Robert Schneider 10 Strategies

This Presentation Courtesy of the
International SOA Symposium
October 7-8, 2008 Amsterdam Arena
www.soasymposium.com
info@soasymposium.com

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10 Strategies for Overcoming the
Technological Impact of SOA Governance

SOA Systems Inc.
Copyright © SOA Systems Inc. (www.soasystems.com)

1

About the Book Series

Five titles currently in
development for
release in 2009.

The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series
is the top-selling SOA book series in the world.
www.soabooks.com

About the SOA Certified
Professional Program
Industry-recognized certification
program for the following
designations:
• Certified SOA Architect
• Certified SOA Analyst
• Certified SOA Consultant

For more information:
• www.soacp.com
• www.soaschool.com


2

What are the Most Common
Governance Tools Today?

Most organizations use a hodgepodge of semi-
automated and manual techniques:

• Wikis

• Spreadsheets

• Emails

• Word-of-mouth

• None of the above


Why Have these Governance
Tools Been Successful?
Despite these primitive (or non-existent) tools, many
organizations would describe them as successful.

Why?
• Small number of deployed Web services

• No overarching SOA vision

• Close-knit teams; limited federation needs

• Re-use and composition aren't a priority (yet)

• A governance-related crisis hasn’t arrived (yet)


3

What Happens Without
Governance Technology?
Many organizations that fail to employ governance
technology experience:

• Diminished service reuse

• Service proliferation and de-normalized inventories

• Run-time fire drills

• A perception that the SOA investment wasn’t worth
the effort

Avoiding governance automation isn’t an option for
organizations truly implementing SOA.

3 Major Governance Lifecycle Phases

From a governance perspective, the service lifecycle
can be divided into three major phases:

• Design-time

• Testing and Quality Assurance

• Run-time

Each phase introduces unique governance process
and technology requirements. The chosen
governance solution needs to add value in every
phase.


4

Design-Time and Governance

During this phase, solid governance technology can
help with:

• Metadata management

• Service discovery

• Service composition and modeling

• Disseminating organizational policies

Design-time Testing & Q/A Run-time


Testing/QA and Governance

help with:

• Service unit validation & composition interaction

• Policy adoption

• Security compliance

• Service performance prediction



5

Run-time and Governance

help with:

• Service level agreements

• Version control

• Error reporting and management

• Performance monitoring



Strategy 1:
“Include governance
technology as part of your
overall SOA roadmap.”



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“Include governance technology as
part of your overall SOA roadmap.”

• Avoid the temptation to wait until you have
“enough” services before thinking about
governance.

• Delaying often means that you’ll need to incur
additional effort, cost, and overhead.

• Retrofitting always takes longer than expected, and
siphons off valuable resources.

• These added burdens can jeopardize the entire SOA
initiative.


Strategy 2:
“Make sure your
governance platform is
agnostic with regard to
service development
technologies.”



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“Make sure your governance
platform is agnostic with regard to
service development technologies.”
• At a minimum, services developed in Java and
.NET should be supported.
• Avoid the religious wars; avoid painting yourself
into a corner.
• If your governance platform only supports one
style of development technologies, you’ll end up
living with multiple governance software
installations.
• When selecting a governance platform, many
organizations struggle between selecting an open
source solution vs. a proprietary product.

“Make sure your governance
platform is agnostic with regard to
service development technologies.”
Open source benefits:
• Less likely to experience vendor “lock-in”.
• Many enterprises have an “open source only” policy for infrastructure
software.
• Reduced financial outlay means IT organizations are more likely to
implement this kind of governance software.

Proprietary solutions benefits:
• Well-integrated with design, development, and management tools.
• One-stop shopping simplifies things, and yields a better “out of the
box” experience.
• To make things even better, some software vendors have delivered
their solutions as open source.


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Strategy 3:
“Make sure your
governance platform is able
to support the full range of
service deployment
technologies.”



“Make sure your governance platform is
able to support the full range of service
deployment technologies.”

• Web services are not the only game in town.

• Your platform should be able to recognize and
work with a broad range of services, including
Web services, Java objects, CORBA, and other
service implementations.

• Otherwise, you’ll only be governing a portion of
your SOA implementation.

• Partial governance is not much better than no
governance at all.


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Strategy 4:
“Recognize the importance
of testing as part of your
overall SOA governance
responsibility.”



“Recognize the importance of
testing as part of your overall SOA
governance responsibility.”

• Integrate your chosen testing software into your overall
governance environment.

• Your testing must go beyond individual services to
include complex compositions of multiple services.

• Composition testing often requires significant
performance-driven regression testing.

• It may be necessary to employ scoping or other
monitoring technologies to determine true service
interaction.


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“Recognize the importance of
testing as part of your overall SOA
governance responsibility.”
For example, modern SOA testing software can
highlight the impact of contract changes:


Strategy 5:
“Collect important
governance-related metrics
and review them regularly.”



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“Collect important governance-
related metrics and review them
regularly.”

• Modern governance platforms can capture
enormous amounts of statistical data.

• Gathering metrics isn't enough – you need to
take action on them.

• Strive for predictive, pro-active problem solving.

• Try to prevent issues before they occur.


Strategy 6:
“Track activity through
multiple IT resource layers.”



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“Track activity through multiple
IT resource layers.”
• SOA introduces additional moving parts into the mix.

• With all these potential points-of-failure, it’s natural that
issues become more difficult to resolve.

• Users don't care where the problems initiate; they only
want them solved (or prevented!)

• In many cases, the problem isn’t with the service but an
underlying resource:
– Database
– Application server
– Object


“Track activity through multiple
IT resource layers.”
For example, governance software can monitor SLA
compliance regardless of where the core resources reside:


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Strategy 7:
“Break down the barriers
between repositories and
registries.”



“Break down the barriers between
repositories and registries.”

There's a great deal of confusion between these two
types of product.

However:

• Both have a role to play in an effective SOA
implementation.

• Both are active in design and run-time processes.

The next slides describe the typical usage patterns for
each product, followed by some convergence
predictions.


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4


Service registries answer these design-time questions:

• Where is the service?
• What is its purpose? (generally in brief)

Service registries answer these run-time questions:

• What is the service’s version?
• Where is the service’s contract?
• What policies are in effect for the service?



Service repositories answer these design-time
questions:

• What is its purpose? (generally in more detail)
• What are the versions (including code) of the service?

Service repositories answer these run-time questions:

• Who’s been using the service?
• What kind of responsiveness is the service providing?
• What’s gone wrong with the service?

Vendors are actively combining registries and repositories.


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Strategy 8:
“When selecting a
governance technology
product, write a formal
Request For Proposal (RFP).”



“When selecting a governance
technology product, write a formal
While potentially daunting, there are proven patterns
that you can leverage when making this important
decision:

• Know what you need; there is no substitute for homework
and preparation.

• Try before you buy; pilot projects and proofs-of-concept
are great for this.

• Follow the same discipline and processes that you did
when selecting a database, application server, or other
key infrastructure technology.

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6

“When selecting a governance
technology product, write a formal

• Resist the temptation to employ a boilerplate RFP;
make sure it reflects your organization's needs.

• Alternately, have one written for you.

• If using a consultancy to help design and/or
implement your SOA, try to keep this separate from
the technology vendor.

• To get vendors to take your RFP seriously (and
respond accordingly), focus on quality, not quantity.


Strategy 9:
“Avoid tools that require
code modifications.”



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“Avoid tools that require code
modifications.”
• Certain products necessitate special headers,
configuration files, or other libraries to make
governance possible.

• This requires complete developer compliance in
order to work.

• These kinds of proprietary extensions can also
seriously damage your chances of being
vendor-agnostic.


Strategy 10:
“Make sure that the
governance tool fits into
your existing IT governance
landscape.”



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“Make sure that the governance
tool fits into your existing IT
governance landscape.”
• Popular IT governance tools include Tivoli,
OpenView, Unicenter, and so on.

• Don’t force your IT organization to learn and
maintain completely different toolsets.

• Ideally, your governance tools should cleanly
integrate with other IT management platforms.

• Excessive complexity and training requirements
lessen the chance that governance software will be
used.


Q&A

SOA Systems Inc. www.soasystems.com
SOA Training www.soaschool.com
SOA Certification www.soacp.com
SOA Books www.soabooks.com
SOA Magazine www.soamag.com
SOA Patterns www.soapatterns.org

Updates notify@soasystems.com
Contact info@soasystems.com


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