Better Web Service Modeling and Specification

This one's for all the “architects” out there designing and specing services, and those who have to work with them. Whether you are building it or consuming it, the most painful thing about sharing a service is sharing an understanding of what the service does. This presentation teaches you how to dispel ambiguities, techno-mumbo-jumbo, and reliance on institutional knowledge that bogs down service development and testing today using the 5 essential parts of an interface specification known as Operation-State Modeling (OSM).

WSDLs and XSDs describe the structure of service messages, but its not enough to describe the intended behavior of the service. Poorly-written English-language docs are the defacto standard of the day for describing service behavior. If you're like me, that seems completely ridiculous. Just like messages models (WSDL/XSD) are machine-consumable, so should behavior descriptions.

This presentation introduces the OSM way for specing services that avoids the painful and inevitable consequences of Word doc descriptions – slow development and testing because of: subjective requirement interpretations by developers and testers, inconsistency, and ambiguity. A properly-written spec is objectively consistent, without unnecessary ambiguity, and ultimately stunningly faster to implement and test. This introduction will explain and demonstrate the 5 essential parts of a service interface specification.

About Brian Maso

Brian is a long-time Java architect and real-world engineer, who can credibly wax nostagic about the JDK 1.0 beta days. In the decade since that release, Brian has worked mostly in and around places where web services and the Java VM reign. Clients have included: LeapFrog, Inc., GE Medical Systems, The Motor Cycle Council of America, Cardinal Health (Pyxis Corp. division), the U.S. Dept. of Defense, and many others.

Lately Brian has restricted his professional life to the bounds that his family of four children will allow, venturing away from coding and architecture work only to publish white papers, serve as an independent expert on the JSR 225 (XQJ) Expert Group, and of course share his astounding revelations to No Fluff Just Stuff symposium audiences.

Brian's specific interests include system integration through web services, ESBs and public service networks; and agile system- and unit-specification and testing.

In years past: Brian was the first Tips and Techniques Editor for the Java Developer's Journal; wrote four marginally useful technical books on Java and web development; was the first Java instructor for DevelopMentor, with whom he has delivered thousands of man-days of material to engineers across the maturity spectrum at companies and organizations across North America.

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