other SOA project, a service launched for small business loans, and the other is the company's online banking system.
"We realize the greatest benefits of SOA integration solutions across a great space, service reuse," Petrey said. This has resulted in real time, reduce the service development and quality, just less debugging and testing services to create, he said.
By now, TD Banknorth has adopted basic standards around the web service, including XSD, SOAP and WSDL, Petrey said. "The most important criteria is on the WS-I, like strategy, reliability and security, and, in minor extent, address resolution," he said.
The bank only use "areas have been recognized in the SOA market leader in the adoption of standards, and by industry research firm (eg Gartner) that the standard is mature enough", Petrey said. "We have a standard that is more standards bodies, such as W3C and WS-I, recognized," he added.
TD Banknorth has adopted such investigation of the WS-Security and SAML standards such as the company, "and found most of barely qualified," Petrey said. "Logically speaking, these standards as early as a year ago are ready to be adopted, but no one really was designed and information according to their use as a standard. We did not find a successful case."
In the bank in its SOA lessons learned in the adventure: to promote the use of modular, flexible and incremental approach to build the deployment architecture, "the follow-up of features for those who need to adopt the standard reserved for the next placeholder," Petrey said.
In small organizations to manage the middleware, a number of CIO in the absence of special emphasis on the criteria for the implementation of the SOA. Washington, DC's John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, is a medium-sized organizations, using a large number of commercial software products, some of which advance toward SOA, the organization's CIO Alan Levine said.
For example, the center of the enterprise resource planning products, vendors, Lawson, will be transferred to the service structure. Kennedy Center's customer relationship management platform, Tessitura - Impressario developed by industry-related applications, the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Metropolitan Opera - has turned to SOA.
Levine said he was not too concerned about the standards to take steps to implement SOA. "We are focused on creating 'glue' for different functions of SOA business systems in the next match."
Levine said that in order to achieve this objective, the Centre is developing within the middle layer of the solution.
"Our focus is not trying to choose a standard, but do allow back-end system interoperability," Levine said. Of course, the middleware strategy depends on the size of your organization and existing systems. Summarize, your eyes fixed on the prize: a flexible IT organization. Like GM's Zhang said, using the ultimate goal of SOA is "a flexible and of information systems and service environment, business needs can change quickly when re-arranged."
SOA implementation proposal
Early attempts to use your SOA standards to help determine what is most important to your business objectives.
Looking for the successful deployment of SOA standard case. Just because standards have been one year does not mean they have the right full deployment.
If you use middleware to provide an integrated program of temporary absence of the appropriate standard, then be sure not to over-rely on a vendor or product.