SOA Issues: Mapping the Problem

The previous SOA registry tutorial outlined one of many key SOA issues: the problem of IT's lack of visibility into vertical application silos: the lack of visibility into business processes, applications, transactions and other critical elements. Robust SOA management solutions, on the other hand (Progress Actional products, for example), are adept at solving these visibility issues -- employing techniques such as:

  • Auto-discovery of services
  • Mapping of business processes and dependencies

... across all of the different tiers in the SOA.

Viewing SOA Issues from the Edge of the Network to the Data Sources

One of the important things about SOA is it's not just about Web services. Web services is a core technology standard that lets applications talk together, but there are many other tiers in a SOA that come into play: legacy applications, portals and so forth, that use different protocols. And to get a true end-to-end view of what's going on, IT needs to be able to see all the way from the edge of the network back to the data sources.

Mapping: Progress Actional SOA management products give IT the ability to map transaction paths out automatically. Simultaneously, once IT understands where a transaction path fits in the overall environment, then the SOA management solution can tie in information about those transactions to put them in a business context: What generation plant do these transactions apply to? Which customer? Which region? And so forth.

Discovery: Here is a view of what an actual discovered application policy looks like when viewed in Progress Actional tools. Below is a snapshot from one of the product screens:

FlowMap™ solves key SOA issues: auto-discovers transactions and interdependencies among business processes, services, applications

FlowMap™ solves key SOA issues: auto-discovers transactions and interdependencies among business processes, services, applications

With this auto-discovered information in hand, a better understanding of the organization's business processes and interdependencies leads to a number of key capabilities:

  • Detection: SOA management makes it possible to detect and resolve various kinds of problems more effectively: find performance degradations in the infrastructure, discover activities not completing on time, business exceptions, security attacks and so forth.
  • Runtime Governance: Services that don't follow business rules or policies, for example, are automatically brought under the governance umbrella offered by the joint registry/SOA management solution. Security and the compliance of services can be assured because policies are always being enforced. With the combined solution, services can't be brought into production without policies being properly enforced.
  • Optimization: A key SOA issue to consider is how to optimize the IT infrastructure for the business -- and understanding how business is impacting IT systems. And vice-versa: how the IT infrastructure is impacting the ability to deliver services to the business. The next step is to be able not only to see what's going on (visibility) -- but to automate responses to changing conditions.

Got SOA Issues? Progress Actional to the Rescue!

Register to watch the On-Demand Webinar, "Will SOA Benefit The Energy & Utility Industry?", now.

Note: The items in BOLD are required fields. You must supply a valid email address to complete the registration.


First Name
Last Name
Company
Title
Job Category
Industry
Email
Telephone
Address 1
Address 2
City
Country
State/Prov
Postal Code

Taking Control of SOA Issues by Automating Responses

Let us consider a particular transaction scenario involving service-level agreements (SLAs). There may be a transaction for which IT would want to measure the service-level performance that is being provided to customers and partners, for example. Using the SOA tools described above, IT can actually choose to leverage the information gathered to re-route service traffic based on the content or context of the message. Such a real-world example would involve companies that have "Gold" customers who, under heavily loaded conditions, would be rerouted to alternate data centers to guarantee their service levels.

Actional Responds to SOA Issues by Securing Services, Prioritizing Traffic

With respect to the services going across the SOA backbone, some of the things that Progress Actional products provide include the capacity to:

  • Secure those services -- securing interactions across multiple applications
  • Ensure regulatory compliance by providing "auditability" of transactions
  • Ensure the privacy and integrity of those transactions as they go across the SOA backbone, inside or outside the organization (as with partners, for example)

With respect to back-end applications, Progress Actional products allow IT to prioritize traffic -- allocating bandwidth and pre-eminence to the most important traffic first. This capability is relevant because what often occurs with a shared service is that not all requests demand the same priority. Mission-critical infrastructure demands, for example, may need to take precedence over customer inquiries or reporting requests. So being able to prioritize traffic is important.

Finally, there is the consideration of bringing new services online -- or retiring old services. In the new connected, shared-service environment, IT can't simply bring offline a service -- and assume everything will continue running as before. There needs to be a way (view webinar, SOA Versioning Made Simple) to maintain constant availability and consistent performance of those services.

Key SOA issues solved by Progress Actional SOA management product suite

Key SOA issues solved by Progress Actional SOA management product suite

Progress Actional Products Resolve SOA Issues with Graphical Tools

Progress Actional products offer graphical, point-and-click tools to solve various SOA issues. These graphical tools allow IT to quickly and easily define new policies, define the environment and the security rules around services -- without having to resort to the manual coding that would otherwise be necessary.

Progress Actional products solve policy, SOA issues with graphical, point-and-click tools

Progress Actional products solve policy, SOA issues with graphical, point-and-click tools

The diagram below represents a "birds-eye view" of the Progress Actional product suite and its various layers:

Progress Actional SOA management products address SOA issues on multiple layers: the organizational layer, the SOA management layer and the business/user layer

Progress Actional SOA management products address SOA issues on multiple layers: the organizational layer, the SOA management layer and the business/user layer

There are several "layers" that are encompassed by the SOA at large. At the bottom, one of the first things Progress Actional products can do is to link up with a registry, like the Systinet Registry, to push down policies into the fabric of the SOA. As transactions begin to flow through the SOA, the next step is to try to understand what's happening within the SOA -- within the context of the business.

Contextual information is then fed to the architects, the developers, the business users. That business information could answer questions like: what is the sales volume in a particular region? What is the status of trading? Or the information could be strictly IT-related, e.g., are security policies being followed? Are we having problems with performance and reliability?

Looking at the SOA from this perspective, one can see that it is necessary separate the notion of the transactional layer -- where actual transactions occur -- from the middle-layer infrastructure that manages and provides visibility into the SOA.

Integrated Governance Solution is Essential to Defeat SOA Issues

To summarize, in order to deal effectively with the various SOA issues and challenges out there, SOA management and governance is absolutely critical. SOA governance is essential for maintaining and protecting the SOA environment. Furthermore, what's required is governance that encompasses the entire development life cycle. The integration Progress Actional products offer with the Systinet Registry gives IT organizations the tools they need to implement end-to-end governance -- from design-time through runtime -- providing them with advanced functions such as the ability to set and automatically enforce policies around security, regulatory requirements, and control of communications with partners and other outside stakeholders.

For More Information

Learn more about how Progress Actional SOA management products can address your SOA issues -- and help you take control of your services network -- making your organization more secure, agile and competitive. Download the free white paper, SOA Primer: Comprehensive Runtime Governance from Actional