Business object design and implementation IV: From business objects to complex adaptive systems: OOPSLA '98 workshop report

The NCITS H7 Object Information Management Committee and the Object Management Group Business Object Domain Task Force (BODTF) jointly sponsor the Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation for the purpose of improving business object design and implementation through use of patterns, interoperable components, object-oriented workflow, and Internet strategies for distributed computing. Of particular interest are heterogeneous distributed workflow systems for operation of enterprises over Intranets and Extranets. These systems need to provide business object solutions for mobile agents, process engines, and systems that exhibit emergent behavior. Interactive, autonomous, business object components may be intelligent agents roaming the net to perform complex tasks. They will exhibit complex behaviors, catastrophic events, and chaotic interactions and have been studied under the umbrella of "complex adaptive systems (cas) for use in predictive economic simulations, the building of artificial life, computer models that can independently adapt and evolve, and "avatars" that can personally represent the creator in Internet transactions. NCITS H7 Object Information Management H7 has recently become part of T3 Open Distributed Processing (ODP). Technical Committee T3 is responsible for the development of the National Standard Reference Model on Open Distributed Processing (RMODP) and represents the U.S. position at the International Standards Organization (ISO). RM-ODP models features and functions required to achieve a transparent distributed processing platform and will be used to coordinate future standards development in the area of distributed processing. T3 Project Editor, Joaquin Miller (miller@shl.com) solicits support and assistance for development of the RM-ODP enterprise viewpoint standard. OMG Business Object Domain Task Force (BODTF) The Object Management Group's central mission is to establish an architecture and set of specifications based on commercially available object technology to enable distributed integrated applications. Primary goals are the reusability, portability and interoperability of object-based software components in distributed heterogeneous environments. To this end, the OMG adopts interface and protocol specifications that define an Object Management Architecture (OMA) that supports applications based on distributed interoperating objects. Goals of the Workshop 1. Enhance the pattern literature on the specification, design, and implementation of interoperable, plug and play, distributed Business Object components. Specify how patterns can be reused and how they can be useful to end users. 2. Clarify the design and implementation of object-oriented systems, particularly systems in which workflow patterns and the REA accounting model are basic building blocks. These systems must deal with the impedance mismatch between application transactions (units of work) and Transaction Monitor (TP) transactions in large systems. 3. Contribute to emerging architectures for Intranet/Internet/Extranet applications, particularly those applications that integrate business objects, web servers, object and relational databases, and new approaches to client delivery of content. Strategies for implementation of real time, event driven systems with generative process planning, automated routing, and dynamically changing roles of resources are of interest. 4. Pursue issues developed in previous workshops on heterogeneous distributed workflow systems. Specify business object solutions to mobile agents, learning systems, process engines, and systems that exhibit emergent behavior. Cross-fertilize business object design concepts with experience from the field of complex adaptive systems. Address hierarchies of workflows, peer to peer workflows, workflow between organizations, separation of workflow from application business logic, generic workflow execution patterns that are part of every business process object, and workflow concepts that can be seamlessly interwoven into all applications. 5. Provide explicit experience reports on business object systems developed and in production, with emphasis on implementation of domain object models that are subject to dynamic change. Many of the outstanding issues in business object design and implementation for enterprise systems involve federated, autonomous business object frameworks on the Internet acting collectively to solve business problems in an automated fashion. Manola describes the future construction of these distributed object systems on the Web. Workshop Presentations Workshop position papers are available online. Many of the 1998 papers and those from previous years are revised and extended in the OOPSLA’96,’97,’98 Business Object Workshop Proceedings published by Springer. Session 1: Business Objects From Business Objects toward Adaptive Agents by Pam Rostal, Compuware Professional Services Considering units of work as autonomous goaldriven agents emphasizes the connection between business objects and complex adaptive systems. Assigning goals to work objects, in addition to the usual attributes, behaviors and rules, allows them to act as adaptive agents. Applying user-modifiable conditions to their actions keeps the agents goal-driven behavior within limits dictated by volatile consumer markets, changing corporate direction, new legislative rulings, etc. The Business Component Approach by Peter Herzum and Oliver Sims, SSA The business component is a single unifying concept that supports system definition and requirements and continues through deployment and customization to subsequent system evolution. It does this with minimal transformations across the development lifecycle, and is supported by appropriate processes, architectures and tools. If we are to address the multi-dimensional systems development problem for mission-critical, large-scale, multiuser, distributed business systems, we need a component concept that addresses the entire development life cycle. Business Object Component Architectures: A Target Application Area for Complex Adaptive Systems Research by Jeff Sutherland, IDX Systems Corporation Concepts in Complex Adaptive Systems (cas) research are relevant to the development of enterprise business object component systems. Many mathematical and computing models have been developed for cas in recent years and much of this work can be applied to Business Object Component Architectures now emerging as the mechanism of choice for building large distributed object systems.