my presentation on SOA for libraries at DLF Fall Forum 2007

Overall I think it went very well, the room was packed (to my considerable surprise) and I got good questions from the audience - for once actually too many questions for my allotted time, so I unfortunately stole 10 minutes from Chris Mackie, whose presentation followed mine.

The slides are up on Slideshare, they were done in Apple Keynote, in case you're wondering.

http://www.slideshare.net/scilib/serviceoriented-architecture-for-libraries/

All of the links and background info for the presentation are available at

http://www.connotea.org/user/scilib/tag/dlf2007akerman

The following is not the actual narrative, but it gives you enough to follow the (mostly conceptual) slides:

I started with a great quote via Katherine Kott of DLF Aquifer, from the previous night's session on collaboration, stating that we need "vision translated into operational success".

Service-Oriented Architecture addresses problems in technology planning,
design and implementation.
First, we must understand what some of these problems are.
Fundamentally, technology implements the desires of the organisation.

Too often we focus on our immediate desires ("What do you want") rather
than long-term planning.
This has meant we get what we asked for (e.g. incremental catalogue
interface changes) rather than what is best for the organisation
(transformed catalogue)

In order to better align our implementations with our goals, CISTI uses
an SOA derived from our Enterprise Architecture.  In our EA methodology,
we start with business needs (Who are you?), and only then proceed to
identifying the gaps to be filled.  But you must look beyond the current
state (Why are you here?  Where are you going?)

So what are the transformational challenges we face?

In a way, we are in a fantastic world for the traditional goal of a
library - ubiquitous, zero-cost, perfect copies of information.  No more
scribes devoting their lives to copying a few books.  But this has
tremendous implications in terms of preservation, versioning, citation
etc.

Also, there are major changes in moving from a physical world where we
engineer bridges, to a virtual world where we "engineer" software.
Software doesn't have most of the constraints that apply in the physical
world, and we have to be careful with analogies to physical objects.  It
would make very little sense (except perhaps to a US Senator) to build
half a bridge, or a bridge that goes nowhere.  But in the software
world, building components, even if they are only part of an overall
goal, can be extremely useful.  And software is not location constrained
- it can be accessed from any location - there should be no "software to
nowhere".  The network is everywhere, and we need to understand how that
transforms our systems design.

So how do we apply the notions of architecture that we understand from
the physical world, and that have for centuries and continue today to
enable us to build very complex structures with many components (heat,
lighting, electrictiy, plumbing, etc.)

Well, we can use the idea of modeling.  Just as we make models of
physical objects, we can make models of business processes.  But we must
ensure that we don't get stuck in our models or frameworks, and do move
to implementation at some point.

CISTI has found that its methodology, which is focused on getting to the
implementation framework, and beyond that to design and development, has
been invaluable for turning business ideas into implemented software.
We are fortunate in that we are a library with substantial in-house
technology resources, including a dedicated architecture team (the only
library EA team in the world??)

SIDEBAR: I met the Head of eArchitecture for the British Library at my presentation, so now I think I should say "one of the very few library EA teams in the world".  END SIDEBAR

This structure may be different for
academic organisations, with faculty groups that have departmental IT,
central IT, and academic consortia.

Within this larger mehtodological framework, SOA is an approach to
identifying "servicifiable" functions in the organisation, and building
larger service offerings from various combinations of services.

In the architecture analysis phase, CISTI models all of our
technology-related activities, at a high-level this model describes all
the technology-supported activities, with functions such as "provide
library service" that then decompose down into many many lower-level
models.

Recently we have been specifically modeling a Trusted Digital
Repository, using the OAIS model and converting and adapting it.

This EA modeling work then leads to the derivation of SOA services
[depending on audience profile I may talk a lot on this slide about the
details of SOA, or not].

CISTI has used and is using SOA successfully as the foundation of
various projects - this is not just theory.

SOA is also not an agility-killer bureaucracy - services actually
provide pieces that can be used for small experiments, while
simultaneously moving the organisation in its stated general direction.

Ideally, we should all be collaborating on SOA, rather than building SOA
silos.  I have blogged a lot about this, but with little response.  Are
the individual framework groups only talking amongst themselves?  How
can we use their efforts most effectively?

SOA is certainly being explored in many areas of the library space,
including various digital library initiatives and modeling efforts (some
of which will be presented in other forum sessions).

SOA also offers the possibility of improving the catalogue by breaking
it into component services, and enabling the sort of simple layers
(widgets, mashups, javascripty stuff) by providing sustainable,
well-architected underlying service capabilities.

For academic libraries in particular, SOA offers a compelling
opportunity to connect with existing and future scientific activities,
as many Cyberinfrastructure projects have SOA at their cores.  Can we
use modelling at even the highest level (the entire scientific
communication cycle) to guide our service implementations?

Ultimately to build sustainable, non-siloed, modern information systems
to support scholars and citizens worldwide, we need to build many
bridges (this one happens to be built of lego components, in case you're
worried that giant ducks have invaded the US).  Between libraries and
scientists, between technology and business, between funders and
software developers, between computer science and library science...

We need to move beyond frameworks, using solid governance to ensure that
SOA plans become running SOA code, while avoiding getting stuck in giant
projects that don't deliver.  As well, even if you don't have the scale
or the capacity to build your own SOA, you can still participate as a
service consumer.

I'm not crazy in this (at least I hope not), as evidence for which I
present some starting points about SOA in the academic and library
sectors.

Questions...

The End

SIDEBAR 2: In case you're wondering, there's a slight science fiction theme running through the presentation, inspired by the "federation" part of the organisation name.  The Four Questions are from Babylon 5, the goodish aliens, the Vorlons, ask "Who Are You?" and represent the forces of order, the evilish aliens, the Shadows, ask "What Do You Want?" and represent the forces of chaos.  "There Are Many Copies" is from the opening sequence in the new Battlestar Galactica, using the great Creative Commons images I found worked out as a nice way of avoiding using a screencapture (plus using a screencap might have been a bit distracting as it shows a scene from BG where the many copies of Sharon Valerii/Number Eight are not so much wearing any clothes).  I had a better closing quote but I couldn't remember it, so I used a tag line from Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, to close out the "where are you going" questions theme.  END SIDEBAR 2

SIDEBAR 3: I was actually amazed to be able to locate the "bridge to nowhere" Google Earth image.  I had seen the unfinished highway bridge out of the airplane window as the plane was coming in to land in Philadelphia and by the time I thought to GPS-mark it or take a photo it was already past.  Incredibly, doing an image search on

"bridge to nowhere" Pennsylvania

brought it up as the first hit - Google Search, Google Earth and the Internet continue to amaze me. END SIDEBAR 3

SIDEBAR 4: I bought my carbon offsets from MyClimate.org

flight from: Ottawa, ON [Macdonald-Cartier International Airport], Canada, YOW
flight to: Philadelphia, PA [Philadelphia International Airport], USA, PHL
flight via: Toronto, ON [Lester B. Pearson International Airport], Canada, YYZ
return, economy
flight distance: 1'845 km
flight passengers: 1

CO2 Emissions: 0,511 t

Total costs for compensation of your flight: SFr. 20.00

According to Google

20 Swiss francs = 16.3543582 Canadian dollars