Enterprise services application program development model

• US 20040177335A1
• Filed: 03/04/2003
• Published: 09/09/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2003
• Status: Active Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Beisiegel, Michael, Delfino, Jean-Sebastien, Przybylski, Piotr
• Application Number:
  US10/378,972
• Publication Number:
  US 20040177335A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/102
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A development model for architecting enterprise systems presents a service-oriented approach which leverages open standards to represent virtually all software assets as services including legacy applications, packaged applications, J2EE components or web services. This approach provides developers with a standard way of representing and interacting with parts of a business application without having to spend time working with unique interfaces and low-level APIs. Furthermore, individual business application components become building blocks that can be reused in developing other applications. Using the service-oriented approach to integration in accordance with the present invention reduces the complexity, cost, and risk of integration by providing a single, simple architectural framework based on Web Services in which to build, deploy, and manage application functionality. In one aspect, a services toolkit for an integrated development environment is introduced to facilitate development in accordance with the model.

Claims

1. A method for architecting an enterprise application comprising:

creating one or more services that define said enterprise application, each service created in accordance with a service definition modeling one of a plurality service providers having one of a plurality of service provider types, the service definition conforming to a standard common for differing service provider types; and

deploying the one or more services, each deployed in accordance with an access definition sufficient to access the service;

wherein said differing service provider types comprise at least two types selected from;

access protocols;

software assets;

resource adapted EIS services;

a flow composition defining a service from one or more other services; and

a transformer mapping one or more input messages of a particular service to an output message of the particular service.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the service definition comprises a service interface definition and a service implementation definition and wherein the step of creating comprises, for each service:

generating a service interface definition modeling the interface of the service provider; and

generating a service implementation definition describing an implementation of the service interface and the location of the implementation.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the service interface definition and service implementation definition comprise separate documents.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the documents conform to the WSDL standard.

5. The method of claim 2 including the step of publishing the service interface definition and access definition to facilitate creating a client application to use the deployed service.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of deploying comprises adapting the deployed service for operation on an application server.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step of:

defining a service proxy for accessing the deployed service.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the service proxy is defined from a portion of the service definition describing an interface to the service and the access definition for accessing the deployed service.

9. A services toolkit for architecting an enterprise service comprising:

a service creation component for creating one or more services that define said enterprise application, each service created in accordance with a service definition modeling one of a plurality service providers having one of a plurality of service provider types, the service definition conforming to a standard common for differing service provider types, the differing service provider types comprising at least two types selected from;

access protocols;

software assets;

resource adapted EIS services;

flow compositions, each flow defining a service from one or more other services; and

transformers each transformer mapping one or more input messages of a particular service to an output message of the particular service; and

a service deployment component for deploying the one or more services, each deployed in accordance with an access definition sufficient to access the service;

wherein the services toolkit is adapted to communicate with an integrated development environment to assist with architecting the enterprise application.

10. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the service creation component comprising one or more tools to assist with the creation of the service definition for each service provider type.

11. The services toolkit of claim 10 comprising a service provider browser to facilitate a selection of a service provider type to create the service definition.

12. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the service definition comprises a service interface definition and wherein the service creation component comprises:

a service definition editor for generating a service interface definition modeling the interface of the service provider.

13. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the service definition comprises a service implementation definition and wherein the service creation component comprises:

at least one service implementation editor for generating a service implementation definition describing an implementation of a service interface of the service and a location of the implementation.

14. The services toolkit of claim 13 wherein one of the at least one service implementation editors comprises a flow editor for generating flow compositions graphically.

15. The services toolkit of claim 13 wherein one of the at least one service implementation editors comprises a transformer editor for defining data transformations in accordance with a standard therefor.

16. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the service definition comprises a service interface definition and a service implementation definition defined by separate documents.

17. The services toolkit of claim 16 wherein the documents are XML documents.

18. The services toolkit of claim 17 wherein the XML documents conform to the WSDL standard.

19. The services toolkit of claim 9 including a tool for at least one of importing and exporting the service definition to facilitate creating at least one of a service and a client application to use the service.

20. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the service deployment component comprises a tool for adapting the deployed service for operation on an application server.

21. The services toolkit of claim 9 comprising:

a service proxy wizard for creating a service proxy to access the deployed service.

22. The services toolkit of claim 21 wherein the service proxy wizard is operable with the access definition and the service definition to generate the service proxy.

23. The services toolkit of claim 9 comprising a service skeleton wizard to at least partially generate a service provider from a service definition.

24. The services toolkit of claim 9 wherein the enterprise application is operable in a J2EE environment.

25. The services toolkit of claim 24 wherein the access protocols are selected from protocols operable to invoke Java based components;

wherein the software assets are selected from Java based software components; and

wherein the resource adapters are selected from resource adaptors operable in accordance with Java based connector standards.

26. A computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium for providing instructions and data to a computer system executing an integrated development environment (IDE) for architecting an enterprise service application, said instructions and data defining a services toolkit that, when operated on said computer system, adapts said IDE to:

create one or more services that define said enterprise application, each service created in accordance with a service definition modeling one of a plurality service providers having one of a plurality of service provider types, the service definition conforming to a standard common for differing service provider types; and

deploy the one or more services, each deployed in accordance with an access definition sufficient to access the service;

wherein the differing service provider types comprise at least two types selected from;

access protocols;

software assets;

resource adapted EIS services;

flow compositions, each flow defining a service from one or more other services; and

transformers each transformer mapping one or more input messages of a particular service to an output message of the particular service.

27. An integrated development environment (IDE) for architecting an enterprise service comprising:

first means for describing a service interface to a service;

second means for describing a service implementation to the service, said service implementation binding the service interface to one of a plurality service providers having one of a plurality of service provider types, the second means conforming to a standard common for differing service provider types, the differing service provider types comprising at least two types selected from;

access protocols;

software assets;

resource adapted EIS services;

flow compositions, each flow defining a service from one or more other services; and

transformers each transformer mapping one or more input messages of a particular service to an output message of the particular service;

third means for generating a service from said first and second means;

fourth means for describing a protocol sufficient to access the service; and

fifth means for deploying the service in accordance with the fourth means.

28. The IDE of claim 27 wherein the first, second and fourth means comprise XML-based documents.