OOPSLA'95Jeff Sutherland 

OOPSLA'96 Workshop

Business Object Design and Implementation II: Business Objects as Distributed Application Components - the enterprise solution?


1996 Final Report:


Participants

Bill
McCarthy 
University of Michigan 
21777wem@msu.edu 
Dilip 
Patel 
South Bank University 
dilip@sbu.ac.uk 
Fred 
Cummins 
Electronic Data Systems 
cummins@ae.eds.com 
Glenn 
Hollowell 
Texas Instruments 
glenn@ti.com 
Jeff 
Sutherland 
IDX Systems 
jeff.sutherland@idx.com 
Kazuki 
Yoshida 
University of Illinois 
kyoshida@cs.uiuc.edu 
Kitty 
Hung 
South Bank University 
hungks@sbu.ac.uk 
Mark 
Baker 
Nortel 
markb@interlog.com 
Martin 
Fowler 
Consultant 
100031.3311@compuserve.com 
Paul 
Evitts 
Trove etc. 
evitts@inforamp.net 
Paul 
Moran 
Fidelity Investments 
paul.moran@fmr.com 
Pranab K. 
Baruah 
Boeing 
praab@atc.boeing.com 
R. Sellers 
Smith 
Mitretek Systems 
rssmith@mitretek.org 
Ralph 
Johnson 
University of Illinois 
johnson@cs.uiuc.edu 
Wolfgang 
Shulze 
University of Dresden 
schulze@is2201.inf.tu-dresden.de 


Position Papers Presented (most hits first)

Martin Fowler. Analysis Patterns and Business Objects. 13 August 1996.

Paul Evitts. Business Objects, Business Patterns. Updated 4 Sep 1996.

Ralph E. Johnson and Kazuki Yoshida. Models of Business Objects: Accounts. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 25 Aug 1996.

Fred A. Cummins. An Object Model for Business Applications. Electronic Data Systems. 4 Sep 1996.

Wolfgang Schulze, Markus Böhm, Klaus Meyer-Wegener. Services of Workflow Objects and Workflow Meta-Objects in OMG-compliant Environments. Dresden University of Technology, Database Group, 19 August 1996

William McCarthy, Julia Smith David, and Brian S.Sommer. The Evolution of Enterprise Information Systems -- From Sticks and Jars Past Journals and Ledgers Toward Interorganizational Webs of Business Objects and Beyond, Michigan State University, 27 Sep 1996.

Mark Baker. Workflow Meets Business Objects. Northern Telecom Network Services Management, 8 Sep 1996.

Texas Instruments Business Object Architecture Team (Ed. Tom Digre). Business Object Facility. Texas Intruments, Inc. 28 March 1996 (presented by Glenn Hollowell).

Presenters unable to attend:

Christopher Spottiswoode. The emperor's new clothes -- an outsider's perspective. Updated 29 Sep 1996.

Stephan Schreyjak. Aspects of the integration of a componentware system with a workflow system. University of Stuttgart, 20 August 1996

Ken Schwaber. Controlled Chaos : Living on the Edge. Advanced Development Methods, 4 Sep 1996.

Haim Kilov, I.D. Simmonds. Business patterns: reusable abstract constructs for business specification. IBM T J Watson Resarch Center, 28 Sep 1996.

Additional papers to be published in proceedings:

Andrew Watson. Coda: OMG Rationale for Choosing the Classical Object Model (Or why there has not been an "insidious shift in OMG aims.") Object Management Group, 13 Sep 96

Jeff Sutherland. Integrating Java, Objects, Databases, and the Web. IDX Systems Corporation, Revised 15 Nov 1996


E-Mail


Call for Participation

The ASC X3H7 Object Information Management Committee and the Object Management Group Business Object Domain Task Force will jointly sponsor the Second Annual Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation. This year's workshop will focus on distributed component design and implementation of component-based frameworks as enterprise application solutions. Last year's organizing committee has been joined by the Chairs of two other OOPSLA'95 Workshops to build on the success of last year's workshop and strengthen the anticipated results of this workshop.

Goals of Business Object Workshop II

Results from Business Object Workshop I

The wide variety of papers presented and the high level of expertise last year's workshop led to a consensus on several important issues:

Focus of This Year's Workshop

The OMG Business Object Domain Task Force has issued an RFP on Common Business Objects and Business Object Facility. The Business Object Facility is to provide a component based substructure that allows Business Objects to be implemented as interoperable plug and play components. Common Business Objects are plug and play components that are used to support domain specific application frameworks. Responses to the RFP can be more effectively evaluated if technical papers are available that provide in-depth analysis of the following issues.

Impact of the Intranet

To say that there has been an explosive uptake of the Internet or the WWW would be an understatement. However, simultaneously, there has been a parallel interest in the Intranet, or the EWW (Enterprise Wide Web). Most corporations make extensive use of this facility for a number of reasons. This culture provides an ideal environment conducive to business object design and implementation. The Intranet can be used to deliver software and up-dates immediately to users across the corporate network. This will gain momentum as new technologies such as Java become more widely available, and allows the creation and distribution of objects.

Publication of Workshop Proceedings

It is anticipated, as in the 1995 Business Object Workshop, that papers will be published as a book by Springer Verlag through a review and revision process during and after the Workshop. 


Submission


Attendance


Agenda


Background

The Second Annual OOPSLA Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation is jointly sponsored by the Accredited Standards Committee X3H7 Object Information Management Technical Committee and the Object Management Group (OMG) Business Object Management Special Interest Group (BOMSIG) for the purpose of soliciting technical position papers relevant to the design and implementation of Business Object systems.

X3H7 Object Information Management

In 1994, the X3H7 Object Information Management Technical Committee projected that over the next decade, more than 80% of new object-oriented software systems would be built in three object-oriented languages (Smalltalk, C++, and OO COBOL) and communicate through a Object Request Broker to four primary external environments (SQL databases, Object Databases, Microsoft OLE/COM, and CORBA objects).

Interoperability of large grained objects existing in these environments was identified as a core activity in the standards process.

In addition, X3H7 projected that implementation of systems will move up to a higher level of abstraction. A business model will be built for enterprise applications using standard object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) techniques, legacy CASE models will be incorporated, and major amounts of code will be autogenerated, rather than hand coded. OOAD models, documentation, and code will be stored and versioned in an object repository and injected into the run time environment. Furthermore, the business object model will be a component-based model that supports component distribution over arbitrary processors on a network.

Provision for interoperability between standard business components was identified as a major priority. One can conclude, based on the experience at SEMATECH and NIST, building large software frameworks for chip fabrication plants requires a Business Object Component Architecture to enable interoperability. This insight is generalizable across a wide variety of application domains.

The need for a component-based enterprise architecture led X3H7 to propose development of an ISO RM-ODP Enterprise Viewpoint Companion Standard. This resulted in the initiation of three activities:

OMG Business Object Domain Task Force (formerly BOMSIG)

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.

The current focus of OMG BODTF is a Request For Proposal (RFP) to address the OMA component called Common Facilities. The RFP solicits proposals for the following:

The objectives of the RFP are:

Providing the required higher level of abstraction has two separate, but closely related, aspects:

The Business Object Facility should provide the abstraction which hides computational complexities, and enables business objects to interoperate efficiently and reliably in multi-user, concurrent, distributed, heterogeneous environments.

The Common Business Objects component of this RFP should provide a common starting point for enterprise application developers and domain industry standards groups by providing a set of business concept abstractions from which more specific business objects can be specialized. In some cases these abstract objects may be quite generic since the concept varies considerably from one industry to the next. In other cases, the abstractions may be quite specific because the concept occurs much the same in all industries. The objective is to promote consistency across industries and enterprises and minimize the duplication of effort to define and eventually implement (using the Business Object Facility) enterprise and industry frameworks.

The people who will benefit from the greater levels of simplicity include:

The work of OMG BODTF is directly related to the current work of the X3H7 Object Information Management Committee. Industry consortia standards developed by OMG can be formalized through the accredited standards process through the current ISO work item that is the designated task of X3H7. 


Organizers:

Jeff Sutherland, Chair - jeff.sutherland@idx.com

Secretary X3H7 Object Information Management, liaison to X3H2 SQL Database
IDX Systems Corporation
116 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: +1 (617) 266-0001 x2920| Fax: +1 (617) 721 1226

Cory Casanave - cory_casanave@omg.org

Chair, OMG Business Object Domain Task Force
Cory Casanave
Data Access Corporation
14000 SW 119 Ave
Miami, FL 33186-6017, USA
Phone: +1 (305) 238 0012 | Fax: +1 (305) 238 0017

Richard Due' - rtdue@ccinet.ab.ca

Thomsen Due' and Associates Limited
2401-11135-83 Avenue
Edmonton T6G 2C6
Alberta, CANADA
Phone: +1 (403) 439 4627 | Fax: +1 (403)

Glenn Hollowell - glenn@hollowell.org

Chair, X3H7 Object Information Management
Texas Instruments
8390 LBJ Freeway
P.O. Box 655303 MS 3663
Dallas, TX 75243, USA
Phone: +1 (214) 927-6267 | Fax: +1 (214) 927-6267

Haim Kilov - kilov@watson.ibm.com

IBM T J Watson Research Center
30 Saw Mill River Road
Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA

Joaquin Miller - miller@shl.com

Chair, X3H7 Object Information Management Rapporteur and Project Editor, ISO ODP Enterprise Viewpoint
Chief Scientist-Objects & Models
SHL Systemhouse
12750 Center Court Drive, Suite 700
Cerritos, CA 90703-8583, USA
Phone: +1 (713) 222-2345 | Fax: +1 (562) 860-9668

Dilip Patel - dilip@vax.sbu.ac.uk

Chair, Centre for Information and Office Systems
South Bank University
School of Computing, Information Systems & Mathematics
103 Borough Road
London, SE1 0AA, UK
Phone: +44 0171 815 7429


Pointers of Interest


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