OfficeObjects®Service Broker - a software supporting the organization’s activity through providing Internet services enabling group work and business processes, corporate knowledge and electronic documents management. The system enables the creation and and integration of IT system in SOA architecture and implementation of the composite services in Internet portals.
One of the actual challenges facing informatics is surveying a gap between the customers’ needs and the services provided by existing IT systems, specially supporting a public administration. In general, accomplishment of the users’ demands requires execution of several single services provided by distributed IT systems. The services must be processes in defined sequences, using appropriate data and meeting different variants and exceptions.
Taking advantages of the composite services seems to be the most promising direction. This conception relays on a definition of the composite services based on several single services. Usually a definition of the composite services is introduced as a business process, including invocations of respective services offered by existing systems called also atomic services. The atomic services are offered by different providers, organizations or public institutions. Thanks to aggregation into the composite services the users’ requirements are easier to serve, the proficiency in procedures and rules is not crucial for successful execution. Now, the stress is put on real needs, processed data and expected results.
OfficeObjects®Service Broker is software solution dedicated to manage the composite services. Its functionality allows to register new atomic service, define new composite service, execution of composite service by powering in appropriate sequence with selected atomic services data, in the framework of the secured enterprise service bus. The main advantages of this solution are flexibility and generics of the defined composite services. These features are supported by usage of generic workflow processes offered by the OfficeObjects®WorkFlow, and by elastic parameterization of processes by application of knowledge about a service and its environment (an ontology) defined with the OfficeObjects®Ontology Manager product.
OfficeObjects®Service Broker solution enables to manage the composite services offering the generous set of functionalities, accessible via the following interfaces: for registration, definition,searching, filtration, execution, monitoring and administration of services. These interfaces are approachable as Java interfaces (basic interface), remote interfaces (SOAP commands) and a user interface based on the WWW portal framework. The solution consists of the following modules and tools:
Service Register – the module responsible for registration, publication and removing of the atomic services and the composite services. Registered atomic services are specified in the Web Service Description Language (WSDL). This specification (characteristics of input data, denotation of a service, categorization, characteristic of output data – results), is represented in a system’s ontology according to the Topics Maps standard (ISO13250) using the OfficeObjects®Ontology Manager module. The composite services are defines as business processes. These processes are modeled and defined in the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) with the Process Designer tool – one of the OfficeObjects®WorkFlow’s components. Entire processes are described in the Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WS BPEL). The composite services are offered as executable web services and information about them are published as WSDL files and entries in a UDDI server (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration).
Service Execution Engine– this module is responsible for execution of ordered services on data included in a query/request provided by a user. This module bases on the OfficeObjects®WorkFlow’s engine. The module executes the composite services like WS BPEL expressed processes by initiation of the respective atomic services through communication layer. Additionally, for the composite services, this module concretize a single generic process by evaluation of accompanying atomic services and, if possible, removing useless process paths. Started services are stored in a repository based on the OfficeObjects®Intelligent Content Manager product which provides functionalities as follows: storage of information objects, version management, internationalization, categorization, structural and full text searching, and binary objects management.
Portal – a user Web interface enabling to watch the hierarchy of services, initiating of services, monitoring of service status, monitoring of history of service execution, execution of manual activities on composite services, etc. An interaction of a user with a system is done in friendly-user way thanks to implementation of the electronic forms defined by the OfficeObjects®e-Forms product. This portal environment provides flexible configuration of layout and placement of icons in the user interface and enables for integration of many different solutions (portlets) into a single portal.
Communication layer – the module responsible for transparent execution of an atomic service, independently from a type of a service (i.e. a web service, a service accessible via SOAP, a service based on Enterprise Java Beans technology), transport protocol (i.e. HTTP, or JMS) or evoking mode (synchronous, asynchronous). This layer is implements by set of adapters for respective protocols, types of services and invoking modes basing on WS Interoperability.
Service administration and execution console – this module supports monitoring of service executions and relevant administrative activities (i.e. process termination). The monitoring and administrative functionalities are realized by the OfficeObjects®WorkFlow product. It offers a process execution’s history in a graphical and textual form as well as an administrative processes’ console.
Designer environment – the module acts as an Internet application enabling for definition of the composite services. It supports registration of the composite services, specification of an ontology, business processes, electronic forms, etc. Changes occurred in a designer environment influence the execution layer immediate (on-line). This Model driven approach enables for the definition of new services and modification of pre-existing services without necessity to code, built , changes in a database’s structure or restart of a system.
The areas of application:
