A conceptual framework for unified and comprehensive SOA management

Business requirements, such as regulations and laws, corporate policies, quality of service aspects, etc. affect the management of enterprise-scale SOA systems during different life-cycle stages. Such requirements also induce interdependencies across different elements and aspects of an SOA system. Therefore, a systematic approach to SOA management must be in place in order to effectively govern the development and execution of automated business processes throughout the entire SOA life-cycle in compliance with business requirements. Until now, industry and research have focused on specific management aspects rather than unified and comprehensive solutions. This paper addresses this issue by proposing a conceptual framework for SOA management that combines a micro-kernel/plug-in architecture with the concept of management workflows. The micro-kernel incorporates a unified registry/repository model, facilitating the extension of specific management capabilities with plug-ins. Management workflows compose the capabilities of multiple plug-ins into comprehensive management processes that can be linked to events in different places in an SOA system.