The technical interface to actions that support a business process, such as tracking the shipment of a product purchased online or searching for some specific content.
Overview of the e-Framework for Education and Research
The e-Framework provides a particular way of looking at how information technology (IT) software infrastructure is developed. To take advantage of the benefits offered by technical interoperability and flexible deployment, the e-Framework advocates a service-oriented approach (soa) to provide open interfaces to numerous reusable services that perform business functions.
What is 'soa'?
In a service-oriented approach, services can be implemented once and accessed by different applications when needed. Depending on how the services are combined, they can support a wide range of an institution’s business requirements.
The e-Framework’s advocacy of this approach is aimed at closing the gap between an organisation’s business needs and their currently available IT services. The reuse of interoperable services could greatly reduce the amount of redundant code and overlapping services that need to be maintained (for example, authentication and single sign-on). This business-centric mindset underlies the e-Framework concept.
What is special about the e-Framework’s soa?
Currently, four international partners are collaborating as an open development community to provide guidance on the use of services and open standards. They aim to evolve the e-Framework’s service-oriented model by providing a methodology for deconstructing complex, existing business processes into their basic service components.
The details of how the service components work are documented using a common, agreed upon vocabulary, and published under an open licensing model. These components could then be more readily reused -- within an organisation, between institutions or internationally.
Ultimately, a map will be constructed of technical services in use within education and research.
What are the benefits of using the e-Framework approach?
The benefits will depend on your particular perspective, the needs that you have within your job or role, and the goals of your institution or organisation. Others may find that different aspects of the e-Framework approach can benefit them.
Benefits for policy makers, IT managers and others needing fewer technical details
- Big picture view of how reusable components of the business processes can be integrated across the inter-connected activities involved in teaching, research, libraries, administration and IT functions
- Knowledge base to assist your strategic planning and funding for IT development, existing efforts and where work is needed
- Maximise the re-use of services for efficiency/economy
Benefits for business analysts, domain experts and architects
- Method for decomposing your complex business process into components that can be reused
- Documented collection of what's been done, including business cases, design decisions, successful architectures and problems encountered
- Insight into how a new application could be built by reusing services
- Identification of areas where a standard or specification can be applied and where standards development is needed
Benefits for managers of software development projects
- Proven way to clearly document what your project has implemented
- Visibility for your project in the global education / research community
- Model for planning future implementations and other work
- Enhancement of your service-oriented software development process
Benefits for developers and implementers
- Published details for the interfaces and standards of existing services
- Opportunity to share your work-in-progress and get feedback
- Common vocabulary and established documentation procedure
- Access to development guidelines, other technical documents and best practices
Last updated 14 October 2008