escaping the legacy jungle

Escaping the Legacy Jungle

XML and Web Services in Digital Government

Today’s Speakers

• Dave McComb, Semantic Arts

• Sanjeev Batta, Coraxis Corporation

• Todd Shelton, Netdesk Corporation

• Rick Cook and Paul Piper, TAAG, Web Services Subcommittee

Agenda

• Dave McComb: Web Services and Legacy Apps: A Marriage of Convenience?

• Sanjeev Batta: Service Oriented Architecture

• Todd Shelton: Getting to Web Services

• Rick Cook and Paul Piper: Web Services TAAG

Web Services and Legacy Apps:A Marriage of Convenience?

Dave McCombSemantic Arts, Inc

www.semanticarts.com(970) 490-2224

Three responses

• What’s one more string?

• Cutting the Gordian Knot/ Starting over

• Untangling the mess, a bit at a time

Frustration

• Being a systems person these days is frustrating

• Everything takes many times longer than we know it could, because we have to deal with the spiderweb of existing interconnections

Before we get to the answer

• How did we get in this situation?– Mostly through a series of ad hoc decisions about what

things mean, and how systems should communicate

• How do we get out?– This will require some leadership above the project

level to determine the language systems should use to talk to each other

– It requires renegotiating new agreements between systems

– This presentation is about…

Hope

• New technology

• New approaches

• New methods

and with hope comes…

Buzzwords

• XML

• Message Oriented Middleware

• Web Services

The Distinctionary

• Is: a glossary

• Is distinct from other glossaries: structurally each definition first specifies what the more general type of thing the word is, and then provides a way to distinguish this thing from others that are similar.

XML

• Is: a markup language

<person> Dave McComb </person>

XML

• Is distinct from other markup languages: by allowing tags that at least have some hope of being Semantic

html for instance

<H1> Dave McComb </H1>

<H1> Fido </H1>

What makes XML interesting and potentially

useful for us• Preserves context and structure

• Document/ Message duality

• Potential for application to application communication

But for the most compelling factor in XML’s future success…

The Final Jeopardy Answer

4’ 8 ½”

What is how far I can throw someone I don’t trust?

What was the adult height of Neanderthal man?

What is the distance between North American standard gauge RR tracks, and a good analogy for the reason for XML’s coming ubiquity?

MOM (Message Oriented Middleware)

• Is: Infrastructure Software

• Is distinct from other infrastructure software: in that it allows you to send messages between applications without necessarily knowing the identity or location of the other application, and without necessarily waiting for a response.

Other Interesting Things About MOM

• Promotes asynchronicity

• Promotes loose coupling

• Allows broadcast of messages & multiple use of messages

• Opens up many avenues for redundancy and parallel conversions

Web Service

• Is: A way to invoke functionality remotely

• Is distinct from other ways to invoke functionality remotely: in that it allows you to express the calling arguments in XML over the internet.

Other Interesting Things About Web Services

• Exposing your API as XML

• Unaffected by many changes to invoking message

• SOAP allows inter-machine calls, even through firewalls

• Easy to set up and use

Web Service“show me”

• Normally, there is nothing to show• It’s systems integration, when it works

you don’t see it• Mostly behind the firewall• But here is a pretty public example

“If Amazon were as easy to use as Google”www.mockerybird.com

I type my search into mockerybird’s site, they then call amazon through their

web service

Mockerybird then reformats the returned results. I then add one of these books to my “list”

Zoom in on “Your List” my selected item immediately shows up…I click checkout

I get a summary, and some options, including buying from Amazon

I’m at amazon’s site now (new window) and the book I selected from Mockerybird is right in with my other amazon selections!

Two ways to think about web services

• From the consumers standpoint

• And from the producers standpoint

Web Services, from the providers standpoint

• You have a value added service, you’d like to make it available to the widest possible audience

• You might want to charge for this privilege• Maybe something as simple as reporting air

quality at a certain location, or most recent outbreaks of west nile virus.

• Maybe it’s supplying 9 digit zip codes for addresses.

Web services from the consumers standpoint

• What additional information would you like to make available at the point of consumption?

• What additional services would you like to make available?

EAI, Portals and Composite App

• There are three main points of consumption for Web Services:– EAI – Portals– Composite Apps

Finding and Negotiation with a Web Service

UDDI

WSDL

SOAP

Some Example Web Service

(very fine grained) • Calculation

• Currency Conversion

• Email validation

Some Example Web Service

(medium grained) • Immigration status

• Language Translation (gist)

• Issue Line of Credit

• Immunization Requirement for Travel to Foreign country

Some Example Web Services (coarse grained)

• Outbound Correspondence

• Imaging

• Accounts Receivable

• Auditing

• Abstracting

Some Example Web Services (very coarse

grained)• Contact management

• Payroll

Strategies for taking advantage of this trend

• Message Enable your legacy systems

• Publish Services that will add value and help you at the same time (ZIP +4)

• Implement Portals and Composite Apps with– Internal Services, and – Optional external services

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Web Service or other Adapters

Untangling Gulliver

Compelling reason to get on the Web Services

Bandwagon• Freedom – from the legacy bonds of

confinement

• Economics – it’s far cheaper to build systems this way

• Looking good – this will be the measure of eGov success in the future

• Not looking bad – avoid having to explain why you can’t do this

Thank you

Dave McCombSemantic Arts

(970) 490-2224

If you have questions, or would like additional copies of this material, feel

free to contact me:

Service Oriented Architecture

Sanjeev Batta

Coraxis Corporation

Sanjeev@coraxis.com

Industry Projections

• IBM – “Web Services will be bigger than Java or XML” – Rod

Smith, VP of Emerging Technology, IBM

• Forrester Research– By 2003, the market for software components used to build

services will represent a $14.5 billion industry.

• Gartner Group – Within the next 4 years, 60% of all new business applications will

utilize a service-oriented architecture– By 2004, 40% of financial services transactions and 35% of

online government services will be web service-based

Service Oriented Architecture

• In simple terms, service-oriented architectures provide a standard programming model that allows software components, residing on any network, to be published, discovered and invoked by each other.

Topology of WS Environment

Building Blocks

Architectural Elements

• Services

• Messaging

• Contracts

• Service State

Service Design Concepts

– Granularity– Clear Separation of Business and Operational

Requirements– Exception Handling– Service State Management

Message Design Concepts

• Messages and Message Schema

• Message Routing

• Styles of Message Exchange

• Messaging Bus / Messaging Infrastructure

Contract Design Concepts

• Service Interfaces

• Design Time Contracts

• Run Time Contracts

• Conversations

Approaching Enterprise web service initiatives.

• Top Down Design – Plan for virtual enterprise

• Think Integration Platform not Integration applications

• Beware of Heterogeneity

• Define Business processes succinctly

• Define enterprise message models at enterprise level.

• Leverage Standards

• Focus on granularity

Web Service Gotcha's

• Security / Privacy

• Messaging / Routing

• Quality of service / Reliability

• Transaction processing

• Management

• Performance

Standards

Acronym Name Supported Standard

XML Extensible Markup Language Version 1.0 ( 1.2 Last call draft is released and final version expected to be released very soon)

UDDI Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

Version 2.0 ( 3.0 Just Released)

WSDL Web Service Description Language

Version 1.1 Commonly supported ( 1.2 is in Draft )

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol Version 1.1 Commonly supported. (1.2 in Draft)

Emerging Standards

Acronym Name Description

XKMS

SAML

The XML Key Management Specification

The Security Assertion Markup Language

These are 2 emerging standards for addressing Web Services Security requirements.

ebXML BPSS

XLANG

WSFL

ebXML BPSS (Business Process Specification Schema)

Microsoft proposal for process Orchestration.

WSFL (Web Services Flow Language)

Emerging standards to address business process and web services Orchestration issues and Long-Running Transactions.

Getting to Web Services

Organizational Readiness, Individual Readiness and Return on

Investment Todd Shelton, Netdesk Corp

Agenda

• Getting your organization ready

• Getting your people ready

• Getting the return on your Web Services investment

Getting the Organization Ready

• Governance

• Collaboration– Can you make decisions?

• Is business driving the technology decisions?

• Enough individual skills on hand to start

• A real project that matters

Getting Your People Ready

• Three roles: – Business decision maker– Technical decision maker or architect– Production project people

• Each needs specific web services skills

Getting Business Decision Makers Ready

• Decision makers need understand what web services can do for the business– Cost of building, of operating, of flexibility– New capabilities we don’t have right now– Governance and policy

• IT has to lead this conversation• This is NOT a technical dialogue!

– It has to be about the effects of web services on the business, not what is takes to build them.

Getting Business Decision Makers Ready

• Business decision makers need clear, actionable justification for the investment– IT can’t provide all of this information

• Business decision makers need the effects, not necessarily what creates the effects

• Business decision makers are accountable for results and have to insist that those results be measurable

Getting Senior Technical Decision Makers Ready

• Architects need to understand – Does it makes sense technically? – Does it make sense in our situation?

• Architects will make preliminary platform recommendations and budget estimates

• Architects will review application portfolios and plan conversions

Getting Senior Technical Decision Makers Ready

• Training, of course! – Books, magazines, self-study all help with

basic principles

• “Safe”, structured hands-on– Classroom training with labs– Agency lab environment

• A real project

Getting Production Project People Ready

• Production project people need specific skills in the tools they will use to build web services– VS.NET, J2EE tools, etc.

• We are seeing a sharp increase in demand for object-oriented skills

• It’s an opportunity to install best practices– MSF, OOP, UML, etc.

Getting Production Project People Ready

• XML

• Web Services standards

• Skills in the specific platform– For .NET, Visual Basic .NET or C#

• Or any other language that runs in the CLR

• Project management skills

• Object design skills

Getting the Return On Web Services

• The business case for web services

• The community imperative

• It’s about sharing information, not technology!

Getting the Return On Web Services

• Standards based and platform independent – Preserve your religious freedom!– .NET, J2EE, legacy systems can interact

• Get the benefit of standards without standardizing your systems – Just build a web service front end

Getting the Return On Web Services

• Build on central services, Add only what makes you unique – Leverage common services and stores

• Get the shared standards automatically

– Pay only for what you need that’s extra• Don’t pay for duplicating the entire system

Getting the Return On Web Services

• “Much easier to “play” with – Stitch” together web services quickly to create

• Ad hoc integrations• Test mockups• Quick and dirty feasibility looks

– Without risking production services

• Spend more time focused on getting the right result

Getting the Return On Web Services

• Less specialized training; more resilience to turnover– Bigger community

• Community standards

– Shared experience interconnecting– Standardized training

• XML, SOAP, UDDI, common tools

Getting the Return On Web Services

• A Web Services community can build out a statewide architecture– Common problems, shared solutions– Collaboration and communication!

• Governance-driven, policy-based standards management is built in– Web services are already standards– No cost to build the base standard, it’s already there– Extend or restrict as needed

Getting to Web Services

• Getting your organization ready– Governance, decision-making ability, and business-

driven expectations • Getting your people ready

– Business decision makers, senior technical, and production project people need different skills and support

• Getting the return on your Web Services investment– It’s about sharing information, not about technology!

Thank You!

• Todd Shelton

• Todd.Shelton@netdesk.com

Technical Architecture Advisory Group (TAAG)

Web Services Subcommittee Presentation

October 16, 2002

Agenda

• Web Services Subcommittee Purpose & Scope

• Participating Agencies

• Contact Information

• Web Services Business Definition

• Observations

Workgroup’s Purpose

• Explore Web services to identify any policies, standards or potential infrastructure that would benefit or impact the state.

Scope of effort

• Explore Web Services to identify what the industry is doing with this new technology

• Define Web Services

• Make recommendations regarding the use of Web Services in Washington State Government.

Agencies Represented

• Administrator for the Courts• Dept. of Information Services• Labor and Industries• Dept. of Personnel • Dept. of Revenue• Dept. of Transportation• Dept. of Social and Health Services • Office of Financial Management• Washington State Patrol

Contact Information

If you want to participate in the Web Services Subcommittee, contact:

Paul Piper at 360-902-3471PaulP@DIS.WA.GOV

orRick Cook at 360-902-7714Cookre@DSHS.WA.GOV

When is it a Web service?

• Employ one or more of SOAP, UDDI and WSDL technologies to perform distributed computing

Gartner Group

Business Value Examples

• Share Code

• Dynamically Exchange Data

• Publish

Working Group Observations

• The technology is in the early phases of adoption, most deployment has been for internal use.

• Communication between agencies, entities, and communities of interest will play an important role.

• .NET and J2EE may co-exist.• Emerging standards and security issues need to

be monitored.• State guidelines are needed as the technology

matures.

Thank You Very Much!