SOA Modeling Patterns for Service-Oriented Discovery and Analysis

Chapter 17. CONTEXTUAL CONTRACTION ANALYSIS PROCESS AND MODELING PATTERNS

Contextual contraction is the process of reducing a service's offerings due to lack of interest in its continued business or technological value proposition. This is simply about rolling back a service's operations, reducing its reusability rates, and, as a result, trimming its consumer scope. The exposure of the service to departments, divisions, or enterprise partners diminishes as well.^[95] A decline in market demand, outdated technologies, and rising maintenance costs are the chief drivers for the contextual contraction effort. Recall that this activity is not a physical cutback of service inventories; nor is the implementation a major subject to modification. The contextual activity of this operation is conceptual by nature, and the final artifact should serve as an analysis proposition that can be utilized in future design, architecture, and construction initiatives. This is a modeling exercise that takes place on paper, ahead of any tangible manipulation of a service's structure or alteration of its environment.^[96]

Indeed, planning the reduction of a service's involvement in the execution of organizational missions will clearly affect its reusability factor because of its shrinking exposure to enterprise applications, organizations, or partners. But here software reuse is not the major goal. Two chief drivers can motivate architects, modelers, analysts, developers, or managers to pursue the contextual ...