Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 12
This Month's Issue:
Consolidation is Key
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Application Integration Using the SID:
A Review
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Software provides the additional bonus of an included CD-ROM containing the current release of their free model browser for the SID so you can see the larger context of the examples of integration.

By now, everyone agrees that the current OSS/BSS environment of large numbers of independent applications (those developed internally as well as those purchased from vendors), dedicated databases, redundant security, housekeeping, and management tools add up to an environment whose cost to operate and maintain can no longer be sustained. Telecom IT must be retasked from specific, local jobs into a federation that serves the corporation as a whole. We, unfortunately, also have come to understand that making a move is difficult, expensive, and fraught with risk. The integration tax is all too real.

This book looks at the integration problem from the perspective of a SOA interface designer: how to define the interfaces so that they can be understood and correctly used by other services.


frameworks. A reasonable knowledge of NGOSS, UML, and the SID in particular is a pre-requisite for using this book. Structurally, the book uses a drill down approach of examining real examples in successive iterations of detail. It explores from different roles attached to people on the project (business architect, data architect, data modeler, and the developer doing data mapping). It looks at projects that start greenfield from the SID and those that must adjust and link existing interfaces and


One of the early successes of NGOSS was to provide a framework of resources and techniques that enabled some successful integration projects. However, as practitioners solved the platform communication problems initially with message busses, then ESB and now SOA, they came to confront a more intransigent problem: reconciling the many data representations, data structures, databases, and commercial APIs. At its worst, this became a black hole, sucking in all available resources for integration and transformation.

The key players in the TMF NGOSS groups began to sharpen their focus on developing more pragmatic implementation support. Application Integration Using the SID provides the template for the “data-driven” approach to application integration.

After a short and succinct explanation of NGOSS as used for integration projects, the book provides guidelines for approaching integration from several viewpoints. This book is not intended to explain NGOSS or the SID; its job is to teach a way of using the


databases.

This book looks at the integration problem from the perspective of a SOA interface designer: how to define the interfaces so that they can be understood and correctly used by other services. It begins by explaining how to use the eTOM process framework as a source for designing business-oriented use cases which in turn will drive the specification of NGOSS Contracts. It provides guidelines for tough problems like “what is the right size for an NGOSS Contract interface?” It explores creating task-centric (one atomic job), utility-centric (commonly re-used core services), and entity-centric (manage this) service types. It also provides a roadmap for the NGOSS canned interfaces: OSS/J and MTOP. Then it explores the use of tools to automate the generation of machine-implementable interface code, specifically androMDA, Tigerstripe, and the “NGOSS Contract Factory.”

With this foundation laid, the book then proceeds to examine how a data modeler

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