| Term | Explanations | Source |
| Actor | A role played either by a Participant or its Delegate and that interacts with a SOA-based system. | [1] |
| Architecture | The fundamental organisation of a system embodied in its self-sufficient cohesive components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution. | [2] |
| Blueprint | “a detailed set of plans used as the guide for construction” or “a detailed outline or plan of action”. | [3] |
| Business Capability (BC) | A Business Capability is an ability of a business entity – a person or organisation – to deliver certain Real World Effect (RWE) when the predefined business situation(s) occurs. A Business Capability comprises a determined business function and related planned or reserved implementation resources that, upon execution, deliver the RWE. A Business Capability is nominated via a combination of “verb” and “noun”. | |
| Enterprise Business Capability Model (EBCM) | A combination of Business Capabilities that sets certain relationships between them aimed to address a predefined goal or purpose. | |
| Business Capability Model (BCMM) | A hierarchical bottom-up model where each upper level adds more business activities to what should be done at this level in order to create a particular Business Capability. | |
| Business Functionality | A defined set of business-aligned tasks that provide recognisable business value to consumer stakeholders and possibly others in the SO Ecosystem. | [1] |
| Business Process | A repeatable sequence of conditional steps that delivers the same results or business values in the given business execution context; in essence, it is a realisation of business logic that interacts with external providers (suppliers and receivers) via pre-defined interfaces. | |
| Business Service | A service that realises one or a few Business Capabilities. | |
| Capability | An ability to deliver a RWE. | [1] |
| Capacity | The maximum level of output of goods and/or services that a given system can potentially produce over a set period of time. | [4] |
| Consumer | A role assumed by a participant who is interacting with a service in order to fulfil a need. | [1] |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management. | |
| Dynamic Capability Theory | The theory authored by Professor D. Teece et al. | |
| EBA | Stands for Enterprise Business Architecture | |
| LOB | Line of Business in an enterprise. | |
| Need | A general statement expressed by a stakeholder of something deemed necessary. | [1] |
| Owner | A role assumed by a participant who is claiming and exercising ownership over a service. | [1] |
| Ownership | A set of claims, expressed as rights and responsibilities that a stakeholder has in relation to a resource; it may include the right to transfer that ownership, or some subset of rights and responsibilities, to another entity. | [1] |
| Ownership Boundary | The extent of ownership asserted by a stakeholder or a social structure over a set of resources and for which rights and responsibilities are claimed and (usually) recognised by other stakeholders. | [1] |
| Participant | A person who plays a role both in the SO Ecosystem as a stakeholder and with the SOA-based system as an actor either · directly, in the case of a human participant; or · indirectly, via a delegate. | [1] |
| Process-centric mindset | A way of thinking about actor’s activities that always form a business process, known or as yet unknown. | |
| Provider | A role assumed by a participant who is offering a service. | [1] |
| Real World Effect (RWE) | A measurable change to the shared state of pertinent entities, relevant to and experienced by specific stakeholders of an ecosystem. | [1] |
| Requirement | A formal statement of a desired result (a RWE) that, if achieved, will satisfy a need. | [1] |
| Resource | An identifiable entity that has value to a stakeholder. | [1] |
| Responsibility | A predetermined obligation on a participant to ensure that some action is performed, or to assume a role in relation to other participants. | [1] |
| Robustness | A characteristic describing an entity’s ability to effectively perform while its variables or assumptions are altered. A robust concept can operate without failure under a variety of conditions. | [5] |
| Service | A tangible means of accessing Business Capability or outcome of its execution. | [1] |
| Service Boundary | The logical limits that restrict an implementation of a service to be dependent on entities under foreign ownerships, or to interact with external entities in any way other than via service’s interfaces and end-points pre-defined for the communication when acting in the role of consumer. | |
| Service-oriented ecosystem (SO Ecosystem) | An environment encompassing one or more social structure(s) and SOA-based system(s) that interact together to enable effective business solutions. | [1] |
| Single point of failure | A part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. | |
| SOA | Service-Oriented Architecture. | |
| SOE | Service-Oriented Enterprise. | |
| Stakeholder | A person with an interest (a stake) in a social structure. | [1] |
| Willingness | The internal commitment of a human actor (or of an automated non-human agent acting on a participant’s behalf) to carry out its part of an interaction. | [1] |
References
[1] “Reference Architecture Foundation for Service Oriented Architecture”. Ver. 1.0. Committee Specification 01. OASIS, Dec. 2012.
[2] Michael Poulin, Architects Know What Managers Don’t. BuTechCon-Troubador Publishing House, ISBN 978-0-9575199-0-9, 2013 http://www.mpoulin.com/architects-know-what-manager-dont/
[3] AllBusiness Dictionary http://www.allbusiness.com/glossaries/blueprint/4962631-1.html
[4] “Definition of Capability”. Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capacity.asp
[5] “Definition of Robust”. Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/robust.asp
HOW to ARCHITECT for DEVELOPERS 