Great questions, Dennis. Let me try to answer them (I will not represent an opinion of OASIS SOA RA TC in this case)
Business Fictionality is the business services, functions and features provided for consumers. For example, McDonald's produces and sells burgers, this is business functionality. The result of the McDonald's is, as expected, a number of sold burgers. The Real World Effect (RWE) of the McDonald's service is a number of replete people, and a number of sold burgers. In this case, the replete people are not necessary only those who bought the burgers from McDonald's but those who ate them. Sometimes, the RWE is the same as the service result but sometimes it is a bit different 'animal'. Another example, a Credit Calculation Engine Service (CCES) calculates a credit transaction exposure and places it into a data store. This CCES performs the calculations in response to a Business Process Orchestration Service, but the latter is not interested in the results. Another service, e.g., Netting Service retrieves exposures collected for the day in the data store and performs netting calculations. That is, the CCES' RWE may be expressed in the number of calculated exposures AND in providing Netting Service with input information ( the CCES could store its results in the non-shared data store, leaving the Netting Service with nothing). If we deal with business services (in Business and Technology), it makes sense to analyse the service outcomes in architecture as RWE. If we deal with infrastructural technical services, the the service outcome becomes equivalent to service result much more frequently. But, still, let's take an Entitlement On-boarding Service - it works exclusively for the future entitlement control services and does not respond to its caller, i.e. we deal with RWE again. I hope my comments were not that muggy - Michael ________________________________ From: Dennis Djenfer <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:50:48 PM Subject: Re: [service-orientated-architecture] Joe on SOA without service-enabled apps >Michael Poulin wrote: >One SOA service differs from another SOA service by two attributes values only: Business Functionality promised but >the service to be realized and Real World Effect (RWE), which can be viewed as a service result. So, why don't we just call it "service result" instead of using the confusing term "real world effect"? Also, what is the difference between "business functionality" and "service result" (the two attributes you are referring to)? Isn't the service result just part of the business functionality? // Dennis Djenfer
