1 2 Previous Next 20 Replies Latest reply on Oct 23, 2008 5:22 AM by bernd.koecke

    Starting SOA Governance in small steps

    bernd.koecke

      I'm very interested in project Overloard. I think we need all the things you mentioned in your roadmap for our SOA to make it really work. So I would be very happy not only ot use it but also to work on the project, if possible. But because we started our SOA some time ago, I started with a very small project which should handle additional metadata for services. Other guys are working on a small monitoring system for services and processes. For my project, I've found two possible approches for bringing data into a repository:
      One very technical approach would be to put the additional metadata somewhere in the esb-file (we use JBossESB) and build a subdeployer to extract it out of the file and store it in the registry. But there must be the possibility for some external systems, e.g to extract keywords from a description, like a Wiki-Page and make it accessible to potential users. With this approach the ESB knows something about the additional metadata and handles it.
      A second approch could be a separate system which must be called first and this system deploys the file on the ESB. It could run on the same application server, but the ESB doesn't know anything about the additional metadata.
      What would be the way Overloard wants to go? The reason why I am asking is, that I started with the first approach, because this breaks up the big problem into small ones, which I can solve easily. And I don't need a new additional system. But I would like to stay as close as possible to your future directions, that I can migrate to Overloard as easy as possible.

      Best regards,
      Bernd

        • 1. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
          marklittle

          Hi Bernd. I was on vacation when this came in :-)

          At the moment we're augmenting the ESB deployment file, but I think the information should be separate since the same service configuration may be deployed as multiple different instances that are also governed by different contracts, SLAs etc.

          • 2. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
            bernd.koecke

            Hi Mark,

            "mark.little@jboss.com" wrote:
            Hi Bernd. I was on vacation when this came in :-)


            me too in the last week :)

            "mark.little@jboss.com" wrote:

            At the moment we're augmenting the ESB deployment file, but I think the information should be separate since the same service configuration may be deployed as multiple different instances that are also governed by different contracts, SLAs etc.


            That sounds good. I think I will start with a little subdeployer to get some additional data in the registry, but then I will talk to some people here to move to your approach with jackrabbit. Because, as you said, it is a little bit difficult to handle policies, SLAs etc. only with a subdeployer, especially in a cluster.

            • 3. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
              bernd.koecke

              Hi Mark,

              is it possible to work together in developing the system? I think this would be more the open source way than waiting until JBoss gets all done and consuming the results :).

              Regards,
              Bernd

              • 4. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                marklittle

                Hi Bernd. Sure. What had you in mind.

                • 5. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                  bernd.koecke

                  Hi Mark,

                  until today I looked only into the user forum and read the roadmap, but now I see in the developer forum and svn that there is work done on CDL and SAM. I don't have much experiences with user interfaces (HTML, Flex etc). Normally I'm working on the server side. I started years ago with JBossAS 3.2.3 went through 4.0.x and 4.2.x and last December with JBossESB by bringing our first process into production with JBossESB and jBPM on JBossAS 4.2.2. All this in a cluster environment. Now I'm working on the Governance topic and my next step would be to write a small subdeployer to close my current project. Normally my job is to bring eveluate new technologies and see if we can use them for production and implement a first prototype.

                  So, I'm interested in all stuff which brings JBossESB and the parts of Overlord together and build a working system. And by looking into your roadmap, I think it is a better idea to invest the development time in Overlord and not in my own implementation :).

                  • 6. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                    jeff.yuchang

                    Hi Bernd,

                    Not sure if you will be interested in the CDL work or not, currently we are introducing a set of JBoss ESB actions to map the CDL process. So here is the design document (http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/soag/cdl/trunk/docs/conversation/) for you reference.

                    ;-)

                    Thanks
                    Jeff

                    • 7. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                      bernd.koecke

                      Hi Jeff,

                      that sounds interesting. I think I should read some documents about CDL and the design docs from svn at first. How can I get in touch with you, when I'm done with this? Should I send a reply to this topic or send you an email directly?

                      Regards,
                      Bernd

                      • 8. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                        marklittle

                        Hi Bernd. Sounds perfect and we'd very much like your help. Let's keep the discussions in the forums.

                        • 9. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                          jeff.yuchang

                          Yes, please use the forum, we are always discussing in the forum, you can also get some information from the overlord user/developer forum.

                          -Jeff

                          • 10. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                            bernd.koecke

                            Thanks a lot, I will post to the forum, when I read the documentation and other forum posts.

                            Bernd

                            • 11. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                              bernd.koecke

                              Hello,

                              sorry for the long delay. I had a lot of work to do and I tried to build the CDL-Project. Because of unresolved dependencies I had no success. But I'm no maven expert and I think I have some problems with my local repository, I will have a look at this. But because I don't have running examples, the following question about the CDL ESB-Actions may sound stupid:

                              From the WS-CDL-Spec I understand that CDL describes communication in a peer to peer manner. This means there is no explicit master. But CDL uses ESB-Actions and the whole choreography must or should be in one esb.xml file. But then I have a master. It is the ESB in which this esb.xml is deployed. Or is this esb file only used to validate the choreography? If this is the fact, why don't we use the XML-Notation from WS-CDL? Or is it possible to distribute one choreography among several ESBs?

                              Regards,
                              Bernd

                              • 12. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                                objectiser

                                Hi Bernd

                                As you have pointed out, the choreography represents a "global" view describing the behaviour of a distributed system.

                                Each ESB Service (i.e. jboss-esb.xml) containing the "conversation aware" ESB actions only represent one of the participants within the choreography.

                                So essentially the choreography is being used to ensure that each of the ESB services, which are associated with different participants within the choreography, will correctly inter-operate according to the choreography description. The "conversation aware" ESB actions make the behaviour of the individual ESB services explicit, and therefore make it possible to check it for conformance against the associated participant within the choreography.

                                Hope this clarifies the approach.

                                Regards
                                Gary

                                • 13. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                                  bernd.koecke

                                  Hi Gary,

                                  thanks for clarifing the design. I think the next step for me is to build cdl. I can't find a binary distribution, but now I have a self packaged one. I had some issues with the maven build. May be your are interested in the solutions:

                                  There is a dependency on org.jboss.jbossesb.rosetta:4.3. This wasn't found in the repositories. But I installed a renamed jbossesb-rosetta.jar from my JBossESB 4.4.GA in my local repository, added a simple pom.xml and changed the dependencies.

                                  Next, I can't find org.jboss.jbossesb.config-model, so I commented it out and the build seems to run without it.

                                  The last problem was a HeapSpace OutOfMemeory during the docbook run. I started with the default amount of memory and raised it up to 1GByte. It only lasts a little bit longer until the exception came up. It looks like an endless recursion or something like that, so I commented out the docbook run.

                                  Now I will look into the code and try to install it on my ESB cluster. I see that cdl uses a Hypersonic DB. Are there interests in using another DB, e.g. MySQL, as an alternative?

                                  Regards,
                                  Bernd

                                  • 14. Re: Starting SOA Governance in small steps
                                    objectiser

                                    Hi Bernd

                                    Yes we have the same problems when doing the build of the distribution, and have to install the dependencies in a local repository.

                                    In terms of the docbook problem, we set our MAVEN_OPTS environment variable to -Xms256M -Xmx512M and both Jeff Yu and I are able to build out - on windows and linux.

                                    Regarding the db - I will let Jeff respond to that, as it is more in his area.

                                    We are hoping to make a binary distribution available early November, but have not got a fixed date for this yet.

                                    Regards
                                    Gary

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