Reza,
I think during yesterday's call and the resulting
conversations on the list we are exploring several different topics, which
I think is related to your comments below. I agree that we should have some
standard guidelines (+ templates, classification system, etc.) which we use for
the creation of the adoption blueprints.
However, I do not think we need a repository of
SOA best practices in order to create blueprints. In fact I think that the
reverse might be true. Best practices might start to surface out of the details
of the Adoption blueprints (and resulting real-world implementations).
It is my experience that many best practices would be
implementation specific, with resulting code, models, technology related
implementation information, etc. As an example you could have a best practice of
how to secure Web Services within an app server such as WebLogic. Such a best
practice would be very specific to a certain vendor product and implementation,
which wouldn't fit into the charter of the TC. At the same time it might
be difficult to replicate or reuse the same best practice within another
implementation where a different app server is being
used.
I can also describe various other examples
of quite generic best practices that are removed from physical
implementation, but before exploring these in more detail we should consider the
question; what is a best practice? Before we can decide whether to
include best practices into the TC's work we need to define best practice, the
role it will play, relationship with adoption blueprints, how it will be used
and of what value it is to the larger SOA community.
Theo
From: Reza Shafii [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 13:47
To: John Harby;
; Beack, Theo; ;
; ; Jones, Steve G
Subject:
RE: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed - Best Practices
Shouldn’t a blueprint
creation guideline that gives us a common methodology/notation, classification,
and a repository of best practices (some of which could be just pointers to
existing best practices) precede the creation of individual
blueprints?
Reza
From: John
Harby [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 1:06
PM
To:
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed -
Best Practices
I would be in favor of a repository of best
practices that are not necessarily tied to a single blueprint but can certainly
reference one or more blueprints.
On 1/24/06, Beack, Theo <>
wrote:
If we decide
to include best practices under the general Adoption Blueprint "umbrella",
it would be helpful to understand the relationship between the blueprint and
associated best practices. Immediate questions I have is whether we will create
"one off" best practices related to a specific blueprint or whether we would try
to make them generic enough to be used within other blueprints. If that is the
case, do the best practices deserve to stand on their own and should we create a
classes of best practices that can be reused within Adoption Blueprints (or even
separately).
Theo
From: John
Harby [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006
12:38
To:
Subject: Re: [soa-blueprints] To Proceed -
Best Practices
Possibly although I
think there are loopholes within the charter that would allow us to specify best
practices. Firstly, the Generico blueprint has some treatment of best practices
therefore inclusion and advancement of those is included by this
statement:
Circulate,
improve, maintain and standardize the existing "Generico" blueprint to be
contributed, in the form of a basic Adoption Blueprint.
On 1/24/06, Beack, Theo <> wrote:
Don,
I'm not convinced that we
agreed on the role or place for best practices
as part of the Blueprints TC.
I reviewed the charter of this TC
(
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/soa-blueprints/charter.php) and
it
made no mention of best practices. Not that I think it is a bad
idea.
The notion of creating best practices could be of
value.
However, we need to determine whether this TC will focus it's
efforts on
only creating SOA blueprints (+ anti-patterns) or whether best
practices
will be included in these efforts.
I think one of the
dangers of trying to focus our efforts on best
practices, is that we might
enlarge the scope to the extent that it will
be difficult to focus and get
some real blueprint work done. It is
definitely a topic worth
discussing.
Regards
Theo
-----Original
Message-----
From: Don Flinn [mailto: ]
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006
13:57
To:
Cc:
Subject: Re:
[soa-blueprints] To Proceed
Agreed.
In addition, I believe that
one of the goals that was agreed upon is
developing best practices,
BP. These could be partitioned into the
following categories:
- General BP, which would be applicable to all domains
- Domain Specific
BP, where the domains might be:
- Financial
-
Manufacturing
- Retail
- Professional
services
- Business services (not SOA services)
- Media & Marketing
- Education
-
Government
Each of these could be further subdivided, but too fine a
subdivision,
IMHO, is not in the spirit of a specification. If we
could come up with
best practices at this level we would deliver information
that would be
useful to a broad category of people. We could point
out significant
exceptions or additions for subcategories of the chosen
domains.
Although the primary effort would be to generalize the BP as much as
feasible while still making them useful.
Don
On Mon,
2006-01-23 at 11:49 -0600, wrote:
> To All,
>
>
Here is what I gather from the group as a whole:
>
> 1. Need a
context on what we are doing.
> - 2
cents: A problem statement would be a great start with
audience,
etc...
>
> 2. Need to defining use cases to provide context on the
blueprints
defined
> - 2 cents:
establish a use case document that can be expand on
> this and may have
domain related spin offs
>
> 3. Need to establish what a blueprint
is.
>
> I think everyone should start adding to this list and adding
opinions,
etc...
>
> This may help to create a bit of focus or
strategy.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
>
--
Don
Flinn
President, Flint Security LLC
Tel: 781-856-7230
Fax:
781-631-7693
e-mail:
http://flintsecurity.com
