Towards Design Rationales of Software Confederations

The paper discuss reasons why service-oriented architecture is a new software paradigm and the consequences of this fact for the design of enterprise information systems. It is shown that such systems called confederations need not use web services in the sense of W3C. It is, however, more or less a necessity in e-commerce. Confederations (service-oriented systems with known set of services) are typical for manufacturing systems. As business processes supported by enterprise systems must be supervised by businessmen, the same must hold for communication inside service-oriented systems. It implies that the interfaces of the services must be user-oriented (user-friendly). It can be easier achieved in confederations than in e-commerce systems. User oriented interface has positive consequences for the software engineering properties of the confederation. Confederations should sometimes include parts based on different implementation philosophies (e.g. data orientation). Pros and cons of it are discussed. Open issues of service orientation are presented.