SOA Enablement
Migrating existing applications into an enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform can bring significant value to an organization, but the transformation requires precise knowledge and planning. Many projects fail because they fall short of capitalizing on the primary goals of SOA. Services do not inherently provide value to the business. If the services are not interoperable, well defined and documented, or reusable there is minimal gain.
With the Knowledge Refinery™, Hatha Systems brings automation and tooling to all phases of a SOA modernization project. Prior to the actual migration, our tools help the analyst understand all aspects of the existing application. During the migration, Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ automates key portions of the process ensuring a precise and rapid transformation. Post-migration our tools can be used to ensure that no features, data, or business rules were missed. While most vendors deliver facilities to create wrappers for services, Hatha Systems focuses on the discovery, accuracy and correct definitions for a more precise migration of services.
One key advantage of Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ is that it is capable of visualizing applications which incorporate disparate technologies. The platform is capable of representing the entire application in a single model, even if components have been implemented in different languages. This holistic view of the application allows the analyst to obtain a complete picture of the system.
Using Hatha Systems' technology to discover candidate services
The fundamental questions which need to be answered when moving an application into an enterprise SOA platform are - what functionality does the application provide, and how does it correlate with the functions required by the business? Once the existing functions are discovered, the next question is which of them should be transformed into services. Discovering candidate services is crucial to the success of the migration.
Before services can be created, the set of required services must be identified. Hatha Systems brings automation and tooling to the task of discovering services. Our solution helps analysts understand all aspects of the existing application including application dependencies and intersection points.
The discovery of application dependencies is critical for creating the roadmap which guides the migration process. Application intersection points define the boundaries between systems. Hatha Systems' solution provides comprehensive information about the relationships between applications, including the specific inputs and outputs required for each interaction. Finally Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ facilitates the discovery of redundant (or similar) functionality which can be consolidated into a single function or service.
Layer Identification Using Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™
Using Hatha Systems' technology to create services
Hatha Systems also delivers significant value during the migration itself. It does this by automating pieces of the transformation process, insuring high productivity, efficiency and accuracy. While there is no push-button transformation solution, individual components can be migrated with a high degree of automation. Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ delivers automated value in the following areas:
- Service Contracts - automated discovery and definition of the associated service contract.
- Overlapping Service Mitigation - automated identification and analysis of overlapping services and how they can be integrated into new applications.
- Security and Policy Alignment - ensure that proposed services align with the security and architectural policies of the organization prior to integrating those services into the enterprise SOA.
Using Hatha Systems' technology after the migration
Once an application has been migrated, it requires extensive testing. One of the chief challenges associated with testing is the ability to identify the set of all relevant test cases. Analysis performed by Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ can facilitate assembling a suite of test cases that ensures comprehensive coverage of the application functionality. An inventory of business or validation rules discovered by the Knowledge Refinery™ may be used to ensure that they are all included in the resulting application.
