Evolution toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA)

A drastic increase in exchanges between heterogeneous information systems,
A rise in the number of third parties (suppliers, partners, colleagues, subsidiaries, or clients), accelerated calls for improvements in terms of functions: these are some of the emerging issues that any MIS must tackle. How can you address all these topics while controlling existing resources and rationalizing both costs and applications?

Today, service-oriented architectures (supported by technologies such as Java, C++, J2EE, .net, Web services) provide solutions, in terms of both the interoperability and reuse of developments, which come from source areas that are often heterogeneous.

The programming of ideally reusable components and the ability of teams to rediscover components that have already been engineered represent challenges for which there are no clear solutions. Multiple standards and architecture types, the complexity of codes that must be implemented to create components, and a lack of compliance between functional and technical skills represent just as many obstacles that can delay the return on investment that has been promised by these new service-oriented architectures.

These service-based developments require either existing functional applications that must migrate, be exposed, or be entirely redeveloped or existing internal or external services. These issues entail other concerns:

• How can existing services or their dependencies be identified?
• On which technical components does a business component depend?
• How can services be documented so that they can be understood by different sectors within the profession?
• How can the directory of shared services be published as a metamodel that is, in itself, evolutionary and not a mono technology (UDDI, ebXML, …)?
• How can all heterogeneous service technologies (e.g.: different versions of EJB WebLogic and EJB WebSphere, etc.) be understood?
• How can existing resources be analyzed prior to the redesigning process?
• How can technical and functional mapping be obtained for applications that you want to migrate? (MVS/Cobol, Natural/Adabas or GCOS applications?)
• How are the new components linked to the legacy?
  

becubic, the single repository

becubic™, the IT Assets Intelligence solution for information systems enables you to inventory and document any application and its associated services. The becubic repository is the fundamental element on which every service-based development approach must rely. This solution makes existing IT assets available to all key players involved in the development cycle with a view to reusing system components – regardless of whether they are called objects, components, services, or web services, even if they come from a variety of connected systems.

To develop more quickly using a comprehensive information system approach and to implement solutions in distributed architectures that pay off immediately, regardless of their standards, the becubic solution provides the market’s only industrial solution. It has been engineered to enable your enterprise to industrialize the reuse of its components-engineered internally or externally-while benefiting from work accomplished by teams that are geographically scattered and sometimes outsourced.

becubic’s advantages associated with the concept of reusability:

• reduction of costs of development
• reduction of the number of lines of source code
• reduction of development cycles
• reduction of maintenance costs
• increased adaptability for the development
• referencing and mutualization of professional components among various departments
  

becubic is the single IT assets repository for enterprises that is able to include nearly 100 environments, from mainframe components to distributed architectures. Only a multi-technology repository can respond so exhaustively to the way in which an evolution impacts an information system. Thanks to its active repository, becubic is designed to support the evolution of your information system toward distributed architectures and service-oriented architectures.

The becubic solution enables you to achieve the objective of development reusability by making your existing resources available.