Contextual governance for service oriented architecture composition

Abstract

Currently, business requirements for rapid operational efficiency, customer responsiveness as well as rapid adaptability are driving the need for ever increasing communication and integration capabilities ofthe software assets. Functional decomposition into re-usable software entities, loose coupling, and distribution of resources are all perceived benefits of the investment on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This malleability can also bring about the risk of a more difficult oversight. The same service is ideally used in different applications and contexts. This situation forces a supporting infrastructure to allow and manage the adaptability to these different contexts of use. In this thesis, the author proposes to govern such variations in a cost efficient way by composing the core business function offered by a service with other services implementing infrastructure capabilities that fulfil varying non-functional requirements. However, as the number of services increases and their use in different contexts proliferates, it becomes necessary to automate policy enforcement and compliance monitoring. Furthermore, the composition of services into different business applications over a common infrastructure intensifies the need for end-to-end monitoring and analysis in order to assess the business performance impact. Managing the full life-cycle of service definition, deployment, exposure and operation requires management processes that take into account their composition with the infrastructure capabilities that take of non-functional requirements. In addition, policies may change during the life-time of a service. Policy updates may be the result of various reasons including business optimisation, of reaction to new business opportunities, of risk / threat mitigation, of operational emergencies, etc. It becomes therefore clear that a well-designed governance architecture is a prerequisite to implementing a SOA capable of dealing with a complex and dynamic environment.