What Are Service Usage Models?
Service Usage Models (SUMs) are a core component of the e-Framework. SUMs provide a description of the needs, requirements, workflows, management policies and processes within a domain and the mapping of these to a design of a structured collection of Service Genres and Service Expressions, resources, associated standards, specifications, data formats, protocols, bindings, etc., that can be used to implement software applications within the domain. In other words, SUMs model how services meet business needs.
Simply put, SUMs show the interoperability requirements support the functional process requirements and how various technical components can be used to support those interoperabilty requirements. In some cases SUMs indicate how an application may be developed. Ultimately, other application developers may be able to take advantage of the collection of SUMs that are included in the e-Framework to create new applications.
Illustrative Example
A Service Usage Model can be seen as a “bundle” of separate activities related to a general activity. For example, consider Commercial Bread Baking as a SUM. Someone could design an implementation of the model that would combine the many interrelated processes necessary to bake bread in a commercial bakery.
The activities associated with the Meal at an Institution SUM cover different types of actions; some of these activities are common to Commercial Bread Baking, Winemaking, and other SUMs that involve processes for preparing food for consumption.
For example, the generic activities related to "sorting” may be part of all three SUMs listed in the table, but “baking” food may only be relevant for two of the SUMs, while “bottling” only fits with the Winemaking SUMs. In the e-Framework vernacular, these generic activities are the Service Genres.
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Service Usage Models |
Service Genre 1 “baking” |
Service Genre 2 “sorting” |
Service Genre 3 “bottling” |
|
Cooking a meal at an institution |
X |
X |
|
|
Commercial Bakery |
X |
X |
|
|
Winemaking Operations |
|
X |
X |
The analogy between SUMs for software applications in the e-Framework and for the food-related examples could be summarized as:
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SUM for a specific food-related operation: |
SUM for software applications: |
|
A description of how individual activities are combined into the complex processes for producing/preparing foods and beverages. |
A model of the various service elements, their data types, and the messages sent between the elements.
|
The key difference with SUMs for software applications is that the SUM will identify the interoperability requirements in the process. That is, the points in the process that one function needs to communicate with another function inorder to do something.
Note that SUMs may cover one or more of the five designated e-Framework domains: learning and teaching, academic administration, research, libraries and information management, and IT-services.