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Dutch Railways and SOA
Jack van Hoof
JvH-Y2K+7 v1.0
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This presentation
1. Who am I
2. What is Dutch Railways
3. Vision of Dutch Railways on the application landscape
4. Application level: Role of Web services technology at Dutch Railways
5. Infrastructure level: Role of the ESB as a Web services platform at Dutch Railways
6. Our view on the innovation roadmap
- High level, no technical details -
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Who am I? Jack van Hoof…
The 90-s: Dutch Defence (The Hague)
• Business consultancy
• System development
• Leading developmentteams
The 80-s: IBM (Amsterdam/Uithoorn)
• Leading analyst of development teams
• Programming/design/analyses
The 21st century: Dutch Railways (Utrecht)
• IT-architect – Application Integration, SOA, ESB
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What is Dutch Railways?
• Passengers transportation by train (no freight transport)
• Owner of railway stations (maintenance and operation)
• Owner of buildings and terrains (biggest real estate owner in The Netherlands)
• Time tables
• Maintenance and repair of trains (not only Dutch Railways trains)
• Commerce (price of the tickets)
• Training of drivers and conductors
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How big is Dutch Railways?
• Number of coaches: 3000
• Number of stations: 400
• Number of travellers per day: 1.000.000
• Number of traveller-kilometers per day: 45.000.000 (1.000 x around the world)
• Number of “front-liners” (drivers, conductors, station-personel): 10.000
• Total number of employees: 20.000
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Our Vision
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We strive for “new” technology
Application infrastructure• Enterprise Service Bus • Portals
Open standards• XML• Web services: SOAP / WSDL / WS-*• WSRP • JSR168
Architectural approaches• SBI (Service Based Integration) • SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)• EDA (Event Driven Architecture)
Driver: Not cost reduction, but necessary to survive
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Why should we strive for “new” technology?
The whole IT-world is converging into this direction
• Market analysts (Gartner): SOA / EDA
• Software vendors: XML / WSDL / SOAP / WS-*
• Organizations: Flexible business-to-business value chains with use of uniform/standard technology
Ignoring these trends means getting away from your partners
• Modern software relies on modern technology (expensive to adapt new software to legacy)
• Environment demands uniform connectivity with regard to B2B value chains: take-it or leave-it
Because everone does…
so if we don’t want to get isolated we have to join
Driver:
Not cost reduction, but necessary to survive
Innovation is no option, but a must in the current era
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Does Dutch Railways have an SOA?
No…
But we will, as everyone!• All software suppliers are service enabling their application interfaces
• All software tools will enforce Web services technologies
• You can’t (in future) implement ERP (SAP) without implementing SOA (SOA out-of-the-box)
• Business partners will force us to communicate via standard technology (web services)
• SaaS providers will (in future) use SOA to allow for customized business process definitions
accross multiple providers
We anticipate by service enabling our legacy,
and putting an adquate infrastructure in place
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Current situation: 500 “known” applications
Every application has own solution/technology for:
•Access control
•User interface mechanism
•Data storage
•Application server
•Interface-mechanisms•shared databases•file shares (accross domains)•Mail•FTP•remote calls
Monolithic applications
User interface and access control
Business logic
Data storage
Interface
No structure!
No overview!
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Getting structure: separation of concerns
Generic solutions for: •Application access (Portal)
•Data storage (DBMS, datawarehouse, backup/recovery)
•Standardized interfaces (ESB, secured, reliable)
•Application platform (application servers)
Business logicservices
Acc
ess
serv
ices
Exchange area
Dat
a st
orag
ese
rvic
es
User interface and access control
Business logic
Data storage
Interface
Interaction based on open standards:
XML, SOAP, WSDL, JSR168, WSRP, WS-*
Effects:
•Better manageable
•Consistency (data, user interfaces, business logic)
•Cheaper deployments (one-time deployment)
•More flexible to change
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One virtual Enterprise application
Business logic services
ERP
Acc
ess
serv
ices
Exchange area
Dat
a st
orag
e se
rvic
es
COTS
Homemade Legacy
BusinessProcess
Management
BusinessActivity
Monitoring
(Complex)Event
processing
All business logic implementations must fit within framework:
•ERP - Enterprise oriented applications like SAP•COTS - Function oriented packages•Home made software•Legacy - Old fashioned monolithic applications
Flexibility and uniformity, but also basis for:
•Business Process ManagementFlexible definition of processes outside applications
•Business Activity Monoriting Real-time insight in operational business state
•Event processingReact proactive to potential bottle-necks
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Business logic services
ERP
Acc
ess
serv
ices
Exchange Area
Dat
a st
orag
e se
rvic
es
COTS
Home made Legacy
BusinessProcess
Management
BusinessActivity
Monitoring
(Complex)Event
Processing
Web
2.0
clie
nts
(web
bro
wse
rs)
AJAX mashups
Portal with portlets
Databases
SOA and EDA
ESB
Implementation technologies
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Two important challenges
Heterogenous technologies within Dutch Railways• Programming languages• Databases• Operating systems• Hardware • Devices
• Gates at stations• Camera’s• Railpockets (PDA’s for front-liners)• Information displays
Heterogenous environments of Dutch Railways• Geographical locations
• Stations• (Moving) trains• Data Centers
• External partners• ProRail (rail infrastructure)• Other transportation companies (time tables)• Service providers (cleaning, maintenance)• Retailers
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Putting together:
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Current market trends are helping us
Our needs
• Standards to harmonize different technologies
• Infrastructure to virtualize different locations
Market trends
• Suppliers strive for uniformity and standardization - Web services
• Generic distributed integration technologies are coming to market - ESB
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We go for Web services and ESB
By using standard Web services technology everything can be connected with everything
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is our deployment platform for Web services technology
Application level
Infrastructure level
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The application level
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Application innovation: 3 different focus points
• Service Based Integration (SBI): focus on monolithic applications – wrapping interfaces
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): focus on modular application construction - “call” services
• Event-driven Architecture (EDA): focus on business events – publish and consume messages
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SBI: focus on monolithic application
New
Connect monolithic applications (legacy, COTS, ERP) using
Web services technology
to harmonize different technologies
Application B Application C
Application A
WebServices
Keywords: Legacy, stove-pipes, packaged software (COTS, ERP)
Application B Application C
Application A
Old
Looking for common technologies to communicate
e.g: B with C via fileshare on server of A
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SOA: focus on modular application construction
• Reusable components deliver services to each other• Process definitions outside the components (Process Manager)• Ultimate: one enterprise wide box of building blocks
B1
B2
C3
C1
C2
A3
SOA
A1
A4 B3
A2
Keywords: Strong cohesion, command-and-control, reuse, functional decomposition
Calling services using Web services technology
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EDA: focus on event messaging
Events
Web Services
(SOAP)
Applications (legacy, SOA’s, workflows, transactions, processes, UI’s, portals, databases, gateways, devices)
Keywords: Loose coupling, linking autonomous processes, workflow
Publish and consume messages using Web services technology
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ESB
Simple example of EDA (illustrative)
Passenger xTrain
Routingtable
Gates at stationsa, b, c, d
Back-endsystems
SOAP SOAP SOAPSOAP SOAP
…buys ticket from A to B via Internet (business event)
…Determines stations on route A-D (enrichment)
…allow access to passenger x on date y
…register transaction
Passenger: xDate: yStations: a, b, c and d
Passenger: xDate: yRoute: A-D
Data-warehouse
SOAP
…logs data ibo analyses and rapporting
1 2 3 4 5Concurrent with: Concurrent with:
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Holistic approach at Dutch Railways
Access to old and packaged systems: Service based integration
Development of new systems (processes): Service oriented architecture
Connecting systems (processes) into chains: Event-driven architecture
Not subsequently, but all three concurrently!
And all with the same common technology: Web services
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Web Services: lubricating oil between old and new
Common technology allows for integration of legacy with SOA and EDA
Legacy Z
Legacy YS1
S4
S3
S5S2
SOA / EDASBI
Web services technology
“Old” “New”
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The infrastructure level- distributed web services platform -
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Web services alone are not enough
How do you deal with semantics?• Is “customer name” only last name, or first name AND last name …?
How do you deal with security?• Who is allowed to see or change a message? (confidentiallity, integrity)• Who is allowed to send or receive a message? (authorization, authentication)• How do you prove a message has been sent/received? (non-repudiation)
How do you deal with transactions?• How do you define a transaction and how will it be performed and rolled back?
How do you deal with workflow?• How is routing of messages defined and monitored? (intelligent routing when paths are blocked)
How do you deal with format transformation between sender and receiver?• How and where is data transformed during transport?
How do you deal with reliability?• How is guaranteed that a message reaches its destination?• How is guaranteed that a message is processed only once?• How is guaranteed that a message is processed in time?• Where does a published message persist before it is consumed?
?
?
?
?
?
?
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Supporting platform: The Enterprise Service Bus
Global Dataspace- ESB -
SOA(Process X)
Gateway
External systems Legacy(cusotm, package)
SOA (Process Y)
Package(COTS, ERP)
Enables support for:• Secured routing of messages • Guaranteed delivery of messages• Instant availability of messages within the enterprise• Semantic mapping between systems (CDM)• Format harmonisation between systems (CDM)• Explicit definition of busniness processes (BPM)• Insight in actual state of business processes (BAM)• Detect correlations between messages (CEP)• Access to services (SOA)
Publish and consume messages
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ESB
Reach of our ESB (future)
Stations
Trains
PDA’sData Centers
Railpockets
Gates
…
Partners
Gateway
All places where applications are running
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Appearance of our ESB
ESB
SAP-FINNetweaver XI
SAP-CRMNetweaver XI
SAP-HRNetweaver XI
IBM WebSphere(Corporate)
BEAWebLogic ESB
Partner Gateway
Etcetera(future)
BizTalk
Ddatagateway(MQ-Series)
External environment(business partners)
Remainingapplications
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ESB: Intelligent layer on the network
Connectivity
Enterprise Service Bus
Network
Security Reliability Transactions … User-defined
Host-config:DHCP
Name:DNS
Time:SNTP
Netwerkmngt:SNMP …
Technical infrastructure oriented services
Business oriented services
Messages flowing through ESB safely cross firewalls over HTTP port 80:
No connectivity issues anymore!
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ESB
ESB virtualizes location and technology
Model of application landscape
Location and technology virtualization
Connectivity
• Location and technology of applications are made invisible (unimportant) by the ESB • Visibility and overview of interaction between applications • Application landscape becomes manageable by visual tools
ESB: - Tools to get overview- Virtualizes locations and technology- Distributed presence at locations
Network:
- Technical connection between locations
Locations:
- Places where applications run
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Infrastructural characteristics of an “ideal” ESB
Based on open standards• Also internal mechanismes based on web services technology
• Makes interoperability with other ESB’s easy• Makes distributed architectures possible
Light weight• Adding functionality on demand over time when needed • Start on small scale and grow over time when needed
Distributed architecture• Intelligent components deployed near the endpoints (like agents)• Communicating components, no central hub processing (very scalable)• Only central rules repository; changes are published to local components
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Current technology trends
In a few years the network will be the ESB
The network (CISCO)
• Network devices (routers) are getting XML-aware
• Network decives are getting SOAP-aware
• Network devices will understand Web services standards (WS-*)
The ESB (IBM)
• XML-processors are getting build into appliances (hardware)
• SOAP-message security is getting managed by appliances
• SOAP-messages are filtered, blocked and routed by appliances
• Web services standards (WS-*) are getting implemented by appliances
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Innovation roadmap
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Two innovation approaches
Top down• Start from business functions perspective• Requires highly structured and mature IT-organization
Bottom up• Start from application integration perspective • Dutch Railways takes this approach
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Our bottom-up approach to innovation: ESB as the platform
1. FTP file transports over the ESB 2. Record (message) oriented data transport over the ESB – slicing into SOAP messages
and rebuild3. Shift focus from applications and batch-files to real-time point-to-point messages4. Scale up - start limited and let it grow 5. Define intermediate (canonical) layer of message types to decouple senders from
receivers
6. Decompose applications into documented – reusable - components (services)7. Start using tools for Business Process Management and Business Activity Monitoring
By connecting applications to the ESB, every application can have its own pace to innovationwithout affecting the other applications
Old world can talk with new world via the ESB
Incr
easi
ng m
atur
ity o
ver t
ime
A C DB= Transformation
Canonical
F FE
A C DB
E
Receiving applications
Sending applications
Step 3 Step 5
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SOA
SOA
SOA
SOA
Event-msg
Event-msgEvent-
msg
ERP
COTS
Legacy
Event-msg
ExternalGateway
ExternalSystems
Event-msg
Event-msg
SOA, COTS, ERP, legacy and external systems
= heterogenous and flexible application landscape with EDA =
Heterogenous systems are loosely (asynchronously) coupled via triggering event messages
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Competence Center of Integration
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Integration process
Competence Center of Integration to help
Define message flows (data analyses)
Build message flows through ESB
Buy/build/deploy adapters/wrappers
Buy/build/adapt/decompose business applications
Operate/manage message flows through ESB
Test and user acceptance
CCI
CCI advises development teams and delivers specialists (designers/developers)
CCI does the work
Focus is on message flows
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Deliverables of the CCI
Toward development teams:• Deliver (templates, solution patterns, guidelines)• Give advise (guidance during development projects)• Coordinate communciations between departments and with external parties• Enterprise wide metadatamanagement (XML-schema’s, semantics)• Deliver specialists (developers) to help with:
• Adapt legacy to connect to the ESB • Connect new applicaties/services to the ESB• Choose/build/configure adapters and wrappers • Configurate message flows (e.g. routing, security, enrichment, transformations)
• Facilitate test channels in the ESB• Facilitate separation of functional domains in the ESB• Functional adminstration of cross domain communication (interface-configuration)• If desired: functional administration of communication within domains • Functional life-cycle management of the ESB-infrastructure plus appurtenant tools• Deploy infrastructural ESB-facilities at distributed locations
- final slide -
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FIN
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Questions?
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