Enterprise architecture is closely related to information technology. In this article, I will describe a simplified top-down enterprise architecture in SOA (Service-oriented Architecture) environment, focusing on information technology, in order to achieve the best alignment between business and IT.
I will introduce
Different concerns of top-down enterprise architecture; Summarize the target method of enterprise architecture and its relationship with BEA SOA domain model; Through this article, you will be able to understand the advantages of top-down enterprise architecture driven by business strategy and related organizational considerations.
Different concerns of top-down enterprise archITecture In the top-down way, from business to it, it is necessary to separate different concerns of business and IT in different plans, and then lay a foundation between them. The basis of business-related planning is called business process planning, and IT-related planning is called application planning, and the planning between them is called function planning, which is also the most meaningful part of this method, because IT aims to provide the best match between business and IT. If you want to describe hardware, network, operating system, application server and database, you can introduce the concept of technical planning. I don't intend to describe the technical planning in detail, because my main purpose is to recommend a method to achieve the best alignment between IT and business on an open basis.
The chart describes these plans and their interrelationships, and I will introduce them in detail.
Different concerns of top-down enterprise architecture
Business Process Planning This planning focuses on business processes in a business strategic environment. An enterprise architecture that can work closely with different business lines in an organization can start with the business requirements defined by the business strategy and can model the main business processes of the enterprise. For example, enterprise architecture can achieve this goal at the design level through AquaLogic BPM Designer, which will help architects understand the overall main processes in the enterprise and do more. The participation of sales representatives can also be promoted in this way. Using AquaLogic BPM Designer, business analysts can simulate business processes and provide optimization measures when the processes are reversed. Business process planning belongs to the business itself. The main task of all architects is to obtain business requirements and confirm the same business services that can be used by different business lines in the organization.
Taking the banking business environment as an example, we should first design various banking business processes (such as loan import/export operations). These two banks have completely different business processes, but they also enjoy some of the same services. * * * Confirm the same service by designing the process at the organizational level. To some extent, authorization system and accounting system should be able to be reused in different processes, such as the process of issuing letters of credit (LC) or the process of loan approval. It should be possible to use two methods.
After the functional planning and design of the important processes of the organization, the main functional blocks can be determined. Function blocks provide business services that can be reused in different business processes. Business services are also ideal building blocks for SOA. These services should also be reused and reorganized to provide the agility required by the business. When selecting these functional blocks and data to be shared between functional blocks, business lines should provide enterprise architects with enough business knowledge so that the whole organization can reuse and understand the standardized data model domain UML model and data repository. After that, you need to add business to the plan.
This universal method should bring a universal language and classification that can be enjoyed by the whole organization. The definitions of universal entity and universal domain model make their meanings universal in the organization and can be reused by different business lines. This plan is like a city plan, which organizes functional building blocks into regions and zones related to different business lines in the organization.
A common language is very helpful for the reuse of functional components and data sharing among these components. Standardized models should be managed in enterprise repositories. Design access verification and modification methods of these models should be defined. I will elaborate on these considerations later in this article.
Back to the example of a bank, in this organization, there should be one business line to handle payment, foreign currency exchange and mortgage, another business line to handle loans, a third business line to handle import/export business, such as letter of credit (LC) and collection, and a horizontal business line to handle authorized accounting reports and risk management. If urban planning is used as an analogy, every business line can be regarded as a special zone.
Further observing the import and export business lines, we will also find that the functional blocks related to LC and collection respectively can be subdivided into different services that LC should provide. This block should provide functions (or services), such as issuing letters of credit, modifying letters of credit, using letters of credit and repaying letters of credit, which are all business services of LC block. These services will depend on the functions provided by the authorization block accounting block and payment block.
The authorization module will grant the customer a credit line according to the customer's status. The authorization block may depend on the function of the risk management block. The LC function will also use the services provided by the accounting block and the payment block, and the payment block will use the functions of the accounting block and the authorization block.
The description of functional planning uses business terms and subdivides them so that they can be mapped to applications and services in applications. In the bank example environment, accounting services and authorization services are reused at the organizational level.
After determining these functional building blocks, it is necessary to define the communication between these blocks, that is to say, to form a standardized data model, which can be described by UML model. UML model brings XML representation of data, and this common language should be shared throughout the organization.
Take the bank as an example. No matter whether the account is used in the LC block or the loan block, the customer is the same, and both the account and the customer are entities defined in the cross-organization * * * shared business model. These entities are represented by two standard models, one for account data and the other for customer data. These models can be shared by the whole organization or by the public as part of the building blocks of the organization. The service that accesses these services can be CRUD (Create Retrieve Update Delete). Services can also be combined services. The best way to define the standard model is to refer to the industry standard banking system and use the SWIFT standard. The MT message defined in the SWIFT standard manual defines the banking business at the business use case level. These messages can be easily mapped into XML messages that can be used throughout the organization. It is very helpful to extend the business operations used in a single organization to B2B operations among multiple organizations.
There are more information about service design modeling and runtime concerns in Quinton Wall's Understanding Service Lifecycle Design in SOA and Understanding Service Lifecycle Runtime in SOA.
After defining the function block and the data model used in the block, these assets should be reused by different business lines in the enterprise repository, and BEA Aqualogic Enterprise Repository can be used to * * * enjoy enterprise information assets.
Application and Implementation Planning As I mentioned, functional building blocks are ideal for SOA building blocks. Using the top-down method to determine the service will bring a better match between business requirements and IT.
The service implementation in application planning will depend on the type of service and the relationship between service and different SOA layers, including presentation and composition layer, business service layer and data access layer or connection layer.
When choosing the right products to implement these modules, we should be extra careful, and we should consider the organizational environment, such as existing applications and technical limitations. When choosing implementation, application planning and technical planning are inseparable. In an ideal situation, BEA WebLogic Integration is a good choice for system-to-system processes. BEA AquaL is used for design and process redesign in business process planning. Ogic BPM is an ideal choice for manually driven processes. BEA WebLogic Portal is very suitable for WSRP development and * * * work of the whole organization. Enjoy the presentation layer, and then promote the reuse of the presentation layer and portal alliance. AquaLogic Data Services is an ideal tool for data access layer, and AquaLogic Service Bus is very suitable for communication between applications. In the actual environment, these choices depend on the existing assets and requirements in the organization, and the reference architecture should be considered in the organizational environment.
An organization's reference architecture can provide best practices and blueprints on how to implement each building block according to the layer and service to which it belongs. In the reference architecture, communication diagrams between services will also be defined and displayed. An example of a reference architecture defined for an organization is given. This figure also describes the definition of SOA layer reference architecture needed to realize the functions of the organization and build block services through appropriate products. This model can be used to realize the building blocks of each SOA layer in the organizational environment through processes involving the appropriate business and IT layers.
Reference architecture of graph organization
The reference architecture should help promote the best practice guidelines and design principles defined by the management team. The architecture should use standardized models and classifications defined in functional planning. I will discuss the management team later.
The goal of enterprise architecture is to adopt a global approach from the business needs of the organization. The main goal of enterprise architecture is to create a reuse atmosphere with the help of a common language, as shown in the figure. This goal should be achieved step by step, not by drastic changes. A management team should be established to manage different categories, global business and strategy categories, information system categories and project categories, and promote reuse throughout the organization through appropriate tool support.
Describe the objectives of the enterprise architecture
The management team should create and maintain assets that reflect the current state of the organization, such as existing functional modules, which have a global description of the current state, which will be very helpful to determine the silo of the current information system, and should also consider the road map when defining the target state.
In order to apply the road map to the target management team, we should intervene at the beginning of the project and provide guiding principles, implementation regulations and best practices for the whole organization.
The guiding principles, policy classifications, enterprise specifications, data models, data repositories, best practices, reusable assets and other guidelines that the management team needs to define and maintain will involve all business lines and IT.
Global business and strategic scope enterprise architecture should be able to coordinate IT and organizational strategies, and it should be able to easily adapt to the constant changes of business, which requires that business architecture and guiding principles must finally form the functional building blocks needed to combine and decompose business flows.
The information system enterprise architecture team can refer to the existing functional building blocks, and can also define new functional building blocks needed for business processing. As defined by the global business category in business process planning, the information system category is related to functional planning and should be able to provide the correct level of abstraction in a language that can be understood by business and IT.
Information system assets are defined in functional planning, including communication between functional applications, standardized enterprise data model, common language classification and data repository. Access to these assets should be defined and controlled.
The work in functional planning should correspond to the application in application planning, and various standards and product support should be determined together with the aspects covered by each application.
At the operational level, most measures of the project should be implemented in the form of projects to ensure the successful application of the Guiding Principles and Rules. Architects from the management team should ensure that the detailed technical requirements and project architecture are consistent with the guiding principles, strategies and common language of the enterprise. If the blueprint of architecture can be applied to deliverable projects in the early stage of investment, the possibility of meeting the demand and delivering on time, on budget and with high quality will increase significantly. Only in this way can the project provide new SOA building blocks that can be reused throughout the organization.
Applying global drive strategy to new projects is an evolutionary scheme to achieve the goal, and the process is smooth rather than explosive.
Enterprise architecture repository management access to enterprise common model definitions should be globally available in order to develop a common enterprise language. Without a common language, it is impossible to effectively manage reusable information system assets. This repository should be accessible to the entire organization and managed by the management team. It should provide an extended view of assets and metadata. Bea Aqualogic Enterprise Repository is an excellent tool to support enterprise architecture.
Methodology Overview An excellent way to design an enterprise architecture is to describe the current status of each of the above plans, as shown in the figure, which will help to assess the gap between business and IT, identify shortcomings, and then define a roadmap to achieve the goals. Methodology is actually to analyze the different plans described at the beginning of this paper to evaluate the current state and define the target state.
Overview of chart method
Current Status (Existing) The evaluation of the current status can be achieved by top-down, bottom-up or a mixture of the two methods, and the definition of the current status can be carried out on each plan.
Starting from the business process, the common work should be realized by the business line and IT*** to define the current state of the business process. Modeling these processes with AquaLogic BPM Designer can provide a * * * common foundation for architects and business representatives. You can draw enhanced graphics by using AquaLogic BPM bit business processes and simulating possibilities.
Starting from the existing application, it will determine the existing functional blocks with it, so that duplicate functions can appear in the silo and be identified.
Once the silo application is determined, the method of eliminating silos through service exposure should be defined in the target state.
The target state should be defined in a top-down way, which is recommended because it is based on business requirements and can provide reusable business building blocks.
Starting from the business process, this paper uses AquaLogic BMP Designer to model the optimized future state process, and then determines the functional blocks to provide the required services for the combination and decomposition of business processes. Remember, in functional planning, only business and IT can accomplish the same task together.
After the roadmap, define the roadmap to achieve the goal of intermediate approval status. This roadmap should be considered when defining the common language specification model data repository. Intermediate verification steps should include business and IT.
The reference architecture is planned at some stages of the road map. Of course, the planning of reference architecture can be done at any time, but you should not wait until all enterprise assets are defined before preparing reference architecture. Effective assets should be constantly adjusted according to new business requirements (new functional blocks will involve new implementation methods). As mentioned above, its goal is to give instructions on how to do it according to the existing reusable assets of enterprises and the technologies that should be adopted. With the continuous development, the examination architecture office provides the best way to realize new projects in the organizational environment, with the goal of enhancing reusability at some point.
The management team is the most important team involved in the road map, because the team can use the assets it generates to participate in the whole new project process and focus on providing the agility needed by the business. The management team should include a group of enterprise architects with different professional backgrounds, so that they can pay attention to one of them to varying degrees. The management team should focus on both technology and business. The management team can be composed of senior architects from different business lines and senior architects from IT, which makes the team have the necessary qualifications to lead the overall situation.
The task of the management team is difficult to achieve in some circumstances, so it is necessary to provide strong assistance. The role of the management team is a bit like an alchemist. He is committed to finding the right formula to promote appropriate changes. There are many articles in this field, such as David groves and steve bennett's Successful Planning SOA, Successful Planning SOA, Building Your SOA Roadmap and Successful Planning SOA for Long-term SOA Planning. Please pay attention to change management before applying the road map.
Relationship with BEA SOA domain model The way described here starts with business strategies and processes, and forms applications through functional building blocks, all of which can be realized through common enterprise language and reference architecture, which can provide blueprints for new projects and applications. In the functional planning, I introduced various aspects that the organization needs to deal with in order to maintain a structured view and successfully expose assets that can be used throughout the enterprise.
In the environment of using SOA as enterprise architecture, senior SOA architects need to avoid the common problem of high cost. These architects should work with the organization's management team to provide the required skills and help the management team build a successful SOA. SOA can be driven globally as an enterprise or locally in a project, which can provide management and guidance for the project, thus providing higher consistency and better return on investment for SOA. This will reduce the maintenance cost of the application in production and enhance its reusability.
BEA provides a domain model that can be used to deal with enterprise architecture. The model covers the planning described above (and more) through six aspects, and provides a method to successfully realize SOA, as shown in the figure.
BEA domain model of graph
BEA SOA is a practical enterprise architecture, which involves all aspects of information technology. BEA has provided services and training for all six aspects, and organized them effectively, so that you can realize SOA to meet the needs of your organization.
At the beginning, you may want to refer to the BEA SOA Readiness Assets * * * ENT report, which can help you define the current state and is a good starting point for introducing SOA into your organization. You can get the evaluation report of SOA by participating in the survey of SOA Resource Center.
Conclusion This paper shows the top-down enterprise architecture, introduces the management concerns needed to obtain global reusability across organizations, emphasizes the necessity of the organization's reference architecture, and defines the enterprise repository to promote this global approach.
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? About the author Gabriel Bechara Gabriel Bechara has worked in BEA Consulting Services for more than two years. Gabriel helps customers use BEA products, such as WebLogic Server Portal and Integration. Gabriel's interests include defining software architecture methods, using products in development teams, and providing services that will respond. The simplest way to push the program into production mainly focuses on the methods related to WebLogic integration and SOA. Gabriel has been working in the software industry for more than a year. Gabriel lives in Li Shi Xin Zhi/article/program/Java/ky/201311/28398 in Paris Chinatown.