Question: What’s the difference between a Web Service, an API and an SOA Software Service?
Answer: The Web Service and the API are technical interfaces, that may or may not be well-formed services that comply with SOA principles of loose coupling, autonomy, encapsulation (of the service), reusability and composability. A well-formed Software Service will usually have some form of Service Specification that defines and governs the compliance with SOA principles.
From observation, the use of Service Specifications by architects and designers is highly variable. In our work at Everware-CBDI we have encouraged more formality of specification over many years in order to increase the quality of delivered services. We have done this by making templates,UML profiles and methodology guidance freely available. Today we are actively engaged in delivering automation methodology and tools at all stages of the delivery life cycle. We plan to deliver some specification capabilities on the same freely available basis. We are therefore interested to learn what others are doing and we are inviting participation in a survey to establish some independent data around how services are specified.
The survey is intended for architects, designers and project managers.
– It should be very quick to complete; about 10 minutes.
If you would like to get more involved, please:
We will keep these groups up to date and of course publish results of the survey in due course.
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Everware-CBDI Rich Service Specification:
Download the CBDI-SAE Rich Service Specification Template and view the Service Specification Reference Framework
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Everware-CBDI Rich Service Specification:
Download the CBDI-SAE Rich Service Specification Template and view the Service Specification Reference Framework
