Enterprise Modeling in Support of SOA Migration Analysis

Abstract

This paper shows how enterprise modeling can support a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) migration analysis in terms of (1) IT infrastructure understanding, (2) identifying and refining candidate services by means of analyzing both the current IT infrastructure capabilities and business concerns, as well as (3) understanding how candidate services build on the current IT infrastructure. Based on requirements derived from a conducted literature study on SOA analysis and SOA migration projects, we identify the Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modeling (MEMO) method as a suitable language family to support a SOA migration analysis. Furthermore, we extend MEMO's language for IT infrastructure modeling, called ITML, with concepts central to SOA migration, and show how the modeling language can support key phases of a SOA migration project. We also provide a threefold evaluation of our SOA migration modeling approach by means of (1) application to documented SOA migration projects, (2) a scenario-based comparison with ArchiMate, another language that is a promising candidate for a SOA migration analysis, and (3) an assessment against the identified requirements. Finally, we discuss corresponding software tool support.