Towards a Model-Driven and RoleConfigurable Methodology Suite
for Enterprise and ServiceOriented Interoperability
IESA 2010
Doctoral Symposium
Brian Elvesæter1, 2 and Arne-Jørgen Berre1
1
SINTEF ICT, P. O. Box 124 Blindern, N-0314 Oslo, Norway
{brian.elvesater, arne.j.berre}@sintef.no
2 University of Oslo, Department of Informatics, P. O. Box 1080 Blindern, N0316 Oslo, Norway
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Presentation Outline
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Background
Problem Description
Research Proposal
Research Method
Expected Contributions
Questions
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Background
 Involved in the previous FP6 projects ATHENA and
INTEROP focusing on interoperability research.
 Interoperability for enterprise
applications and software
 Model Driven Architecture (MDA)
 Service-oriented architecture (SOA)
 PhD research work carried out in
the context of the SHAPE project
 MDA methodology for SOA
 SOA modelling language
 Industrial case study
 http://www.shape-project.eu/
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Problem Description
 Modelling is now an integrated part of software engineering
approaches.
 SOA is a dominating design principle of modern IT systems.
 Design and implementation of SOA should benefit from advances in
the model-driven engineering (MDE) approach.
 Allowing specification of both a business and technical view of SOA.
 Supporting business to IT model refinement.
 Mapping to different technology platforms .
 In this context some main challenges are:
 How to map the flow of business logic and data to services providing the
needed functionality in a platform-independent way?
 How to integrate the various models describing goals, processes,
requirements, data and services in a common model architecture that can
also be adapted to individual projects and their implementation
environment?
 How to manage such models and provide links between them that can be
used for service composition or managing changes?
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Research Proposal
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Designing SOAs at the enterprise level
involves several different stakeholders within
the enterprise.
The problem of enterprise interoperability is
complex and requires support from many
methods.
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We postulate that it is impossible to provide
one universal approach and methodology.
We therefore propose to define a knowledge
base of reusable method components each of
them addressing one or more specific
interoperability problems that can be configured
into a full methodology.
The PhD research will define the architecture
and implement a prototype solution, focusing
particularly on business and IT alignment.
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Concepts and languages to describe
composition (assembly) and role-configuration
of methodologies.
Method components for supporting various
roles involved in enterprise SOA
interoperability.
Prototype tools to validate, illustrate and test
the concepts, languages, methods and
services.
Use of and propose and implement extensions
to the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF).
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References
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http://www.shape-project.eu/
http://www.soaml.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/epf/
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Research Method
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State-of-the-art studies in national and
European research projects
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Identify and describe relevant technologies,
techniques and mechanisms.
The main PhD work will follow an iterative
research cycle applied to a real-life case
study.
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Industry use case scenarios focusing on toolsupported methodology for IT architectures and
enterprise interoperability will be established
related to Integration Operations (IO).
Production and Process Optimization (PPO)
use case scenario.
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Integrated Operations (IO)
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The Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF)
has defined the term Integrated Operations (IO)
as “real time data onshore from offshore fields
and new integrated work processes”.
The technical implication from IO is an
increased exchange of information across
geographical and organizational boundaries,
internally and externally.
New, interoperable IT solutions and standards
are needed for this information exchange to be
successful.
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Expected Contributions
 The PhD work will continue to build on the research
results from the ATHENA Interoperability Framework and
the SHAPE Methodology for SOA. The expected
contributions of the PhD research are:
 to provide guidelines and method components for how MDE
principles and MDA technologies should be applied to develop
interoperable service-oriented systems;
 to provide a set of method components covering the SOA
development lifecycle that lets you assemble and configure
situational methodologies, with special focus on integration and
interoperability issues, and alignment of business models and IT
models; and
 to provide an open-source prototype implementation of a
customizable and role-configurable method engineering platform.
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Questions?
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