Agile Integration of Complex Systems

Service Oriented Architecture SOA is fundamental to realizing DoDs Net-Centric Vision. SOA provides a powerful infrastructure for integrating disparate systems and technologies through services. However, current practice relies heavily on human intervention for such integration that provides little flexibility to the edge user during mission execution. We have developed and applied a tool-assisted method that allows the edge user to quickly identify non-organic systems and technologies of interest, augmented with special services, and to integrate them dynamically to support a mission. This method for Agile Integration of Complex Systems Agile Integration was implemented and used in multiple demonstrations. As the mission evolves, the edge user can easily adapt the integrated solution. Our emphasis is on integrating systems and technologies, not the customary service orchestration. Agile Integration is based on three graphically enabled SOA services Graphically Enabled Discovery Service, Graphically Enabled Messaging Service, and Graphically Enabled Mediation Service that use a mission-limited Community of Action CoA registry see Graphically Enabled Messaging Service and Figure 4. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows SOA in DoD discusses the DoD mandate for SOA Baseline SOA establishes a foundation for comparison with Agile Integration the next six sections provide a detailed comparison of the three graphically enabled services with the corresponding baseline services the final section summarizes the paper and suggests some areas for further investigation and development.