Case Study: Stanford Hospital and Clinics switches to InterSystems Ensemble for a healthcare SOA foundation
481988
Leading IT organizations are replacing older-generation integration software with InterSystems Ensemble. Learn why Stanford Hospital and Clinics made the switch.
558541
InfoWorld - Mainframe systems are playing a key role in many SOA (service-oriented architecture) projects, according to a study released this week by IBM user group SHARE.
317585
A Services Oriented Infrastructure presents a vision of common IT infrastructure elements  CPU, network, storage  presented as services to applications.
438187
(InfoWorld) - IBM showed off research efforts in a number of areas, including SOA, wikis, and mashups, at its IBM Silicon Valley Lab on Wednesday afternoon. Technologies on display leveraged concepts like social networking, collaboration, and Web 2.0. Security and healthcare systems also were on display. The 26 projects viewed were in various stages of development, ranging from incubation to actual availability. In the SOA area, IBM's Request Driven Provisioning technology provides a framework to offer business services in an SOA. It combines automated systems with business processes for the purpose of end-to-end IT service delivery. Services are provisioned based on user requirements, said Willy Chiu, IBM vice president for High Performance On Demand Solutions in the company's Software Group. "What we're doing is allowing a business unit to define its requirements for a complete SOA system that would have taken months to install and now it takes hours," said Chiu. The technology is available as a service offering that leverages IBM's WebSphere, Tivoli, Rational, and other product lines. DB2 provides for data storage. Also in SOA, IBM touted Sonoma, which is a Web-based capacity planning tool. To be offered through a Saas (software as a service) model, it will enable customers to size SOA-based workloads to meet future performance and scalability requirements. Sonoma is the latest version of the company's OPERA (On Demand Performance Advisor) tool for capacity planning. Sonoma serves a subset of RDP for SOA planning only and is configured as a Web service, Chiu said. He stressed that IBM was not in the application space. "Our job is to enable applications," said Chiu. IBM brought customer Jeremy King, eBay's vice president of engineering and application architecture, onstage to tout eBayâs collaboration with IBM. Noting eBay's 212,000,000 registered users and its massive infrastructure, King said that if eBay were a country, it would be the world's fifth largest, behind China, India, the United States, and Indonesia. King cited WebSphere as being of particular usefulness at eBay. "In the end, what really made the difference was IBM's understanding of the service that we would need," King said. After discussions by IBM executives, attendees were free to check out the various research efforts. Projects demonstrated under the umbrella of social networking, collaboration, and Web 2.0 included: Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Information Factory, a portal-based system for organizing feedback from customers. Wikis, blogs, social networking, and tagging tools are used to accelerate collaboration. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Koala, a social engineering effort allowing non-programmers to easily automate processes on the Web in a collaborative environment using wiki-like collaborative authoring and semantic Web annotation. Reusable procedures can be developed and reused by recording keystrokes and clicks as a user completes a task. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Fringe, transforming IBM's internal directory into a corporate social networking site. Activities and relationships can be organized around people and experiments with the application of social networking and tagging principles. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  QEDwiki (quick and easily done wiki), an enterprise mashup tool that makes it easy for non-technical persons to build Web-based applications that blend company data with outside Web services. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Mashups for the Enterprise, which are applications developed to solve a situational business problem by integrating Internet/intranet data and services using lightweight Web 2.0 technologies. IBM Travel Maps is an example of this concept. In the category of Information On-Demand, IBM showed the following technologies: Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Unified WebClient for IBM Content Management, leveraging technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Dojo and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) to provide a unified, visually appealing client for IBM Content Management offerings. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Omnifind Yahoo! Edition, an enterprise search product intended to help eliminate financial and technology barriers to intranet and Web search. It features Web search services powered by Yahoo. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Business Insights Workbench, identifying trends and patterns from a customer's internal and external content using advanced text analytics on structured and unstructured information. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Intelligent Document Gateway, providing customized business logic in support of document-centric business processes. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  ShapeWriter, providing a new way of writing text and sending commands on computing and communications devices. It uses multi-channel pattern recognition and lexical information to interpret a user's hand drawing on a graphical keyboard. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, which uses autonomic policy-based protocols to manage heterogeneous storage infrastructures from a single point of control. In the security arena, IBM showed: Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Smart Surveillance System, for data analysis of video sequences. Benefits include real-time alarms to anticipate incidents by identifying suspicious behaviors as well as enhanced forensic capabilities and situational awareness of a location. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  IDemix, or IBM Identity Mixer, which masks information on the Web by making transactions anonymous. Digital identities are hidden, and an additional layer of protection is provided against identity theft. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Assured eXecution Environment, preserving the integrity of personal computers by ensuring that only approved programs are executed. Unwanted automated changes to system configurations also are prevented. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Cancelable Bometrics, which uses an algorithm to protect against theft of biometric data such as a fingerprint. The actual fingerprint is concealed by using a distorted version of it. Consumer technologies included: Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Virtual Worlds, enhancing the retail customer experience using virtual 3D technologies. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  FonePal, using cross-device integration to solve voice menu navigation problems. Instant messaging is used to deliver a visual version of a phone menu to a computer screen. A user could then scan choices and make a selection instead of sifting through menus. Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  MASTOR, or Multilngual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator, providing bidirectional speech-to-speech translation for communication in different languages. Persons not speaking the same language could communicate.
404058
(InfoWorld) - Heralding the most viable, "real-world" approach to building SOAs (service-oriented architectures)Â this week,Â MicrosoftÂ  unveiled new guidelines for partners create an enterprise service bus (ESB). Usually, BEA Systems and IBM beat the SOA drum the loudest, but Microsoft renamed its Business Process and Integration Conference for BizTalk partners "SOA and Business Process Conference" with the aim demonstrate that it, too, has a plan for helping customers build SOAs. Microsoft has had itsÂ business process integration product BizTalk since 2000, but it has not been as vocal as competitors BEA and IBM in discussing a comprehensive SOA strategy. SOA is the next generation of enterprise software architectures, in which applications and services within the IT system are loosely coupled and able to be integrated piecemeal to form custom, or "composite," applications from various components across the enterprise. Microsoft worked with partner Neudesic to provide sample code and documentation for using BizTalk Server to build an ESB, which Microsoft defines as a set of capabilities -- such as mediation, transformation and integration -- for connecting business processes and services throughout the organization, said Steven Martin, a Microsoft director of product management. The company also unveiled a new adapter for Extensible Markup Language-based BizTalk that enables customers to connect the product more easily to IBM mainframe and AS/400 systems. The technology, called the BizTalk Adapter for Host Systems, is based on technologies available in Microsoft's Host Integration Server product, which the company has had for some time, Martin said. John Devadoss, a Microsoft director of architecture, said it is still finding a lot of misconceptions about SOAs among its customers, who think they have to rearchitect their entire software infrastructure "from the top down" to build SOAs. On the contrary, Microsoft believes that SOAs are more successful if there is a "real-world business driver" behind the architecture, he said. "In the real world, the success stories we see are customers taking a pragmatic, middle-out approach," he said. "The only way to truly track to the needs of the business is to take small steps along the way. The mega projects are either big science projects that never get finished or they diverge from the needs of the business."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
703336
InfoWorld - IBM's global services organization is adding "health check" services to its repertoire of technical services for SOA deployments, looking to assist users dealing with issues resulting from poor planning or partnerships with inexperienced or so-called proprietary IT vendors.
538705
BEA has entered the event-driven architecture market with a product geared for SOA in Java environments.
293478
Breaking down business processes into Web services components was the easy part. Weaving them together into manageable, useful services has proved more ambitious.
128620
(InfoWorld) - SAN FRANCISCO -- Positioning itself as the industry's first provider of a native SOA platform, BEA Systems unveiled SOA 360 -- as in 360 degrees -- at Tuesdays' BEAWorld 2006. The vagueness of the announcement, however, has at least one analyst claiming the company still has a lot of explaining to do. SOA 360 spans three BEA product families -- Tuxedo, WebLogic, and AquaLogic -- and features an SOA collaborative tooling environment, called BEA WorkSpace 360. Another key element is the company's "microServices Architecture," aka mSA. Based on SOA and the concept of a services network, mSA features modular services based on BEA products, is event-driven, and uses notification services to publish and discover modular components or "microServices." WorkSpace 360 includes a product family due in 2007. It is geared to enable business and IT professionals to collaborate and work individually and features roles for the business analyst, enterprise architect, developer, and IT operations professional. Working with the role-based products is WorkSpace Central, which is designed to provide SOA lifecycle management and centers around the company's metadata repository, AquaLogic Enterprise Repository. "SOA 360 is a governing approach to modeling, creating, developing, and deploying a full lifecycle SOA application. It is a unifying methodology," featuring all of BEA's SOA products, said Rob Levy, executive vice president and CTO of BEA. "I'm here to tell you with confidence that SOA is very real," BEA Chairman and CEO Alfred Chuang said in a keynote presentation focused on SOA. Details provided during presentations on Tuesday, however, were too vague, said Shawn Willet, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "There's just too many unanswered questions right now," Willett said. For instance, it is unclear what makes something mSA-enabled, Willett said. He did, however, praise BEA for being ahead of the pack when it launched its unified middleware platform, BEA WebLogic Platform. BEA's modularization plans for its WebLogic Server application server were revealed in March. But the company now believes this approach can work for all its products, said Bill Roth, vice president of the BEA tools unit. Modularization provides the right services to the customer, Roth said. "Modularization will be a key design point for us, and ultimately this microServices Architecture will have an effect across all of our products," Roth said. BEA has set a goal of having all its products leverage mSA by the end of 2008. MSA will key in on backplane components, application frameworks, activity services, presentation services, and infrastructure services. The architecture will leverage industry protocols and standards such as OSGi, SOAP, WSDL, XML Schema, WS-Security, and SAML. Also at the show on Tuesday, BEA: * announced the release of AquaLogic Enterprise Repository 2.5, a metadata repository based on the company's recently acquired Flashline technology; * launched its AquaLogic Data Services Platform 2.5, which provides a virtual, unified view of data regardless of type or location; * unveiled BEA Guardian Support Service, providing predictive and pre-emptive software support; * and announced the general availability of SALT (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo) 1.1, which is intended to allow Tuxedo applications to be exposed as Web services.
24703
Will 'coding in the large' replace what we do now? Over the last few columns we have looked at how Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based systems can be built using the Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO).â¦
131955
(InfoWorld) - Emphasizing SOA, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) on Monday is publishing draft documents on Web services and security, and seeks public feedback. SOA architects have been awaiting these deliverables, which provide guidance on interoperability for core Web services and business processes in enterprises, WS-I said. "The Web services specifications and the Web services stack is the underlying technology for SOA," said Michael Bechauf, WS-I chairman and SAP vice president of industry standards. Formed in 2002, WS-I focuses on helping vendors and users implement Web services rather than having users labor with the multitude of specifications. "At the end of the day, the end user really shouldn't care about the underlying specifications," Bechauf said. WS-I features members such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. Working Group Drafts being published include Basic Profile 1.2, Basic Security Profile 1.1, and Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios. The draft documents are up for public and member review and are expected to be approved early in 2007. "The tangible results will be that vendors will actually build solutions according to those profiles," with users assured that the systems will work together, Bechauf said. Basic Profile 1.2 is the revision of the Basic Profile 1.1, which offers guidance on basic interoperability of the Web services stack. Version 1.2 incorporates errata and includes requirements pertaining to serialization of Web services envelopes and their representation in messages from the WS-I Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0. The new profile was constructed mostly using WS-Addressing, which defines a standard mechanism for identifying and exchanging Web services messages between endpoints. Specifications incorporated into Basic Profile 1.2 include Core, SOAP Binding, and WSDL Binding specifications pertinent to WS-Addressing 1.0.Â Â  Comments on Basic Profile may be e-mailed here: wsbasic_comment@ws-i.org WS-I Basic Profiles make life easier for developers by focusing on what they need to know to make Web services work, said analyst Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group. "I think the WS-I Basic Profiles are always a good thing because they constrain the specifications, so it gives developers fewer things to worry about," Manes said. "The main reason that you want profiles is they explain how to use the specifications the right way and ensure that you will get a better chance of achieving interoperability," Manes said. She acknowledged that the plethora of Web services specifications can cause confusion among developers. Manes said she has counted 52 WS-* (spoken as âws starâ) specifications for standardizing Web services operations. "That's enough to make anybody's head spin," Manes said. WS-I has been providing guidance on Web services specifications to OASIS, which oversees many of them, Manes said. "A lot of people think that WS-I hasnât done anything for two years but in fact it has," Manes said. Also on the WS-I docket for Monday, the Working Group Draft of Basic Security Profile 1.1 revises the 1.0 version of the document and incorporates errata to data. It profiles WS-Security 1.1 and WS-Security token profiles, including Username, X.500, Kerberos, and SAML (Security Access Markup Language). Feedback on Security Profile 1.1 can be submitted to this e-mail address: wsi_secprofile_comment@lists.ws-i.org The Working Group Draft of Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios features guidance on use of Reliable Secure Profile. It features specifications such as WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 and WS-SecureConversation 1.3 as well as WS-I's Basic Profiles and Basic Security Profiles. Feedback on the Usage Scenarios can be e-mailed to this address: wsi_rsp_comment@lists.ws-i.org. WS-I documents are accessible at the WS-I Web site.
137724
By Nolle, Tom  The wave of interest in service oriented architectures (SOA) has created, not surprisingly, a wave of speculation about the changes SOA might bring to enterprise networks.
385683
Learn about the two crucial technologies -- missing from most SOA platforms -- needed for successful SOA implementations.
599730
In many respects, SOA is an evolution of the fundamental tenets governing component-based development (CBD). In this article, Bernhard Borges, Kerrie Holley and Ali Arsanjani from IBM discuss the relationship between CBD and SOA and a technique for performing SOA modeling, analysis, and design for services, where services are realized using components.
693226
A new Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification edited by Alan Geller (Microsoft) has been published. This initial joint publication of the specification names Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Dell
698552
As organizations roll out service-oriented architecture, they will turn to rich internet and web applications for the final link: the human-machine interface.
653200
An investor's guide to service-oriented architecture