Re: [alf-dev] ALF in perspective

[Suzanne Yoakum-Stover <systover@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mohana, and Tim,

Thank you so much for sharing your insight.  This really helps!

Best,

Suzi



On Monday 12 September 2005 01:38 am, Krishna, Mohana (Cognizant) wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I too had this confusion to begin with, especially with regard to ALF
> being an "integration framework", and hence not surprised by the
> question raised by Suzi.
>
> After being plugged in to the project for sometime now, my understanding
> is crystallizing that the framework that ALF provides is for integration
> of the various tools that participate over the development lifecycle of
> application(s) - from concept to fully operational (as opposed to
> integration of the applications themselves) . To the framework (ALF),
> the first-class participants are the tools, and the application(s) under
> development/operation are only incidental. In other words, ALF treats
> applications as "meta" objects and leaves it to the individual tools to
> deal with their specific attributes such as their technologies,
> languages, interfaces, etc. It would be a mere coincidence if some of
> the technologies/techniques (OO/J2EE/XML/web services/BPEL...) used for
> integration of the tools are identical/similar to those used in
> construction/ integration/orchestration of the applications. The
> business logic and business process implemented by the applications is a
> non-concern for the individual tools, and even more so for ALF.
>
> I am assuming that this in line with Tim's response below, but only
> coming from a perspective that closer to Suzi's.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Mohana,
> Cognizant Technology Solutions.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Tim Buss
> Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 5:50 AM
> To: systover@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; ALF Developer Mailing List
> Subject: RE: [alf-dev] ALF in perspective
>
> Suzi,
>
> Thank you for your interest.
>
> I couldn't find this message as a post on the ALF Newsgroup but I think
> that is a better place for this kind of discussion.  Newsgroups are
> better at threading discussions.  I encourage you to participate in that
> Newsgroup if you have general questions about ALF.  Look on
> http://www.eclipse.org/alf/ ALF is an eclipse  "Technology Project"
>
> To address your question, J2EE is a general programming platform.  While
> it can be used for integration it can also be used for many other
> purposes.
>
> The aim of ALF is to provide a common platform around which tools in the
> Application Lifecycle world can interoperate.  Since there is a broad
> mix of tools, platform independence is paramount.  Web services offer
> the best chance at this and are the only mechanism that the software
> industry at large has agreed on as a platform independent mechanism.
> Hence the "blind rush" you mentioned.
>
> ALF includes some level of process through the orchestration of web
> services (BPEL) to provide higher value coordinated services.  This
> provides a common platform intended to solve the essential integration
> problems.  ALF does not address the Lifecycle Process directly or
> provide tools to do that.  Vendors that participate in ALF will fulfill
> that need using ALF as the underlying mechanism to coordinate the tools
> that participate across the lifecycle.  Without something like ALF that
> is hard to do.
>
> I am not sure what distinction you are making between business and
> development lifecycles.  Clearly ALF is not intended to address such
> things as loan application fulfillment.  However, it is intended to
> address the business end of application lifecycles, requirements
> gathering being the most obvious example.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tim Buss
> Serena Inc.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Suzanne Yoakum-Stover
> Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 9:09 AM
> To: alf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [alf-dev] ALF in perspective
>
> Fellows,
>
> I first learned about ALF from a great talk given by Brian Carroll and
> Kevin Parker of Serena (www.serena.com) at Eclipse World in August
> (http://www.eclipseworld.net/).   I immediately became interested
> because my
> work is  turning toward the integration of disparate, often stove-piped
> systems in order to support better information propagation and sharing
> as
> well as to leverage those systems to build new processes and
> capabilities.
>
> Looking through the information on the ALF project page
> (http://www.eclipse.org/alf/), I was caught by the statement that "ALF
> is SOA for developers," and began to wonder whether I got the wrong
> impression.
>
> Perhaps someone on this list can set me straight.
>
> What I'm looking for is some perspective on where ALF fits in to the
> variety of existing and emerging integration technologies.  In
> particular, I'd like to better understand the domain and range, if you
> will, of J2EE, web services, semantic web technologies, SOA, and of
> course, ALF.
>
> My current understanding is that J2EE is an integration technology for
> legacy systems and especially DBs, any of which may be remote.  J2EE
> provides the plumbing for hooking up those systems and encapsulates the
> business process management in some sort of java class or perhaps using
> a BPEL engine.
>
> As I understand it, web services simply expose application services on
> the web
> in an implementation independent way.   These services could well
> include
> ones provided by J2EE systems.
>
> SOA adds mechanisms for automatic service discovery and negotiation.
> For this to really be mechanized (i.e. without requiring a human to
> interpret the metadata), we need machine processable vocabularies (say
> RDF), ontologies (in say OWL), and ideally, the rest of the semantic web
> technology stack (logic,
> proof, trust).
>
> In contrast to J2EE which is server-centric and server-bound, SOA is
> process-centric and hardware-unbound.
>
> Today, I see a lot of effort going in to building J2EE systems for
> integrating
> DBs, and an almost blind rush to turn everything into web services.
> What I
> have not seen much about is the process management piece that would
> enable everything in a work flow.  I thought ALF might be such a thing,
> but the emphasis in ALF seems to be on the development rather than the
> business lifecycle.
>
> I apologize for the long email and look forward to your comments,
>
> Suzi
>
>
>
> --
> Suzanne Yoakum-Stover, Ph.D.
> Sr. Computational Scientist
> SAIC
> 6359 Walker Lane
> Alexandria, VA 22310
> (703) 253-1208
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-- 
Suzanne Yoakum-Stover, Ph.D.
Sr. Computational Scientist
SAIC
6359 Walker Lane
Alexandria, VA 22310
(703) 253-1208