Introduction

A ‘Body of Knowledge’ or BOK is a repository of information containing the sum total of all documented expert knowledge of a profession. The development of a BOK is a significant stage in the maturity of a profession as it represents a broad consensus regarding the profession itself and the range of knowledge, skills, and methods that should be mastered by practitioners in the field.

A BOK defines the profession and the core competencies shared by the profession. It defines what we know and what we do with that knowledge.
The USMBOK codifies and defines service management as a system.

The Universal Service Management Body of Knowledge (USMBOKâ„¢) is derived from published literature and the accumulated experiences of practitioners in the service management profession. It continues to evolve as the profession evolves, through open dialog and representation.

The USMBOK is a ‘living’ reference for, and of the profession. It is available in two forms, via this web site as a summary, and in a much more detailed and comprehensive published form - the GUIDE to the USMBOK.

Quick Links
Large Map of USMBOK
Best Practice Statement Library
Key Performance Measure Library

Source:http://www.usmbok.org/index.html

There are at least four international bodies currently developing standards around SOA - OASIS, OMG, Open Group and W3C, plus some important national bodies (US Federal Government, DoD, MOD).

The key standards bodies have several relevant artefacts.

- The OASIS SOA Reference Model TC has approved an SOA reference model – OASIS-RM.

- The Open Group is working on an SOA reference architecture and has published an SOA Ontology.

- The OMG has recently released a draft specification of SoaML, the SOA Modeling Language, a UML profile previously UPMS.

The DoD and MoD are looking to use UPDM (UML Profile for DoDAF and MoDAF) from OMG. This profile is relatively close to SoaML and shows that these three groups seem to be coming closer together. This is likely due to the fact that DoD/MoD needs to use standard tools to do their modelling and the OMG is the organization that develops the specs used by most of those tools. The Open Group have based their Ontology on the OASIS-RM. However beyond this it is hard to see much convergence between the bodies.

In addition to lack of convergence between the bodies, it is also obvious that there is widespread inconsistency between parallel groups within standards organizations. As ever multiple, incomplete standards is nothing new. As “users or advisors” we have to assess what value each candidate standard brings and whether it is fit for purpose.

In the context of SOA there are several considerations:

What value do (specific) standards bring? Common vocabulary, high quality, reusable concepts, standard artefacts that can be both reused and shared?
And conversely what is the cost of inconsistency?
And crucially is the standard providing the right level of detail in a manner that supports practical use?
CBDI has pioneered many aspects of SOA standards. The CBDI Frameworks, meta model and UML profile pre-date the work of the standards bodies working on defining SOA structural standards. The CBDI frameworks have been made widely available; the CBDI SAE Meta model and related UML Profile have thousands of downloads and are widely used. Some industry groups have based their work on it. (Notably HL7). Many CBDI Forum members have used the SAE meta model as a basis for their asset management schemas, and the UML Profile as a basis for SOA architecture and design deliverable formats.

For CBDI and our Forum member users the question is how do the CBDI models compare and should they move to adopt one or more emerging standards and when?

CBDI SAE is an SOA methodology which provides considerable depth in practice guidance based on the rigorous underlying meta model. The OASIS-RM is a conceptual model of SOA and there is significant alignment between the CBDI work and OASIS-RM. However CBDI has focused it’s efforts differently to OASIS – The CBDI Meta Model is not purely a conceptual model, rather it is a working level, detailed meta type model that provides the basis for life cycle meta data that will be managed in registries and repositories. In contrast the OASIS-RM and Open Group concept models provide either no or limited cardinality or optionality rules, and are therefore open to interpretation, leading to inconsistencies in implementation.

CBDI is monitoring the work of OASIS-RM and may a) contribute to certain areas and b) consider alignment of the CBDI meta model as appropriate.

CBDI is also monitoring the work of the Open Group and plans to assess potential for alignment when the current SOA work is published. The Open Group SOA Ontology is a derivation of the OASIS-RM, and is a similar concept level model. We have discussed with the Open Group the possibility of donating the CBDI Meta Model as a way to deliver further detail.

CBDI has supported and contributed to the UPMS work, now renamed SoaML. There is significant alignment between key areas of the CBDI meta model and UPMS. The SoaML is somewhat more comparable to the CBDI models insofar as it is fully detailed. Where it diverges is that the SoaML is a UML profile – and therefore its purpose is to support tool design; the CBDI models provide richer metadata whereas SoaML simply provides a means to represent the basic elements in a model.

You may well ask the question, so what’s the difference between the SAE UML Profile and the SoaML? First the SAE Profile is broader in coverage that the SoaML – it spans the entire service life cycle; we would be the first to say, the leaf node detail is not necessarily fully consistent and detailed, but that’s the intent, whereas SoaML is focused purely on the service modeling domain. Second the SAE Profile supports the SAE methodology.

For end users the question is how these various standards should be used. The conceptual models (OASIS-RM and the Open Group Ontology) are useful in providing conceptual consistency. But they do not provide the necessary detail that informs repository and deliverable design. In contrast the SAE meta model and UML Profile are being widely used to define asset schemas and deliverables, and the SoaML will of course be used by tool vendors to develop same.

We are currently engaged in a detailed assessment of the SoaML and SAE profile and anticipate we will report in February. Following this we will canvas our Forum members’ opinion on the level of convergence that is desirable.

To summarize, it seems to us that higher level conceptual standards have their place while the industry is learning. But as the industry and its customers demand production strength support, the requirement is for standards that guide deliverable creation and tooling. This has been the objective guiding CBDI work for some years, and while we see some merit in alignment with the higher level conceptual models, we believe alignment with SoaML is a priority because of its comparable rigour. The levels of inconsistency observed in the purely conceptual models will be extremely difficult to resolve at that level. For that reason we believe the standards will evolve from the CBDI SAE and OMG SoaML models because they are at the level users will require.

The CBDI models are organized into packages because the breadth of SOA clearly indicates multiple domains. It seems likely that standards will evolve at different rates in each of the domains. Alignment around SoaML is clearly going to happen in the Modeling domain. We envisage a plug and play approach where different standards bodies will develop strengths in different domains. In this process CBDI will continue to influence events and to provide a detailed Business Type Model “view” that helps real users make sense of it all.

Finally, we can all see the Web services standards were hugely successful because IBM and Microsoft drove the process. Similarly today we note IBM is a big supporter of the OMG, and specifically SoaML, and significantly Microsoft joined the OMG last September.

Notes:

- This discussion is focused on SOA Concept standards. I will return to the topic of framework standards in due course.

- The comparison report between SoaML and SAE is planned for the February CBDI Journal.

POSTED BY DAVID SPROTT AT 3:58 AM
LABELS: OASIS-RM, SOA STANDARDS, SOAML

Source:http://davidsprottsblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/in-first-half-of-this-decade-there-was.html

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2009 – The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium focused on open standards and global interoperability within and between enterprises, today announced the immediate availability of The SOA Source Book, a new book that addresses service-oriented architecture (SOA) from a perspective of how enterprise architects can use the service principle to deliver unified business and technical architectures for their organizations. Written in conjunction with members of The Open Group’s SOA Work Group by Dr. Chris Harding, forum director of the SOA Work Group, the book approaches SOA from a practical standpoint, offering a pragmatic approach for creating service-oriented enterprise architectures.

The SOA Source Book is a direct result of the work coming out of the SOA Work Group since 2005. It is based on the practical experience that SOA Work Group participants have had with SOA as enterprise architects ‘in the trenches,’ and on the concepts and models abstracted from that experience and developed through the Work Group’s meetings and discussions. Like TOGAF™, this book aspires to provide systemized common-sense. It is a resource that enterprise architects can put to practical use to help their organizations achieve their business goals through SOA.

“Although there has been much hype surrounding the concept of SOA within the IT industry, many of the problems and disillusionments surrounding SOA have been a direct result of service-orientation not being addressed from an architectural perspective,” said Dr. Chris Harding, forum director, SOA Work Group, The Open Group. “Service principles are not losing ground within the realm of IT as many have reported; rather, they are becoming increasingly important as enterprise architecture evolves to address industry ecosystems and the advent of cloud computing. Despite much being written to address the design and programming aspects of SOA, The Open Group is currently one of the few organizations that addresses the architectural aspects of configuring an enterprise’s business and technical systems to generate direct business value.”

Key themes covered within the book include the following:

* SOA and Enterprise Architecture
* How to evaluate SOA features in business terms
* SOA Reference Materials
* TOGAF for SOA
* SOA Governance

The SOA Source Book is available as hardcopy from The Open Group and Van Haren Publishing and is also available on the web at http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-book/. The hardcopy book retails for $40 in the U.S., £28 in the United Kingdom or for €29.95 in Europe.

About the SOA Work Group

The SOA Work Group is a work group of The Open Group’s Customer Council and Supplier Council. Its mission is to develop and foster common understanding of SOA in order to facilitate alignment between the business and information technology communities. The Work Group carries out its mission by conducting a work program to produce definitions, analyses, recommendations, reference models, and standards to assist business and information technology professionals within and outside of the Open Group to understand and adopt SOA. In addition, it produces the SOA Source Book, which is a collection of source material for use by enterprise architects working with Service-Oriented Architecture, derived from the work of the project teams. Further information about The SOA Work Group can be found at http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa/.

About The Open Group

The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral consortium, which drives the creation of Boundaryless Information Flow™ that will enable access to integrated information within and between enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group works with customers, suppliers, consortia and other standard bodies. Its role is to capture, understand and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies and share best practices; to facilitate interoperability, develop consensus, and evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies; to offer a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia; and to operate the industry’s premier certification service. Further information on The Open Group can be found at http://www.opengroup.org.

Note to Editors: Boundaryless Information Flow and TOGAF are trademarks of The Open Group. All other company, brand and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Media contact:
Bill Bourdon
Bateman Group for The Open Group
00-1- 415-602-1491
opengroup@bateman-group.com

The OASIS Semantic Execution Environment TC has recently approved the
following specification as a Committee Draft and approved the package for
public review:

Reference Ontology for Semantic Service Oriented Architectures Version 1.0

The public review starts today, 9 December 2008, and ends 7 February 2009.
This is an open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from
potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for
the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of OASIS work. Please
feel free to distribute this announcement within your organization and to
other appropriate mail lists.

More non-normative information about the specification and the technical
committee may be found at the public home page of the TC at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=semantic-ex.
Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the
OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be located via the button marked “Send A
Comment” at the top of that page, or directly at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=semantic-e
x.

Submitted comments (for this work as well as other works of that TC) are
publicly archived and can be viewed at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/semantic-ex-comment/. All comments
submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures
that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the
obligations of the TC members.

The specification document and related files are available here:

Editable Source:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/semantic-ex/ro-soa/v1.0/pr01/see-rosoa-v1.0-pr01.
doc

PDF:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/semantic-ex/ro-soa/v1.0/pr01/see-rosoa-v1.0-pr01.
pdf

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/semantic-ex/ro-soa/v1.0/pr01/see-rosoa-v1.0-pr01.
html

Schema:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/semantic-ex/ro-soa/v1.0/pr01/see-rosoa-v1.0.wsml

OASIS and the Semantic Execution Environment TC welcome your comments.

—————————————————
Mary P McRae
Director, Technical Committee Administration
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
web: www.oasis-open.org
phone: 1.603.232.9090

Source : http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200812/msg00001.html

PhD Thesis Defense

Summer 2008
Dear Friends of ZIFA,

Thank you so much for your many years of support and interest in The Zachman Frameworkâ„¢. I have had the pleasure to meet many of you personally at seminars and conferences, and I appreciate your contributions to my understanding of Enterprise Architecture. By making sure you are registered on my ZachmanInternational.com website, you will be assured of continuing contact with me.

I wanted to take an opportunity to make some significant new announcements about Zachman International and what you can expect from me in the future.

As many of you know, ZIFA was an informal collaboration between my company Zachman International and Sam Holcman of Pinnacle Business Group. I provided the theoretical basis and evangelism for Enterprise Architecture and Sam provided the marketing, operations and his planning methodology. Sam has since moved on to a new organization, EACOE, presumably to focus on training and marketing his Enterprise Architecture planning methodology. Sam has recommended, and I have agreed, that we dissolve ZIFA at the end of the current calendar year, 2008. I appreciate Sam’s contributions toward advancing the visibility of Enterprise Architecture and I wish him well in his new endeavor.

As CEO of Zachman International, I will continue my Enterprise Architecture talks worldwide, while expanding the “Zachman Certifiedâ„¢” deployment. In order to consolidate the authorized framework materials, schedules, and use of the Zachmanâ„¢ brand, I have asked my son, John P. Zachman, to bring his decade and a half of marketing experience and become the Vice President of Marketing at Zachman International.

Stan Locke will continue to be Managing Director and President of Zachman Framework Associates, relating the client implementation practice to the classification theory through standards development, elaboration and sample models. David Kingston will become the Vice President of Customer Support Systems responsible for systems operations in Toronto which handles all our business transactions, security and ecommerce facilities. Each of us is available via our web site or toll-free number if you have any questions. We are expecting a significant number of other folks to be joining us over the next year, but the aforementioned people here will be the principal contacts, at least for the present.

Now… I am delighted to announce that there is a new look and much more content at my authoritative website: ZachmanInternational.com.

We are integrating all of the authorized framework materials, schedules and Zachmanâ„¢ information into this site. Also, not only have we increased the content, organization and timeliness over the previous ZIFA site, but most importantly, the site ownership and content are completely under my authorization and control. In addition, our Toronto team has significantly upgraded our capacity and network resilience while at the same time implementing proper web security for all business you conduct with us. Over time, this site will continue to act as the portal to the several new Zachman initiatives now underway.

I encourage you to visit the new ZachmanInternational.com where you can:

* Register
o for our iPod Touch® Give-away! (even if you are already registered on the website).
o for access to the new Enterprise Standards
o to see or print the new Enterprise Framework2 graphic.
* Review
o my own ‘wikipedia’ concise definition of The Zachman Frameworkâ„¢.
o the details of “Zachman Certifiedâ„¢” requirements for enterprise architects, methodologies and tools.
o current and popular articles and reference material.
o Frequently Asked Questions that I personally have answered.
o timely announcements and press releases.
* Purchase our support products (requires registration)
o Various editions of my eBook.
o any of the new Zachman Framework2â„¢ posters.
o the new Framework2 model kits.
o An annual subscription to access the MetaFrameworks research work.
* See our
o scheduled conference appearances.
o MasterClass course schedule.
o Refresher course schedule.
o Request for in-house seminars, executive briefings.

Finally, I am very sensitive about using the Friends of ZIFA mailing list to distribute information about an organization other than ZIFA, even by myself, without your specific authorization. So, as ZIFA winds down and if you are interested in a continuing relationship with me and information on The Zachman Frameworkâ„¢ and Enterprise Architecture in general, please REGISTER to have access to all of the above mentioned material. I personally assure you that your new contact information with me will only be used to maintain my contact with you and your access to Zachmanâ„¢ materials.

(If you wish that we maintain contact with you and you do not have the time required to register now, click this link and in 4 seconds we will keep your email address on file at Zachman International.)

Thank you so much for your interest in the past and I hope you will continue your interest in The Zachman Frameworkâ„¢ and Enterprise Architecture in the future.

Sincerely,

John A. Zachman
CEO, ZIFA
CEO, Zachman International

If you wish to unsubscribe , click the link and I will have your name removed from this list.

© Zachman International. All rights reserved.

What is event processing and how could it make a difference? Here is one example of where it could take us: Scientists are talking about the possibility of an in-body network that could detect heart attacks or diabetic collapses and alert emergency services.

A typical company deals with millions, if not billions, of events in a single day, and most are still handled manually, by people

Interesting idea. But then the article goes on to suggest that the same technology could be used to monitor whether patients are taking their medicines. “A pill dispenser would send an automatic reminder and, if the pills were not taken within a certain time, an alarm would sound and a message would be sent to the patient’s family or caregivers.”

So we have the need-to-have, lifesaving value of event processing, and the intrusive, nagging aspect. Now, apply this kind of scenario with a business. That is, if the ongoing health of the business is monitored and maintained with intelligent technology, serious issues could be headed off either by alerting decision makers before things happened, or even in an automated fashion. But is it possible to have too much processing of events that aren’t as critical, and merely drive staff nuts?

Of course, the challenge is that businesses require more than taking a few pills each day to keep problems in check. And note that the pill-nagging system still requires human intervention at the end of the process. A typical company deals with millions, if not billions, of events in a single day, and most, if not all, of these events are still handled manually, by people. It’s obviously not an efficient and competitive way to do things, and the more you can automate, the better. But how badly is it needed?

Gartner VP Roy Schulte recently made a compelling case for increased complex event processing in an online presentation delivered as part of ebizQ’s recent Event Processing virtual conference (registration required). “At any one second, a large company has on its network anywhere from 10,000 to 10 billion business events,” Roy explained. “At the low end, that’s almost a billion events per day — at the high end, that’s almost a trillion events per day.”

The question is, which of these billions of events need to be captured and automated?

A little aside here: The ante on all these enterprise events in play is definitely rising. In my last post, I quoted Tibco’s CEO Vivek Ranadivé, who discussed a typical bank having 100 million events a month to be managed. One reader made this observation about this number, which could be way higher, and therefore really drive up scalability requirements:

“100 million a month is hardly a large bank. Besides, most of these events will be transactions that are typically still processed in batch, resulting in peak loads of millions transactions per hour. If all these transactions can be considered events, that will result in peaks up to 1000 events per second. Considering the idea in your post that in the event driven era the main goal is to share the information, one should expect that one event will result in a few processing actions per event. So the hardware you will need for this will be impressive.”

Schulte also stressed that a lot of work — and perhaps a lot of purchases — lay ahead before organizations can embark on an effective event processing path. Most of these events are not captured or automated in enterprises – the challenge is that most of the stovepiped and legacy applications that power enterprises are not yet event driven, Schulte said.

The question is, then, does everything need to be tied into complex event processing? As with real time, there may be some functions and some industries that need it more than others. Many organizations can plod along with manual responses where there isn’t an impact on the competitiveness of the business. But we’re gradually getting there. The growing array of sensors, such as RFID tags, combined with front-end systems such as business activity monitoring (BAM) dashboards, with service-oriented middleware in between, make complex event processing a reality with today’s technology, Schulte points out.

However, where complex event driven processing is occurring on a well-integrated enterprise scale, the results have been demonstrable and promising, Schulte said.

* In airline operations, “information from hundreds of sources, including sensors on board the aircraft, information coming in from the FAA, and information coming in from standard systems is sent to the ‘enterprise nervous system,’ and is temporarily stored in event databases. It helps to create the data, the outgoing alerts and notifications that is sent to hundreds of applications on the consuming side…. Information helps the fueling and maintenance management applications to change their schedules and so forth. By using an event based system, the turnaround time of each plane can be shortened… Fewer airplanes are needed to handle the same schedule.”
* In supply chain management systems, embedded complex event processing logic “consolidates event data that is coming in through various channels such as through email and Web services. Supply chain management system can answers questions like, ‘where are the goods,’ ‘when are they are going to arrive,’ and so forth. The events are persisted in an event database made available to customers and suppliers.”

There’s a good case to be made for completely automating the ability to capture and make decisions on multiple event streams coming into the core business systems, Schulte says. “For example, you can have a complex event that says, ‘this mornings sales were 30% above our daily average.’ That of course is much easier to digest and act on than sending a person 500 detailed sales records, and making the person compute what happened that day manually.”

“The value of complex event processing, overall, can be summarized as improving situation awareness,” Schulte said. “Simply put, that is just knowing what is going on, so you can figure out what to do.” The benefits of complex event processing, Schulte said, include better decision quality, faster response times, reduced information glut, and reduced costs.”

Complex event processing is the ability to act, in real time, on multiple streams of event data flowing in from different parts of the enterprise. Schulte defined a business event as a “meaningful change in a state that is something that is relevant to the business. Examples include depositing or withdrawing money from a bank, submitting a purchase order, or hiring an employee.”

There is also a second term, “event object,” that describes how the event is packaged for processing, typically as an XML document these days. “We have to record events using event objects so computers can receive them and do computations on those events,” Schulte said.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1102

See the charter for more information.

* News
* Deliverables
* Meetings
* Minutes
* About the Emergency Information Interoperability Framework XG

W3C Advisory Committee Representatives may join this XG on behalf of their organizations by completing this online form. Non-Members may join W3C or ask the Chair of an Incubator Group to participate as an Invited Expert, subject to W3C’s policy for approval of Invited Experts.

Participants are automatically subscribed to the Member list when they join the group. Participants should also subscribe to the public list. Non-Participants may also subscribe. Please read more about W3C mailing list and archive usage.
News
Deliverables
Meetings
Minutes
About the Emergency Information Interoperability Framework XG

Source:http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/eiif/

Swatchai Kriengkraipet presents:-
Google Maps-API Application for Digitizing

Click here Experience the excellent mash-up !

Source: http://lecturer.eng.chula.ac.th/fsvskk/gglmap2/gmad-v2x.html

Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)
There’s a (relatively) new buzzword (buzzphrase?) gaining popularity, Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).

EDA is a technique for integrating applications where an emitter posts an announcement of an event and handlers receive notification of it. The announcements are transmitted as event messages. Often the event messages are transmitted using one or more publish/subscribe channels–where handlers register interest by subscribing to …….

What are some examples of how to use an EDA?

An obvious question is: How does EDA relate to SOA and ESBs?

I also discuss EDA in developerWorks Interview with Bobby Woolf.

For more info:

Event Driven Architecture (Wikipedia)
“Event-driven architecture poised for wide adoption” (Computerworld)
“Primer: Event-Driven Architecture” (eWeek)
“Combining Service-Oriented Architecture and Event-Driven Architecture using an Enterprise Service Bus” (Jean-Louis Maréchaux of IBM)
“TechEd 2005 Europe: Event-Driven Architectures” (Gregor Hohpe)
“Programming Without a Call Stack - Event-driven Architectures” (Gregor Hohpe)
“The Growing Role of Events in Enterprise Applications” (Roy W. Schulte of Gartner)
“Event-Driven Applications: Where they Apply and How they are Built” (K. Mani Chandy)