Introduction

This series of articles discusses the end-to-end process of creating composite business services with IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric Version 6.0.2.Part 1 introduced the idea of composite business services, and how WebSphere Business Services Fabric supports the development of these services. Part 2, explained how WebSphere Business Services Fabric can help resolve a proposed business problem by illustrating the resulting analysis and design steps.

This installment describes the steps for creating a Composite Business Service (CBS) model with IBM WebSphere Business Composition Studio (hereafter referred to as Composition Studio), using the business scenario described in Part 2. This article covers the CBS modeling in Composition Studio, editing the ontology and policies definition, and using Policy Simulator to verify the assembly.

This article assumes you have read the previous two articles in this series.

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Component terminology

To get you started, let's define some WebSphere Business Services Fabric terms and components used in this article:

• Governance Manager: All assembly time governance of CBS construction is performed using the IBM Business Services Governance Manager, which is accessible via the Fabric Console. This Web-based administrative console module within Foundation Pack enables you to:

  • Control access and visibility to business service models and policies within the Business Services Repository.
  • Enforce consistency and coherency of business meta data within the Business Services Repository.
  • Govern the changes to CBS meta data in the Business Services Repository.
  • Migrate CBS meta data between instances of the WebSphere Business Services Fabric.

• Subscriber Manager: IBM Business Services Subscriber Manager lets the CBS administrator manage the users, roles, organizations and subscriptions of the services. Subscriber Manager, accessible via the Fabric Console, is a Web-based module within Foundation Pack that enables you to:

  • Create and manage users and organizations.
  • Manage the enrollment of the organizations into available services.
  • Manage the users' subscription to organizations.

• Composition Studio: IBM Business Services Composition Studio enables CBS architects, business analysts, and integration developers to collaborate with each other and build an IBM Business Services Repository to be used by the WebSphere Business Services Fabric. Composition Studio is an Eclipse-based plug-in for WebSphere Integration Developer that is used to populate service meta data stored in IBM Business Services Repository. Through Composition Studio, you can instantiate:

  • Business Service models (application suite, application models, interface models, Web service models, and endpoint models)
  • Policies
  • Business process models (business ecosystems, business processes, and flow objects.)

Roles and responsibilities during CBS assembly

The suggested roles involved in this CBS assembly are (Figure 1):

• The architect has the overall view of all CBSs enterprise wide and approves changes that developers have made in the form of changelists.
• The integration developer creates meta data of a CBS in Composition Studio.

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Create a CBS model

Below are the general steps for creating a CBS model. The remainder of this article explains the tasks associated with each of these steps in detail.

1. Set up a Fabric project
2. Create namespaces for the project
3. Configure a CBS environment
4. Define organizations
5. Extend the assertion ontology
6. Create a Fabric project
7. Create the Business Service models
8. Define the policy
9. Submit changes
10. Simulate policy

1. Set up a Fabric project

WebSphere Business Services Fabric activities are carried out within the scope of a project, and each project is configured to be associated with meta data and the team that maintains that content.

1. First, type this URL in your Web browser to access the Fabric Console; the default user ID is admin and the default password is webify (Figure 2):

   URL http://<server name:port number>/fabric/

   
   
   Figure 2. WebSphere Business Services Fabric portal
   
   
   

2. Next, the architect needs to create a new project (Figure 3). Select Governance Manager => Configure Projects.

3. Enter or select the following values (Figure 3):

   • Project Name: Loan Origination
   • Project Type: Business Service
   • Team Organization: System (or other applicable value)

2. Create namespaces for the project

A namespace provides a means for grouping objects in the CBS meta-model, thereby making the system more modular. All objects in the CBS meta-model must belong to a namespace. Two types of namespaces are used here:

• Schema namespace describes the domain-specific classes and properties of the CBS meta-model.
• Instance namespace stores objects in the CBS meta-model created by users in Composition Studio.

To create these namespaces:

1. Select Governance Manager => Configure Namespaces.

2. Create a schema type namespace with these values (Figure 4):

   • Display Name: Loan Origination Schema
   • Namespace Type: Schema
   • Namespace Prefix: lo
   • Namespace URI: http://intbank/loan/loanorigination#
     (the trailing '#' is mandatory (for Fabric) or you will not be able to save it)
   • Owner Project: Loan Origination (created in above)
   
   
   Figure 4. Create a schema namespace
   
   
   

3. Create an instance namespace with these values (Figure 5):

   • Display Name: Loan Origination Instance
   • Namespace Type: Instance
   • Namespace URI: http://intbank/loan/loanorigination-inst#
     (the trailing '#' is mandatory (for Fabric) or you will not be able to save it)
   • Owner Project: Loan Origination (created above)
   
   
   Figure 5. Create an instance namespace
   
   
   

3. Configure a CBS environment

A CBS environment provides the association with the system where business services endpoints are deployed, so, for example, endpoints that are assigned for a testing environment will not be consumed if the request contains a production environment.

1. Select Governance Manager => Configure Environments.

2. Create a testing environment named Loan Origination Testing Environment (Figure 6).

   
   
   Figure 6. Configure environments
   
   
   

4. Define organizations

Define the three organizations described in the business case:

1. Select Subscriber Manager => Manage Subscriber (Figure 7).

2. Enter an Organization Name of International Bank and press Create Organization.

3. Create another organization named International Bank of California, and select International Bank as the Parent Organization.

4. Similarly, create an organization named International Bank of Texas, and select International Bank as the Parent Organization.

5. Extend the assertion ontology

Ontology is a collection of definitions of the terms and concepts used to describe and represent an area of knowledge, which may include concepts (classes, general things) in the domain of interest, relationships among the concepts, and properties or attributes and values.

WebSphere Business Services Fabric uses the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to represent both the schema and the data for internal data. Extending the ontology enables you to change the schema (that is, assertion types and associated properties), and Composition Studio lets you to create new data (such as endpoints and assertions) based on new defined schema. Three types of ontology extensions are possible in WebSphere Business Services Fabric:

• Channel represents the mechanism through which a message is sent to a business service.
• Role determines the access control for a user.
• Assertion describe the characteristics and capabilities of an endpoint.

An open source tool called Protege (developed largely at Standard University) is introduced here so you can create two new assertions for describing policy functions and defining endpoint capabilities. (WebSphere Business Services Fabric is expected to provide its own tooling for ontology extensions in an upcoming release.) The steps for creating these assertions in Protege are provided here.

The basic flow for extending the ontology for WebSphere Business Services Fabric involves these general steps:

1. Create new assertions in Protege and store the OWL file.
2. Export the schema of the project from the Fabric Console.
3. Replace the OWL file to the exported schema file.
4. Import the schema file back to WebSphere Business Services Fabric via the Fabric Console.

How these assertions are used will be described later. To create them:

1. Create a new Protege project (Figure 8):

   1. In Protege, select Create New Project...
   2. Select OWL/RDF Files and click Next.
   3. Enter the Ontology URI as: http://intbank/loan/loanorigination (which is the schema namespace created above), then click Next.
   4. Select OWL/DL as the Language Profile, then Next.
   
   
   Figure 8. Protege project
   
   
   

2. Import the Fabric ontology stubs, which are located under <fabric installed directory>\ToolPack\sdk\fabric-sdk-6.0.2\owl when you install the IBM Business Services Tool Pack. To import the stubs:

   1. Click the Metadata tab and import the ontology using the Import ontology... button (Figure 9).
   2. Select Import an ontology contained in a specific local file and click Next.
   3. Click the Browse for File button (Figure 10) to locate the local ontology file. Select core-stub.owl and click Select.
   4. Click Close.
   5. Repeat these steps to import the assertion-stub.owl file.
   
   
   Figure 9. Import an ontology file
   
   
   
   
   Figure 10. Browse for local file
   
   
   

3. To extend ContentBasedAssertion:

   1. Select the OWL Classes tab (marked 1 in Figure 11).
   2. Open the PolicyAssertion tree.
   3. Select the ContentBasedAssertion class (marked 2 in Figure 11).
   4. Click Create subclass (marked 3 in Figure 11).
   5. Name the class LoanAmountAssertion.
   6. Select the Create new annotation value icon (Figure 12).
   7. Select core:assertionType and click OK.
   8. Make sure Endpoint Selection is selected for Property Value.
   9. Repeat these steps to create another assertion named ServiceProviderAssertion.
   
   
   Figure 11. Extend the Content Based Assertion
   
   
   
   
   Figure 12. Create new annotation value
   
   
   

4. To create the loanAmount property:

   1. Select the Properties tab. (marked 1 in Figure 13).
   2. Click the Create datatype property button (marked 2 in Figure 13).
   3. Named the property loanAmount.
   4. Under Domain, click Add named class(es) (Figure 14) and browse to select the LoanAmountAssertion, created above (Figure 15).
   5. Under Range, select int and make sure Functional is checked.
   6. Add a new annotation value to loanAmount property, similar to step 3, naming the property core:assertionPropertyComparator with a value of LessThanComparator.
   7. Add another new annotation named core:controlWidget with a value of integer.
      
      Figure 13. Create properties
      
      
      
      
      Figure 14. Add named class
      
      
      
      
      Figure 15. Select named class
      
      
      

5. To create the serviceProvider property:

   1. Select the Properties tab (marked 1 in Figure 13).
   2. Click the Create datatype property button (marked 2 in Figure 13).
   3. Named the property serviceProvider.
   4. Under Domain, click Add named class(es) (Figure 14) and browse to select the ServiceProviderAssertion, created above.
   5. Under Range, select string, and make sure Functional is checked, then add two values for the range: Internal and External (Figure 16).
   6. Add a new annotation value to serviceProvider property, similar to step 3, naming the property: core:assertionPropertyComparator with a value of EqualComparator.
   7. Add another new annotation named core:controlWidget with a value of dataRange.
   
   
   Figure 16. Add values for range
   
   
   

6. Save the Protege project with a .owl filename, such as loanorigination.owl (Protege Version 3.2 Build 236 cannot store a file name containing a space).

7. Export the schema ontology from WebSphere Business Services Fabric:

   1. Logon to the Fabric Console.
   2. Select Governance Manager => Import/Export, and select the Export by Project tab,
   3. Select the Full Content Content type, then select the Loan Origination project (Figure 17).
   4. Check the Loan Origination Schema and click the Export to File button.
   5. Save the file locally (it will have an file extension of .zip).
   
   
   Figure 17. Export project schema
   
   
   

8. Replace the OWL file to the exported schema file:

   1. Extract the .zip file created above. The compressed file should contain content-pack.xml (the manifest file) and Loan Origination Schema.owl.
   2. Replace Loan Origination Schema.owl with loanorigination.owl, created in step f (for example, rename the loanorigination.owl file to "Loan Origination Schema.owl," then replace with the file that was extracted from the .ocp file).
   3. Use a file compression utility to archive the two files (content-pack.xml and Loan Origination Schema.owl), and remember to change the extension name to .zip.

9. Import the schema file back to WebSphere Business Services Fabric:

   1. Logon to the Fabric Console.
   2. Select Governance Manager => Import/Export.
   3. Click the Browse button, select the .zip file created in step h, then click Import File (Figure 18).
   4. A successful import message will display if the file is correctly imported.

The data created above is stored in the Business Service Repository of WebSphere Business Services Fabric.

6. Create a Fabric project

To create a Fabric project in Composition Studio:

1. First, you need to set workspace preferences. Launch Composition Studio and open the Preference dialog to set up the Repository Configuration, as shown in Figure 19. The default user name and password is admin and webify, respectively. Composition Studio retrieves the project, namespaces, and ontologies (created in the previous section) from the Business Services Repository using the configuration supplied here.

   
   
   Figure 19. Setting workspace preferences
   
   
   

2. Next, you need to create a Composition Studio project. To create a local project associated with the project on Business Services Repository, open the Business Service perspective and right-click on the Business Service Explorer view to create a new Fabric project. The name of this Fabric project is not necessarily identical to the project name created on the Fabric Console, it simply represents the local repository for meta data resources (Figure 20).

   
   
   Figure 20. Create a Fabric project
   
   
   

3. Click the Next button, then the Replicate button to retrieve the available projects data from Business Services Repository into your local development environment (that is, into Composition Studio). This process is analogous to checking out source code from a source control system. Select Next, choose the project you previously created on WebSphere Business Services Fabric, then replicate and click the Finish button (Figure 21).

   
   
   Figure 21. Select a Fabric project for replication
   
   
   

4. After the replication is complete, switch to the Business Service perspective. Under the Loan Origination project, you will see resources related to Business Services, as shown in Figure 22. Resources under the Business Service Explorer represents the view from the Information Technology (IT) perspective, which contains the application suites and the applications to implement.

   
   
   Figure 22. Business Service Explorer view
   
   
   

7. Compose the Business Service models

First, you must compose the application suite and the application:

1. An application suite is a resource in the Business Services Repository that represents a suite of related applications. An application suite can contain many applications. Right-click on Loan Origination and select New => Application Suite (Figure 23) and enter a name, such as Banking Application Suite.

   
   
   Figure 23. Create application suite
   
   
   

2. Here, the application represents the CBS, which is a collection of business services built around a complex, end-to-end business process, and is optimized to a specific industry. Select New => Application, enter a name, such as Loan Application, and select the application suite you just created. Figure 24 illustrates the resulting outline.

   
   
   Figure 24. Business Service Explorer view
   
   
   

3. A business service is a business function whose execution can be adapted at run time based on business policy and user context. The three types of business services provided on Composition Studio are process service, visibility service, and optimization service; for the purposes of this article, only process service is used here. To create a business service:

   1. Right click on the Business Service Explorer view and select New => Business Service.
   2. Select Process Service, then click Next.
   3. Enter a name for the service, such as Loan Processing Service, and select the Loan Application application created previously to associate the service resource with the application. Click Next.
   4. Click the Add Channel... button, enter a Display Name, such as Web Service Channel, and select the value WebServiceChannel from the Matching Channel Types list (Figure 25). Click Next.
   5. Click the Add Role Type... button and select Administrator (or any other roles) that you want to have access to this service. Click the Finish when done.
   
   
   Figure 25. Add channel for process service
   
   
   

4. The Interface created in Composition Studio is based on the port types defined in the WSDL document. A Web service model for each port type of a particular WSDL can be extracted and cataloged. For this article, a WSDL is provided to create the Interface. To create an Interface:

   1. Right click on the Business Service Explorer view and select New => Interface.
   2. Locate the WSDL named CreditVerificationSrvc.wsdl (available in the Download section) and click Next.
   3. Add the available service CreditVerificationSrvc and click Next.
   4. Click Finish.
   5. Return to the Loan Processing Service created in the previous step, and click the Overview tab (Figure 26).
   6. Press the Detail... button then Add (Figure 27) to select the CreditVerificationSrvc you just created.
   
   
   Figure 26. Add Interface to channel of process service
   
   
   
   
   Figure 27. Add the Interface
   
   
   

5. There are two endpoints described in the previous article: the Credit Digger and the Customer Credit Information System (CCIS). The CCIS endpoint has the capability of ServiceProviderAssertion as "Internal" and LoanAmountAssertion as "0" (which means any loan amount larger than 0). Credit Digger has the capability of ServiceProviderAssertion as "External" and LoanAmountAssertion as "10000" (which means the loan amount larger than $10,000). To create endpoints:

   1. Right click on the Resource Explorer view and select New => Endpoint.
   2. Enter the name as Customer Credit Information System, leaving the default values for all other fields, and click Next.
   3. Enter the URL as http://localhost:9080/CreditVeriCCIS/services/CreditVerificationSrvc and click Finish. (The URL should represent the actual Web services deployed; this article assumes the services are deployed at the URL shown.)
   4. Click the Interface tab of this endpoint to associate the endpoint with an existing interface. Click Add Existing... and select the CreditVerificationSrvc interface, created above.
   5. Select the Environment tab, then click the Add Existing... button and select the Loan Origination Testing Environment.
   6. Click the Assertions tab and expand the Interoperability section. Add ServiceProviderAssertion from list box and select Internal.
   7. Add the LoanAmountAssertion and enter 0.
   8. In the Overview tab, add the cost with a value of 1 and select the Transaction for Cost Modifier (which means the cost per transaction is $1). Remember to save the changes.
   9. Follow the same rule to compose the endpoint for Credit Digger: the URL value can be set as http://localhost:9080/CreditVeriCD/services/CreditVerificationSrvc; add the ServiceProviderAssertion as External, LoanAmountAssertion as 10000, and cost as 5 for Transaction Cost Modifier.

8. Define the policy

Policy is the mechanism for providing the Dynamic Assembler with the acceptable procedures (rules) for selecting service endpoints. A policy conceptually declares in IF (condition) THEN (assertions) format: If specified condition (context and content) is met, then the specified contract (in the form of combined assertions) will be produced to match the capabilities defined in available endpoints.

Among the properties of policy assertion (Figure 28), there are two fields worth noting:

• If an assertion is marked as Required, then during endpoint selection, any endpoint that does not satisfy that assertion will automatically be discarded as a candidate. If an assertion is not marked as Required, then Dynamic Assembler regards it is a "nice to have."

• If an assertion is Locked in a policy, this assertion will be used regardless of the existence of policies at a more specific policy target. That means the natural ordering or policy target is overridden.

The natural ordering of policy target (Figure 29) is used to resolve conflicts. Policies defined at high order targets can be overridden by policies set at a more specific target for the same assertion type. Dynamic Assembler uses the more specific target when resolving conflicts between policies. If more than one endpoint fulfills the request, the lowest cost one will be chosen.

To create a policy:

1. Switch to the Business Policy Explorer view.

2. Right click on the Loan Origination project and select New => Policy.

3. Enter a policy name, such as Policy for International Bank of California (P1) and click the Browse button to set the target at Interface level (Figure 30). Click Next.

4. Click Add to set the context target to an organization, in this case International Bank of California (Figure 31), then click Next.

5. Add loanAmount content type and select is greater than comparison, input the value as 10000.

6. Click Finish.

7. Click the Contract tab, expand the Interoperability section (Figure 32), add the ServiceProviderAssertion from the list box and select External.

8. Repeat these steps above to create another policy: Policy 2 for International Bank of California (P2), with target set as application Loan Application, content target set to organization International Bank of California, and loanAmount content type. Select is greater than comparison, enter the value as 10000, and ServiceProviderAssertion as Internal in the Contract tab. (This is intentionally created for a policy override test later.)

9. Repeat these steps a third time to create a Policy for International Bank (P3), with target at the Interface level, context target to organization International, no content assertion, and ServiceProviderAssertion set as Internal in the Contract tab.

9. Submit changes

After completing all of the above steps in Composition Studio, you can submit the changes for a further approving cycle on Governance Manager, which manages a queue of changelists before publishing the changes to the Business Services Repository.

1. To submit the changelists, click the Submit Changelist button in the Repository Changes view (Figure 33) on Composition Studio.

   
   
   Figure 33. Changelist in Repository Changes view
   
   
   

   The changed resources cannot be modified after the submission. You must wait until the request is rejected, or approved and published via the Governance Manger, and the result has been updated back to the local repository. You can skip the step b below if you are using the WebSphere Business Services Fabric Unit Test Environment, which will automatically perform the approve and publish as soon as the changelist is submitted.

2. To approve and publish changelists, you (as an administrator) need to logon to the Fabric Console and click My Inbox to display the pending requests. To act on a request, click the submission request, and then click the Approve and Publish buttons in sequence (Figure 34). Only the changes that are actually published will be functioning on the WebSphere Business Services Fabric runtime.

   
   
   Figure 34. Approve and Publish changelist
   
   
   

3. To update the approved and published changelists back to Composition Studio, simply click the Update Project button on Composition Studio (Figure 35).

   
   
   Figure 35. Update published changelist
   
   
   

10. Simulate policy

Composition Studio provides a Policy Simulator for you to test endpoint selection scenarios for business services prior to checking in changes to the working system. The Policy Simulator simulates endpoint selection, given the context you provide, and gives feedback about the policies and assertions used for the decision, the candidate endpoints, and the endpoint that was selected.

To start the Policy Simulator on Composition Studio, click the icon on the toolbar (Figure 36), then the Finish button. Enter the following values (based on the resources created above; some fields are under the Optional Criteria section):

• Business Service: Loan Processing Service
• Channel: Web Service Channel
• Interface: CreditVerificationSrvc
• Environment: Loan Origination Testing Environment
• Organization: International Bank of California
• Content: loanAmount: 11000

Click the Run Simulation button. You will see the result in the Simulation Result section, shown in Figure 37. The simulator clearly lists the invoked policies, applied assertions, and candidate endpoints during the simulation, the last being the selected endpoint that best fits the request.

Change the organization to International Bank or International Bank of Texas to review a different result (Figure 38).

The difference between two of the policies created earlier, Policy 1 for International Bank of California (P1) and Policy 2 for International Bank of California (P2), are the policy target and the contract. P1 (Interface) specifies a more specific order than P2 (application), and therefore P1 will take effect during the conflict resolution. To illustrate how the policy override works, modify the P2 policy and select the Locked checkbox in the assertion property (Figure 28). Rerun the policy simulation and you will see different results (Figure 39).

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Conclusion

This article explained how to assemble a composite business service on WebSphere Business Services Fabric and Composition Studio, extending the ontology, defining policies, and simulating the endpoint selection for policies on Policy Simulator.

In next article, you will learn how to use the Dynamic Assembler Service Component Architecture (SCA) module to perform dynamic assembly of Web services in a Fabric project. You will also learn how to use the Fabric Dynamic Assembler Extension to extract data from a request message body and supply the information to Dynamic Assembler for dynamic endpoint selection decision.

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More in this series

• Part 1: Introducing IBM's new platform for business service modeling, assembly, and deployment
• Part 2: Analyzing the business requirements
• Part 4: Service assembly with the Dynamic Assembler SCA component

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Download

Information about download methods

Resources

• OWL Web Ontology Language Overview
  
  
• What is Protege-OWL?
  
  
• IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric product information
  
  
• IBM SOA Foundation: An architecture introduction and overview
  
  
• Patterns: Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services
  
  
• Service-oriented modeling and architecture: How to identify, specify, and realize services for your SOA
  
  
• IBM developerWorks SOA and Web services zone
  
  
• IBM SOA products and services
  
  

About the authors

Libra Huang is an IT Architect with SOA Solution Center (SSC), IBM Software Group. His background is in J2EE and is now heavily involved with Composite Business Services (CBS) assets development for banking industry.

Hicks Lin is a developer from IBM China Software Development Lab in Taipei. He is currently developing Composite Business Service (CBS) applications for banking industry. He is interested in SOA, J2EE and other emerging server-side technologies.

Jimmy Tan is a senior developer from SOA Solution Center, IBM Software Group. He is developing Composite Business Service (CBS) for banking industry. He is interested in SOA, J2EE and software architecture.

Daniel Wu is working at IBM Software Group as a software engineer in developing Composite Business Service (CBS) application for banking industry.

Frank Wong is a software engineer from IBM China Software Development Lab, Taipei. He is currently developing Composite Business Services (CBS) as the banking industry's solution accelerators.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Component terminology
• Create a CBS model
• Conclusion
• More in this series
• Download
• Resources
• About the authors
• Comments

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