SOA-RAF TC Conference Call,

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

A: Administrivia

1.  Roll call

2.  Note taker appointed

3.  Approve minutes from previous Conf Call

4.  Review Actions

B: Taskus Genuineus

5.  Microservices

Link to Meeting Attendees

Link to Meeting Notes

Link to Meeting Actions

-  Meeting Attendees –

Ken Laskey

Rex Brooks

Martin Smith

- Meeting Notes –

A – Administrative – Ken Laskey convened the meeting at 11:30AM ET, and chaired

1.  Roll Call: Ken conducted roll call

Quorum Achieved.

2.  Note Taker Assigned: Martin Smith

3.  Approved Minutes for October 26, 2016 as amended.

4.  Review Actions and Open Issues:

-  Ken will take the new action to send out a survey to see if we can find a better time for everyone to participate. CLOSED—stick with current day/time.

-  Ken and Bob Natale spoke with a NGINX representative about Microservices and SOA based on article/book on SOA vs. Microservices on September 22—noting it was a good discussion. Ken will brief us on this at the next meeting once he can find his notes in the ongoing disruption of renovations at MITRE. CARRIED FORWARD.

-  We would like everyone to review minutes from May and June to see where we are going. CLOSED—REVISED as new action

5.  Microservices

The TC continued discussion of microservices, with reference to the Martin Fowler article -Microservice Trade-Offs: http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice-trade-offs.html

TC comments on microservices pros and cons covered in the Fowler article included:

a.  “Con” of maintaining database consistency either via “integration databases” or by independent data stores used by each microservice. Rex observed that for emergency-management applications inconsistent data state might lead to very bad consequences.

b.  “Con” of needing expensive out-of-process calls (between services) and possible mitigations like “batching” inter-service queries.

c.  “Pro” of facilitating mostly independent operations by small groups of developers and enforcing discipline of modular development. Martin suggested this seemed to be main benefit identified by Fowler and others.

d.  TC generally agreed that Fowler’s article seemed to suggest that microservices typically would be developed to work as part of a single application vs. being designed for re-use by multiple applications.

e.  TC agreed that Fowler’s “pro” of microservices being “independent and autonomous” referred to both facilitating independent development and upgrading of microservices comprising an application, and also to allowing an overall application to keep running (with reduced functionality) even if one component microservice failed

Rex reported that his program (in the emergency-management domain) has developed a set of UML process models and standardized data exchanges that the TC might use as a realistic case study for how microservices architecture could be usefully applied. Rex will forward the artifacts.

Ken closed the discussion with a request that TC members identify specific microservices issues around which some recommendations might be developed from the SOA perspective. Rex recalled that the TC had previously concluded that granularity did not seem to be the most fruitful focus area.

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6.  Adjournment

Rex moved to adjourn the meeting, Martin seconded.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:35 PM ET. Next meeting in two weeks.

-  Actions carried forward –

-  Peter: Complete a zip file for SOA-RAF UML Models and load to KAVI

-  Ken: Peter Brown/Ken finalize adjudication of comments received as a result of review of OASIS SOA-RM by IEEE.

-  All: Gather Statements of Use

-  Ken: Will coordinate with William as to when Ken can put discussion of his “patterns” write-up on the TC meeting agenda.

-  All: collect questions on Microservices for Jason Callaway of RedHat

-  Ken: represent personal impression from the AWS conference

-  Ken: Ken and Bob Natale spoke with a NGINX representative about Microservices and SOA based on article/book on SOA vs. Microservices on September 22—noting it was a good discussion. Ken will brief us on this at the next meeting once he can find his notes in the ongoing disruption of renovations at MITRE.

-  New Actions –

-  All: Develop ideas for where we can focus to develop conclusions/guidance on use of microservices.

-  Martin: Develop first-draft template for side-by-side comparison of SOA vs. Microservices Architecture

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