SOA does not support all aspects of the SOA-based implementations by itself. Besides business process modeling, the most important aspect not directly supported by SOA is a guidance in how to map the business process models to the SOA components and capabilities. Federated Enterprise Reference Architecture (FERA) emerged as the leading methodology supporting this guidance.

This article describes FERA-based SOA developed by Semantion. It supports all SOA levels from SOAP message exchanges to the most complex orchestrated collaborative processes. Semantion's SOA specification defines and shapes the way how collaborative (business) processes are modeled, deployed and executed internally and/or externally over the Internet. It also supports standard convergence that enables interoperability between different standards and technologies and at the same time supports the consolidation of standards (Web Services, ebXML, etc.) used in SOA.

FERA

FERA is a reference architecture describing a generic SOA stack required to support any collaborative process. FERA also provides mapping of process models to the technology stack components and their capabilities.

FERA supports integration of process and technology frameworks. These integrated frameworks posses ability to model the process, analyze and simulate it, and then through a series of successive transformations of the model data define a complete deployment architecture and XML files containing required information for the configuration and deployment of the final solution.

Modeling languages and annotations supported by FERA are UML, PSL, VRM and BPMN. Deployment documents are based on the Collaborative Process Information Document (CPID) format of SOA Information Model (SOA-IM).

SOA

FERA-based SOA provides support for the following key aspects in a top-down business process-based approach: business process modeling, document engineering, business process execution, overall architectural integration and standard convergence.

Business process (aka. collaborative process) modeling based on FERA

FERA requires each business process flow to be defined with process characteristics whose combinations uniquely define one of the patterns presented in FERA. Each of the patterns in turn points to the set of deployment elements required for exact configuration of the component stack for run time execution. These FERA patterns support collaborative processes of any type and complexity.

Document engineering based on universal data formatting

Today many systems still "speak" their own data formatting language and expensive translations happening on millions of computers every moment on the Internet. There are three distinctive and main benefits with document engineering:

• Orientation towards standardized content formatting.
• Development of mechanisms that enable content transformations.
• Automatic business (collaborative) documents creation during the both collaborative process modeling (static aspect of collaborative data) and the collaborative process execution (dynamic aspect of the collaborative data).

Business process execution with context and content process management supported by SOA Information Model and SOA Collaboration Semantics

This is the first time that one architectural solution provides complete definition of a collaborative processes information model as well as collaboration semantics. SOA information model and semantics are crucial in providing support for business process modeling with automatic creation of the business process models (using modeling tools) and their deployment and execution on the SOA platforms.

Overall architectural integration with standard-based components

FERA-based SOA provides complete integration of the best available standard components (external and internal collaborations, security, registry and repository, XML-based messaging, universal business data formatting, etc.). This means standard convergence that is a very important factor in the overall standards consolidations that will drastically improve interoperability as one of the most important aspects of SOA.

SOA Virtual Machine

It is important to note that FERA-based SOA provides solutions that do not require business logic coding, including the typical traditional coding or re-coding approach plaguing most software solutions today.

SOA Collaboration Semantics (SOA-CS) and SOA Information Model (SOA-IM) are universal for any collaborative (business) process. They do not have to change from case to case. They are based on collaborative rules capable of supporting collaborative processes of any complexity and type. In general, FERA-based SOA, with its information model and semantics capabilities, is a virtual machine that virtually supports deployment and execution of any collaborative process.

SOA Design and Deployment

SOA design and deployment include the following steps:

• High-level business process modeling
• Detailed modeling of collaborative processes with SOA-IM
• Deployment of SOA documents

These steps are presented in Figure1 - SOA Design and Figure 2 - SOA Deployment.

According to business requirements, SOA business process modeling defines:

• Collaborative process and its collaborative process flows
• Collaborative process roles
• SOA participants (federates) with assigned roles
• Collaborative documents
• Collaborative scenarios

Figure 1: SOA Design

Each SOA supported business process, also referred to as a collaborative process, implements some kind of collaboration. A collaborative process can have one or more collaborative process flows that include activities, decisions and events taking place during the collaboration. Collaborative process roles perform activities and decisions. Collaborative process roles are assigned to SOA participants. A participant can be a user, a service or an agent.

There are two types of documents used in SOA: collaborative documents and SOA documents. Collaborative documents (e.g., invoices, purchase orders, store orders, etc.) are documents that contain information received or generated during the execution of the collaborative processes. SOA documents, on the other hand, are documents that contain information needed to model collaborative processes and support their execution in SOA. SOA documents examples are SOA Collaborative Process Information Document (CPID), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA), etc.

When the SOA business process modeling is completed, the next step is the detailed collaborative process modeling which models and defines all details related to activities, decisions and events in collaborative process flows. This step generates

• The rest of collaborative document formats not defined in the high-level business process modeling step
• SOA documents (CPID, WSDL, CPPA, etc.)

Figure 2: SOA Deployment

The final step is deployment of SOA documents in SOA Federation.

Run-time FERA-based SOA

The main architectural components of FERA-based SOA are: federates, interfaces and SOA Federation.

Each participant involved in the collaboration is referred to as a federate. Federates can be systems or people. People access the SOA Federation through the Portal interface using personal computers (desktop, laptop) or handheld wireless devices. Systems access the SOA Federation through the Gateway interface. The Gateway interface provides complete support for external (public) collaborations and highly secured communications between federates and the SOA Federation. As shown in Figure 3, the SOA Federation is the central framework of the SOA. The SOA Federation includes the following core components:

• Federation Server (Federation Manager, Federation Registry, Agent Interface Manager, Security Provider)
• Agent Framework
• Collaborative Process (CP) Flow Controller (Process Flow Manager, Activity Manager, Decision Manager, Event Manager, Process Flow Registry)
• Built-in Services

Figure 3: Run-time FERA-based SOA

In general, the Federation Server is a bridge between the SOA external and internal worlds. The Agent Framework is a pool of agents that perform activities and make decisions during the execution of collaborative processes. The CP Flow Controller manages collaborative process flows comprising a collaborative process. Each collaborative process can have one or more collaborative process flows. A collaborative process flow includes activities, decisions and events that are SOA Information Model collaborative elements. Built-in Services are third-party tools for the collaborative data analysis, reporting, etc.

Summary

SOA requires careful planning and is an open and flexible technology solution that provides an agile architectural infrastructure that meets the reality of the demands of continuously changing business requirements. Today’s business end users need and require both technology and guidance in how to use the technology to achieve business goals. FERA as the SOA guidance and FERA-based SOA as an architectural solution support collaborative processes modeling, deployment and execution in all SOA levels from SOAP message exchanges to the most complex orchestrated collaborative processes.

For more information about FERA-based SOA please contact us at info@semantion.com.