What is wrong with last-gen EAI?

Customers are tired of having proprietary EAI solutions and want to standardize on the integration mechanism.

The old EAI platforms didn’t do a good job of communicating between each other (Tibco to MQ Series, etc.). Since different businesses picked different vendors, it made it difficult to use these systems to connect independent businesses (or often different business units).

The old EAI platforms were not tuned for ‘long running transactions’

The old EAI platforms didn’t provide ‘compensating transactions’

The old EAI platforms didn’t recognize Web Services / SOAP as a ubiquitous communication device.

The old EAI platforms had proprietary solutions to transformations rather than moving to standards like XSLT.

The old EAI platforms had proprietary solutions for security – they didn’t employ standards like WS-Security for universal security needs.

The old EAI platform all had proprietary solutions for reliability – they didn’t standardize the ‘at-least once, at-most once, in-order, on-time’ delivery functions like is employed in WS-Reliability.

The old EAI platforms had proprietary solutions for node-to-node routing. Thus passing payloads with an itinerary required the vendor solution at each node. Today this may be accomplished by having components that support WS-Routing.

The old EAI platforms focused more on integrating legacy systems than on creating integrated business processes.

The old EAI platforms didn’t have the ability to create abstract versions of a process. Thus the ability to create standardized processes between businesses was nearly impossible. This has been advanced with the BPEL abstract process capabilities.

Customers think that the old EAI price tags are just too expensive.

BPEL4WS moves to OASIS!!!

Infoworld has reported that the control of the BPEL4WS web service orchestration specification has moved control to the OASIS standards body.

"The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) specification is expected to be submitted to Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), Carol Geyer, spokeswoman for OASIS, confirmed.

"We anticipate it will probably be tomorrow and a charter will be submitted tomorrow or maybe Thursday," Geyer said. The proposing companies still are making modifications to the charter for BPEL4WS that they submit to OASIS, she said. "

Perhaps some of the critics claiming too much confusion in the orchestration space will now come around.

Also, I was glad to see OpenStorm mentioned!!

Bob Sutor on Web Service Standards

Taken from, http://news.com.com/2008-1082-995956.html

But is there any one hot-button issue that people can't agree on?The one spot where people are still facing off is on choreography and that really goes to the politics of the standards organizations themselves. But the momentum for standards for Web services has clearly shifted to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). The W3C has decided that it wants to start a group around Web services choreography; IBM doesn't necessarily think that's the right choice or right venue, but we'll see how it works out.

Will IBM abide by the decision?
In what sense?

If they decide on something that's not to IBM's liking, will you be good soldiers and abide by the decision of the group?
Who's the group though? The W3C staff or the 500 member companies? That's where it gets little difficult because if you look at the models of the W3C and OASIS, they are very different. The W3C has a very strong centralized model of control; OASIS is far more decentralized so it doesn't necessarily make any difference what the OASIS staff feels about standards. They are more focused on providing the environment for people to get together. So you have this tension between them.

Process Driven Organization

I'm proud to announce that we are launching a new educational site called the "Process Driven Organization". This site is part of a series of sites Momentum Software is launching to paint a vision for the future of enterprise computing.

A Process Driven Organization treats its business processes as a portfolio of valuable corporate assets. Business Process Management techniques are used to explicitly define and execute processes in a manner that creates significant benefits.

The fundamental shift made by a Process Driven Organization is that business processes are built for agility and they are liberated from the IT applications that support them.

HP & Web Services

"Hewlett-Packard (HP) plans aggressive investments to position itself as the dominant vendor in Web services management. To succeed, HP must execute better than it has done on other software initiatives."

See: http://www4.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=113541

Sun News Letter - Web Services Expo

Taken from, System News for Sun Users, Vol 62 Issue 1

9437: Vaughn Spurlin Reports on the Second Annual Web Services Expo
Event Focuses on Currently Operational Web Services Projects

"In his account of the Second Annual Web Services Expo,sponsored by the Software Development Forum, Vaughn Spurlin reports that the focus was on currently up-and-running Web Services; the huge ROI that well-placed Web Services projects can deliver; the need for a detailed, convincing business plan if obtaining funding is the object; the pall on buying technology simply because it is new and different; and the emergence of SOAP as a four-letter word not to be used in polite company. Spurlin also includes summaries of each of the 14 presentations, among which were:
Intel Chief Strategist, Chris Thomas, stressed the need for "occasionally connected computing" (OCC), which would enable work to continue when no net connection was available. Web-based ordering should download data by subscription, he said, eliminate server lag and use drag and drop to enable completion of forms offline. Reggie Hutcherson, manager of the Technology Evangelism team in the Technology Outreach Group at Sun Microsystems, outlined the phases of Web Services adoption: Web Services over HTTPS (happening now), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Web Services (beginning), and business Web Services --including UBL and ebXML (2004 plus). He said more work is needed in Quality of Service, security and Identity Management and stressed Sun's focus on Java TM 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE TM ), ebXML and UBL, and the Liberty Project. The Sun TM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) provides a deployment mechanism for Web Services, he said.

Finally, Christine Clevenger, SAP VP for Industry Business Unit High Tech, explained her company's new solution, NetWeaver, which she said customers will use to integrate existing multiple SAP installations within their enterprise. Synchronizing master data is the key to interoperability.

P2P & Web Services - - Was I wrong?

Some time back, I wrote an article on, "The Convergence of Peer and Web Services". At the time I was trying to build some software on top of JXTA and realized that what it really needed was web service interfaces. The JXTA team (Sun) was willing to have web service capabilities as add-on's but refused to have it in the core. It was clear to me that this was a failing proposition - my team attempted some things like creating a bridging framework (see Jockey). Jockey was a hack - don't get me wrong - considering the fact that the web service designers were thinking "centrally distributed" (UDDI) while the P2P guys were thinking "resiliency first" it was a happy medium.

I recently had to write some code to parse up WS-Inspection documents and it hit me that WS-Inspection was a first step towards P2P based web services. I was happy that the location of the inspection document was easy to find, easy to parse and physically close to the service it described. Ultimately I think that WS-Inspection was designed correctly - however, it needs complementary specifications to address some additional aspects - like:
- Show me the services that have consumed me lately (a most recently used-by list)
- Show me other endpoints that agree to this contract (a list of same service, but other providers)

Now, some of this is covered in UDDI - and perhaps that is where this stuff will land. However, the UDDI spec seems to be growing and growing and growing. It's growth seems to be more around how to make one big ass, formal UBR. This is good and bad - the requirements for a golden repository with slaves are similar to a peer-to-peer contract repository. Thus, UDDI (although overkill) might just do it.

One of the things that the P2P guys got right (IMHO) is that they realized that finding services (peer or web) isn't always a formal process. In a P2P world, as you bump into servers, you are informed of additional services. In essence, each peer brags about the services it knows about. In the Web Services world this doesn't happen - the only way find a service is by intentionally hitting a UDDI, WS-Inspection or knowing a URL. This sucks. Perhaps it is time to formalize, "My Favorite Web Services".

All in all, I don't think I was wrong - perhaps early. One thing that is clear to me is that it will be web services in the forefront and p2p used as an add-on (e.g., SOAP binding for JXTA, SOAP binding for Jabber, etc.) Then, each of these transport providers will have to provide translation services (translate idl contracts, translate transaction contracts, etc.)

Eventually the concepts between these domains will merge. Now the question is, will it be Graham Glass setting the standard or Microsoft?

E-Week Editorial

I just read the latest e-week editorial:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,985606,00.asp
They comment that SOAP will be challenged because security wasn't built into the 1.2 specification. I'm getting the feeling that the E-Week editorial board isn't familiar with the WS-I security profile work. I also get the feeling that they are still in 1990 land and want a BIG-ASS spec that ties all of this stuff together in a single spec rather than having a building block structure to specifications.

WebMethods White Paper

Web Methods has released a white paper, "An Introduction to Web Service Based Integration (WSBI)":

http://evals.webmethods.com/wmcontent_root/evals/ews/An_Introduction_to_Web_Service-Based_Integration_WSBI.pdf

Let's Dump BPEL and use JavaScript!!!!

HOLY SHIT! O'Toole at Cape Clear thinks we should dump BPEL4WS and use JavaScript instead:

"I asked O'Toole if he expected Cape Clear's customers to proceed blindly with developing Web services that are devoid of any notion of orchestration or transactional state. O'Toole claimed that complicated protocols like the Business Process Execution Language for Web services (BPEL4WS) or the Web services Choreography Interface (WSCI) are extra baggage and that any functionality that those specifications are designed to handle is easily covered by something found in virtually every system: JavaScript (also known as ECMAScript). "

ARE YOU NUTS?

He goes on to say that application servers can go as well. I get the feeling that anything that isn't in his companies product portfolio (yet) isn't worth the while.... very sad.

Not Loosely Coupled

David Chappell makes some sound comments on the fact that loose coupling is poorly defined and that usually it is a bunch of crap:
http://www.davidchappell.com/HTML_email/Opinari_No5_3_03.html

I think the point that David is trying to make is that we need agility with out fragility. That is the essence of loose coupling.

BPEL White Paper

The guys over at Collaxa ran this nice white paper down:
http://tmitwww.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/download/qut_bpel_rep.pdf

Hermes Message Hanlder

I just ran across this free implementation of the ebMS specification:
http://www.freebxml.org/msh.htm

I have no idea how well it works...

I.T.A.A. - Screwing us Again

I try real hard not to post non-service-oriented topics on this blog, but I have to make an exception.

Once again, the group that has positioned itself as the champion of the I.T. professional is hell-bent on screwing the American software engineers. ITAA, has recently been lobbying to make sure that more American labor goes offshore:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,928611,00.asp

If you aren't familiar with this group - keep your eyes open - they find ways at every turn to screw the American I.T. professional. It is really sad.

Choreography a Mess?

Phil Wainewright over at Loosely Coupled is of the opinion that the choreography space is a mess:
http://www.looselycoupled.com/blog/2003_03_16_lc.htm#200027961

I'll have to disagree with Phil on this subject. BPEL4WS won. I'll repeat that, BPEL4WS won - there is no confusion about winners - just confusion about who lost.

I am of the opinion that perhaps the w3c should quit trying to be everything to everyone. This group is over-extended and frankly shouldn't be concerning themselves about business process execution (IMHO). Don't get me wrong, I think they do a great job with low-level technologies like XML and HTML - but this one is probably not in their sweet spot. I really don't understand why they kick started this group after IBM & MS made their announcement and we already had BPML doing world-class work on moving the space forward as a whole.

For the first time ever, the space actually isn't a mess... you just have to dig through the losers.

UDDI Entity Relationship Diagram

Dave Carlson, CTO of Otogenics Corp. did a nice white paper.

The following image is extracted from that paper. Hopefully, you can use them to avoid getting lost in the UDDI data structures like I did...
How do I get the DAMN AccessPoint?? (my thoughts)





This one is a bit easier to read - basically you can see the inquiry paths. The first is the 'browse' path:
find_business ( name_qualifiers ) :: returns a business_key
find_service ( business_key ) :: returns a service_key
find_binding ( service_key )
find_tModel ( name_qualifiers | identifiers | categories )

The Drill Down Pattern allows you to inquire based on a known key. It uses the get_* pattern do send the key as a parameter.
(get_businessDetail --> get_serviceDetail --> get_bindingDetail --> AccessPoint) .... returns...
(businessEntity --> businessService --> bindingTemplate --> tModel)

Best Practices in UDDI

I've been trying to re-organize my UDDI structure, so I went out looking for best practices. Here is what I found:

As published by OASIS:
http://www.uddi.org/pubs/wsdlbestpractices-V1.07-Open-20020521.pdf

Anne Thomas Manes points out some potential issues:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/uddi-spec/200209/msg00027.html

WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing Released

Microsoft & IBM have released the much anticipated specification for performing reliable messaging:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/default.aspx

I'm reading the specs now - will blog on details later.

Trusted Value Chains

John McDowall, CTO of Grand Central Communications does a great job of explaining some of the issues around business-to-business commerce using web services:

http://www.webservices.org/index.php/article/articleview/953/1/24/

Deloitte & Touche Clears Up Web Services!!!

Deloitte & Touche, a well respected Big 5 consulting company paves new ground in clarifying what web services are:



WOW - why didn't I think of that??? :-)