OMG Releases Draft Of SoaML

Posted by Dilip Krishnan on Jan 13, 2009

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SOA

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Modeling

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OASIS ,

UML

OMG released a draft of SoaML, a specification for the UML Profile and Metamodel for Services. SoaML (Modeling Language) is a standard extension to UML 2 that is meant to facilitate services modeling.  The executive summary states the need and purpose of the standard.

A service is a capability offered through a well-defined interface and available to a
community (which may be the general public). SOA is an architectural paradigm for
defining how people, organizations and systems provide and use services to achieve
results. SoaML as described in this specification provides a standard way to architect and
model SOA solutions using the Unified Modeling Language® (UML®). The profile uses
the built-in extension mechanisms of UML to define SOA concepts in terms of existing
UML concepts. SoaML can be used with current “off the shelf” UML tools but some
tools may offer enhanced, SOA specific, support with the compatible SoaML metamodel.

The broad goals of SOAML are outlined in the draft

• Identifying services, the requirements they are intended to fulfill, and the dependencies between them.
• Specifying services including the functional capabilities they provide [protocols and data ] exchanged between consumers and providers.
• Defining service consumers and providers, […] how they are connected and how the service functional capabilities are used by consumers and implemented by providers in a manner consistent with both the service specification protocols and fulfilled requirements.
• The policies for using and providing services.
• The ability to define classification schemes having aspects to support a broad range of architectural, organizational and physical partitioning schemes and constraints.
• Defining service and service usage requirements and linking them to related OMG metamodels, such as the BMM course_of_action, BPDM Process, UPDM OperationalCapability and/or UML UseCase model elements they realize, support or fulfill.
• The current SoaML focuses on the basic service modeling concepts, and the intention is to use this as a foundation for further extensions both related to integration with other OMG metamodels like BPDM and the upcoming BPMN 2.0, as well as SBVR, OSM, ODM and others.

SoaML is a submission in response to UPMS (UML Profile and Metamodel for Service)s RFP and works within the framework of OASIS SOA Reference Model. SoaML depends on Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®1) to help map business and systems architectures, the design of the enterprise, to implementation technologies that support SOA, like web services and CORBA®. The focus however is primarily on business and architecture. “SoaML enables business oriented and systems oriented services architectures to mutually and collaboratively support the enterprise mission.”

Significantly missing among the submitters and supporters is Microsoft. Microsoft had recently expressed commitment to supporting UML in the next generation modeling architecture: Oslo, of which service modeling is a big piece.

The draft of the OMG released specification can be found at the OMG site. The specification is set to go into beta 1 end of January.

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