INSY 4325

Module 3-1
The SOA Architecture

Dr. James T. C. Teng

West Distinguished Professor
 The Traditional Systems Development Lifecycle

The systems development lifecycle partitions systems development into formal

stages, with each stage requiring completion before the next stage can begin.
 Traditional Systems Development Lifecycle

• Oldest method for building information systems

• Phased approach with formal stages
• Waterfall approach
• Formal division of labor
• Used for building large, complex systems
• Time consuming and expensive to use
• Prototyping, outsourcing, and end user
development are viable alternatives
 Services and
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Service: A software component that
encapsulates a high-level business concept
• It consists of a contract, one or more interfaces,
and an implementation
• SOA: a software architecture that is based on
the key concepts of an application frontend,
service, service repository, and service bus.
Article #7 -- “Your Next IT Strategy,” by: John
Hagel III and John S. Brown, Harvard Business
Review, October, 2001, pp. 105-113.
 Motivation for SOA
• Increase agility of the enterprise
• Key benefits include:
– Reuse
– More efficient development process
– Better fit for business infrastructure
– Cost savings
– Evolutionary approach, risk mitigation, and
independence from technology
 Contract
• Specifies the purpose, functionality,
constraints, and usage of the service. May
also contain a formal interface definition in
a language such as IDL(interactive data
language) or WSDL (Web Services
Description Language)
 Service Repository
• Store information about services
• Allows one to discover services and obtain
information for their use
• Repository can provide information such as
physical location, information about the
provider, contact persons, usage fees,
technical constraints, security levels and
available service levels
 Need for the New IT Architecture
• IS have been “proprietary” -- own hardware, own
applications, big staffs to keep everything up and
running. Has not worked well.
• The ERP systems have advantages, but relatively
inflexible, tend to lock companies into rigid
business processes
• It becomes hard to adapt quickly to changes in
market place, and strategic restructurings, through
acquisitions, divestitures, and partnerships become
difficult to pull off.
 Web services architecture –
three layers of technology
Article #1 -- “Your Next IT Strategy,” by: John Hagel III and
John S. Brown, Harvard Business Review
Foundation = software standards
and communication protocols

Middle layer =service grid

Top layer = a diverse array of

application services.
The Web services architecture
 Fundamental Layer
• Software standards (such as XML) and
• Communication protocols (such as SOAP

Make it possible for diverse applications

and organizations to do business together
electronically.
 Middle Layer
Middle layer is the service grid, through which
specialized utilities provide key services and tools’

Four types of utilities operate over the service grid.

1. Shared utilities
2. Transport management utilities
3. Resource knowledge management utilities
4. Service management utilities
 Top Layer
.

• Support day-to-day business activities

and processes- everything from
procurement and supply chain
management to marketing
communications and sales.
 Advantages of Web Services
• By sharing same standards for data description and
communication protocols, applications can talk
freely with other applications, without costly
reprogramming.
• Purchase only the functionality needed when
they are needed, the architecture can reduce
investments in IT assets.
• The architecture will enable connections between
applications - both within and across enterprises
– to be managed automatically.
 Success Story
• Merrill Lynch is leading initiatives to take advantages of Web
services
• Creation of an innovative portfolio analysis system for use by
brokers and selected customers
• Using XML to link systems within Merrill Lynch and from
partners, the new system ties together customer information,
product information and real time market data in a flexible low cost
way.
• Enables brokers and clients to use a variety of devices, including
computers, PDAs, cell phones and conventional phones
• Competitive advantage for sales-people while delivering added
value to customers
 First Guideline; Build on existing systems:
Connect to traditional applications, one at a time.
The existing application is left intact.
• GM developed a new build-to-order manufacturing
and distribution model, generate added revenue and
use its assets much more efficiently.
• GM also to roll out an order-to-delivery application to
shorten the lead time between placing a customer
order and delivering the vehicle.
• The staged approach to change allows GM to shift its
architecture graudally.
 Second Guide Line:
Start at the edge
• Tie to customers or to other companies
• Sales and customer support, procurement and
supply chain management -- where the
limitations of existing IT architectures are
most apparent and onerous.
• Example -- Dell focused its early Web services
initiatives in this area
 Dell Starts at the Edge
• Connecting its assembly operations with suppliers.
• Generates a new manufacturing schedule every two
hours, and publishes these schedules as a Web
service via extranet
• The schedules are in XML format, and can be fed
directly into disparate inventory systems maintained
by suppliers
• So suppliers can deliver to a specific loading dock
and at a specific building.
• Dell has been able to cut its inventory buffers at its
plants from 26 to 30 hours to 3 to 5 hours.
• An early warning system for its supply chain - It
automatically sends out queries on the status of
orders to suppliers, whose own systems
automatically sends out responses.
 Third Guide Line:
Create a shared terminology:
• Once a group of companies with different
internal systems and standards, begins to
collaborate electronically, establishing clear
lines of authority becomes difficult.
• Shared meaning and trust between business
partners must develop more organically
which provides a room for experiment to see
what works and what doesn’t.
 Software for Enterprise Integration

• Legacy systems: replace or integrate?

• Middleware
• Enterprise application integration (EAI) software
• Web services and service-oriented architecture
• XML
• SOAP
• WSDL
• UDDI
• SOA
 Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Versus
Traditional Integration

EAI software (a) uses special middleware that creates a

common platform with which all applications can freely
communicate with each other. EAI requires much less
programming than traditional point-to-point integration
(b).
SOA at Sabre Holdings (in Arlington, TX)
Prior to the Web services implementation in 2005,
Sabre's customers (agencies) had to negotiate a layer of
its communications software to get at the data they were
seeking and then code the data to a specific format to
obtain information.
This multi-step process made it very difficult for
customers to integrate content with their own
applications.
Abacus International (in Singapore, 35% owned by
Sabre) runs 15,000 travel agencies in Asia, had 1 percent
of its bookings online. Now, this has jumped to 11
percent, represent 20 percent of its total volume.
SOA at Sabre Holdings (in Arlington, TX)
Today, Sabre offers more than 50 products and services
to its clients through Web services, including fuel and
inventory management tools for airlines.
The number customers (agencies, airlines, etc.) using
Web services-driven online reservations engines, call
center systems, and other applications has skyrocketed
500 percent since early 2005. Will add 300 new online
customers over the next three years.
 SOA & EAI for Allstate’s New Claims System
• Center of the universe for insurance companies
• Allstate is the most efficient handler of claims
• Half way through the rollout of Next Gen, a $125
million claims processing system. Consistently pays
out the "right" amount to every claimant.
• Based on SOA: Tibco’s EAI software that supports
standard Web service protocols, making data
exchange between systems much easier. One single
application, replacing the dozens they had to log in
and out of at various stages of a claim.

Article #5 -- “Allstate Says New Claims System Puts Customers

In Good Hands,” InformationWeek, April 2007
Process refinement and creation of New Services
• Most importantly, this makes it much easier to create
and alter business processes as needed.
• More easily refine its workflows so that more types of
tasks can be handled by claims processors and don't land
on the desks of more highly paid adjusters.
• Able to create a new service, such as one that
determines the best path to immediate settlement for a
specific type claim, that can be reused for other types of
claims.
• More easily do analysis on claims to make sure there's
even more consistency, identifying cases where there is a
payout amount discrepancy between two seemingly
identical types of claims
 Industry Developments
• IBM announced SOMA (service-oriented
modeling and architecture): a SOA related
methodology in 2004.
• BCM (Business Centric-Methodology) : a
comprehensive approach and proven
techniques that enable SOA and support
enterprise agility and interoperability.
• SAP Enterprise Services Architecture
• The Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards
(OASIS) is examining SOA standards
 SOA and Business Architecture
• SOA as a mechanism for defining business
services and operating models, a business
mapping tool to ensure that the services
created properly represent the business view
and are not just what technologists think the
business services should be.
• Enterprise Business Architecture should
represent the highest architecture. Every
service should be created with the intent to
bring value to the business in some way and
must be traceable back to the business
architecture. (Article #8 & #10)
 What have we learned?
• Problems for traditional IS development
• Needs and motivation for a more adaptive
approach
• Three-layer architecture
• Advantages of SOA
• Three guidelines
• New business architecture