[No abstract]

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After more than a decade of research into and practical application of service-orientation (SO*) there is still confusion about what services are, and what their benefit to Software Engineering research and practice is. Nevertheless, and unfazed by its fuzzy backdrop, SO* has taken hold across industry as the foundation on which large software systems are built. Clearly, this leaves many fundamental questions on the table. This paper focuses on developing the principles and practices for using SO* in large-scale service integration. We start from a simple premise: services are functions, service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are dynamic functional programs. We develop this premise into a semantic foundation for services and SOAs based on a novel dynamic model of stream processing functions. We introduce Open Rich Services (ORS), an architecture pattern for SOA that (a) disentangles infrastructure-concerns cleanly from application-specific concerns, (b) supports flexible and dynamically changeable service composition, and (c) facilitates hierarchical service decomposition. We establish the link between ORS and our basic SOA semantics to yield a comprehensive and scalable SOA foundation. As a proof of concept we develop a domain specific language (DSL) for specification of SOAs following this semantic approach.

Pre-2018 CSE ID: CS2012-0982

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A cyberinfrastructure (CI) is an Internet-based collection of computing services dedicated to providing data storage, computations, and visualizations to a stakeholder ecosystem. A major CI function is to execute workflows on behalf of stakeholders. Each stakeholder will participate in the CI only if the workflows incorporate certain requirements, which may vary from stakeholder to stakeholder. Additionally, because successful CI use by one stakeholder depends on the results of successful use by other stakeholders, a failure of the CI to enforce stakeholder requirements risks the viability of the entire CI. A critical enabler for CIs is the efficient elicitation of stakeholder requirements, called policies, and their accurate and timely enactment. This paper presents a technique that combines UML Activity Diagrams and a Domain Specific Language (DSL) to enable stakeholders to formulate identity- and environment-based access control policies in the context of a workflow. To demonstrate the technique, we recruited exposure biologists as domain experts interested in inserting access control policies into a workflow in the PALMS CI, a health monitoring system currently used at UC San Diego. We found that not only could the experts successfully formulate their policies, but that translation of these policies to the implementation level was quick and accurate. This work extends work in design-level security engineering techniques (UMLsec and SecureUML), Activity Diagram formalisms, and DSLs. In leveraging workflow visualization, efficient policy articulation, and timely enactment, this technique encourages exploration of the requirement space by domain experts.

Pre-2018 CSE ID: CS2012-0988

Enterprise Chat has emerged as one of the key tools for rapid communication, decision making, and situational awareness across a wide spectrum of application domains, ranging from massively multi-player online games (MMOs) to multi-national corporations to public safety and defense. This report is motivated by the increasing need to flexibly bridge multiple existing and emerging standards and technology platforms for Enterprise Chat. A promising approach to this effect is the use of Service-Oriented Architecture methodology and technology, as this combination has been used successfully across the industry in other enterprise integration projects. To determine the viability of this approach, we have performed a case study on the use of an SOA-based approach to unifying disparate IM/chat systems into a system-of-systems framework. This approach leverages enterprise-wide services, but without risking the IM/chat systems’ existing functionality. In collaboration with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), we modeled both a conceptual IM/chat system and existing IM/chat systems to understand the fundamental roles and interactions comprising these systems. We then organized these roles and interactions using a Rich Services [1] architectural pattern that defines a hierarchy incorporating an enterprise service layer and local system integration layers. The result is a SOA that informs the design of a system of IM/chat systems that not only meets the flexible integration goal stated above, but enables many practical operational affordances and allows governance across multiple administrative and organizational domains. Additionally, it points the way toward extending IM/chat systems to deliver richer and more effective content. We have found that careful modeling of the Enterprise Chat domain, as well as of the individual standards and technologies, is one prerequisite to successful integration. As a second key prerequisite, we have identified the use of Rich Services to support principled, scalable integration while addressing many crosscutting concerns such as security, policy/governance, presence, and failure management. These lessons learned can be applied across all types of large enterprises that are characterized by multiple administrative and organizational domains, and that can similarly benefit from the integration of their disparate support systems. By supporting a system-of-systems integration, Rich Services has the potential of leveraging existing and emergent enterprise assets to unleash hidden enterprise value.

Pre-2018 CSE ID: CS2008-0918