AT THIS EVENT OUR CONSULTANCY AFFILIATED EPAPHOS TEAMWORK HAD THE HONOUR PARTICIPATING IN.
Using SOA for structured composition of services
Ms Mechthild Rohen (Head of ICT for Government and Public Services Unit of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General) opened the workshop and stated that the purpose of the workshop is to bring people together to discuss ideas and good practices in the area of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). SOA is only a part of the activities that the Unit is currently dealing with, among which are policy, legal and technical as well as research issues related to eGovernment.
The objective of the workshop is to exchange experiences on SOA. Ms Rohen
noted that in her capacity as the chairperson of the eGovernment subgroup of
the i2010 high level group, she has observed that SOA is considered one of the key elements of innovation for many Member States.
According to the Ministerial Declaration adopted in Malmö in November 2009,eGovernment should focus on four policy priorities. These priorities, defined and supported by the Member States, include an overall improvement in terms of the (i) empowerment of citizens and businesses; (ii) the single market; (iii)
efficiency and effectiveness and (iv) pre-conditions supporting achieving the priorities above.
The fourth priority, pre-conditions, includes innovation in administrations,
where SOA is believed to be a key element. Technology is maturing and the
Member States are ready to develop new public services. New architecture
paradigms should be used to make administrations more efficient and effective. Several Member States have already started with the implementation. The EC is planning to look into the possibilities offered by
SOA for eGovernment through pilots and other actions together with the ISA (previously IDABC) Unit of the European Commission's Informatics Directorate-General.
The European Commission is currently in the process of developing an eGovernment action plan for 2011-2015 – based on the Ministerial eGovernment Declaration of Malmö (Nov 2009) - with the intention to include SOA related activites. However, currently not enough experience on implementing SOA exists in Member States. This is also what the workshop is aiming to achieve: to share experiences and knowledge on SOA.
In conclusion, Ms Rohen pointed two questions that this workshop will aim to
address:
1. What is the level of granularity to which it is possible to break down the components of services to build new services?
2. What is the expected economic impact of using SOA? The current economic crisis necessitates the use of efficient and cost effective development and delivery of services. Therefore, the question relates to
the allocation of cost towards developing SOA or migration of services to SOA and the maintenance costs of these services.
In conclusion, Ms Rohen anticipated a fruitful workshop and encouraged speakers and attendees to participate. Following Ms Rohen’s introduction, Mr Pascal Verhoest and Ms Hannele Lahti (ICT for Government and Public Services Unit of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General)
acting as the workshop moderators introduced the morning session and the first presentation of Mr Sobolewski.
Object SOA for Structured composition of services
Mr Michael Sobolewski (Texas Tech University (TTU), US) discussed service-oriented computing in the context of object-oriented (OO) distributed platforms. Mr Sobolewski argued that a platform consists of virtual computer resources, a programming environment allowing for the development of
distributed applications, and an operating system to run user programs and to facilitate the solution of complex user problems. Therefore, in his presentation,Service Protocol-Oriented Architectures are contrasted with Service Object-Oriented Architectures, and a meta-computer platform (SORCER) based on a service object-oriented architecture is described and analysed.
Furthermore, Mr Sobolewski presented a new object-oriented network programming methodology that uses the intuitive metacomputing semantics and the new “triple command” design pattern. Basically, the pattern defines how service objects communicate by sending one another a form of service requests called exertions that encapsulate the triplet: data, operations, and control strategy.
He continued that one of the first OO metacomputer platforms were developed under the sponsorship of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) – the Federated Intelligent Product Environment (FIPER),with funding of $ 21.5 million.
The goal of FIPER is to form a federation of distributed services that provide engineering data, applications, and tools on a network. A highly flexible software architecture had been developed (1999–2003), in which engineering tools like computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE),product data management (PDM), optimisation, cost modelling, etc., act as federating service providers and service requestors.
The “Service-Oriented Computing Environment” (SORCER) builds on top of FIPER to introduce a metacomputing operating system with the necessary system services, including a federated file system, and autonomic resource management to support service-oriented metaprogramming. It provides an
integrated solution for complex metacomputing applications. The SORCER metacomputing environment adds an entirely new layer of abstraction to the practice of service-oriented computing – exertion-oriented (EO) programming with complementary federated method invocation.
The EO programming makes a positive difference in service-oriented programming primarily through a new metaprogramming abstraction as experienced in many service-oriented computing projects including systems deployed at GE Global Research Center, GE Aviation, Air Force Research Lab, and SORCER Lab, TTU.
Following the presentation, Mr Sobolewski provided further technical details on how the SOOA concept operates, as the result of a question from the audience (Mr. Aggelos Charlaftis, Belgium). More specifically, he presented the difference in terminology in the OO paradigm, where the collection of services is abstract and the service definition itself is an interface; services are not provided by servers as in the case of the client-server architecture, but by service providers, who implement the service interface. He also presented the mechanism that allows a service to be requested, a service provider to be identified, and the service result to pass to the service requestor in a distributed environment, where objects are not confined within a computer, but they are released to the network.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
SOURCE EU ICT
Labels: E GOVERNMENT
posted by The visioner @ 11:41 AM
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