Enterprise Architecture & SOA

SOA: deliverables management model

Within a SOA, it is necessary to carefully manage the software lifecycle, starting from the rationalization of its documentation, in order to maximize the benefits in terms of components modularity and reusability.

In this field, the Blue Reply working model provides an approach based on the core components of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): processes, functions and services. Since these components are atomic and modular, the very same structure “copies” analisis documents and tests which are therefore kept separate for each system component.

Moreover, the connections between the different components are maintained, in order to quickly trace back, for example, which services were used by a specific function or process (functions-services, processes functions, processes services connections). At the same time, the specific platform elements are equally kept into consideration and traced, therefore even connections between business channels and the functions of a multichannel application, or between market and services within a multi-market application, are taken into consideration. Finally, since a test case does not necessarily end on one single object (lets think for example about system tests), for each test case the interaction with different components is documented.

Such a structure, enables to trace individual objects and detect correlations between different objects. Such correlation is particularly crucial during the software evolution phase, especially to:

  • Analyse the impact of new changes to the Software;
  • Extract, in a simple and effective way, a list of non-regression tests to perform following changes to the application.

The following picture summarizes the process being followed when a request for an application change is made:


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