SOA Modeling Patterns for Service-Oriented Discovery and Analysis

Chapter 15. CONTEXTUAL SPECIFICATION ANALYSIS PROCESS AND MODELING PATTERNS

Contextual specification is the process of reducing the abstraction level of a service. This "degeneralization" activity both narrows service functionality boundaries and decreases the scope of operations.^[86] Furthermore, the specification method is designed to trim the capacity of a service and limit its responsibilities by downsizing its contextual aspects. Reduction of contextual aspects means that the service will offer a smaller part of the solution and thus alleviate a narrower portion of the problem. Creating a new service and avoiding applying changes to the originating entity, the core service, would be the preferred specification method.

Remember, the contextual specification process is not about service decomposition and certainly not about breaking down software assets. Here the chief concern is simply the reduction of a service abstraction level to smaller manageable units, each of which is created to partially preserve attributes of the originating core service. The term "reduction" pertains to three major aspects of specification: service naming, functionality, and specialty. Understand these three influencing factors on a service's contextual scope can affect service design and architecture considerations and have implications for future production environments.

CONTEXTUAL SPECIFICATION PROCESS

The contextual specification of a service is driven by three major contributing factors:

1. The service ...