Purpose of this guide is to help
you understand the high level concepts in SCA so that you can build
a simple application. For more details on SCA please refer to the
various specifications available at www.osoa.org.
What is SCA?
SCA is an executable model for assembly of services into business
solutions. It simplifies component programming model for implementation
of business services that can be implemented in any language. The
key benefits of SCA are:
- Loose Coupling: Components integrate with other components
without needing to know how other components are implemented.
Components can be easily invoked either synchronously or asynchronously.
- Flexibility: Components can easily be replaced by other
components. It also provides the flexibility to create solutions
using existing services (bottom up) or model the business and
develope the solution (top down).
- Productivity: It enables you to focus on your business
logic rather than be slowed with concerns about infrastructure.
SCA simplifies development experience for all developers (including
J2EE and Integration Developers), integrators and application
deployers
Now let's get into description of SCA building blocks.
SCA Component Implementation
The basic building block for SCA is a component implementation.
When you're writing code for SCA, you are typically writing code
that will either be the implementation of a component or will be
used by such an implementation. A component implementation is described
by the following attributes:
- Services: This describes the function this type of component
provides
- References: This describes the dependencies this type
of component has in order to function
- Properties: This defines configuration parameters that
can controls how the program logic can behave. For example, what
currency to use.
- Intent policies: This describes assumptions on how the
component will behave. There are two types of policies.
- Implementation policy- Impact the behavior of an
implementation. For example, transaction, monitor and logging
- Interaction policy - defines how the components
behave with one another. For example, security.
A typical component implementation can be illustrated as:
The implementation of a component can be in any language that is
suitable for the user, for example BPEL for business processes or
XSL-T for transformations or Ruby for scripting or pure Java. How
the services, references, properties and intents are defined for
an implementation is specific to that particular implementation
type.
SCA Component
A component is an instance of a configured component implementation.
More than one component can use the same implementation. A component
lives in a composite that is described next.
SCA Composite
Individual components like those above can be used on their own,
or they can be grouped together in a composite. A composite is a
type of component whose implementation is not code but an aggregation
of one or more components co-operating to provide Services as a
whole. Think of composite as a solution, for example credit check
composite. A composite can also be used within a larger solution,
for example credit check can be part of a order processing composite.
A composite has the same charactersitics as a component. It provides
Services, has References to other dependencies, and can be configured
using Properties and can have intent policies in just the same way
as an individual components can. In the example below, you see a
calculator composite which consists of 5 components, a calculator
service has references to four components:Add, Subtract, Multiply
and Divide.
The assembly or wiring is defined in .composite file through Service
Component Definition Language (SCDL). For example, calculator.composite
would define that calculator component references the other four components.
SCA Domain
The implementations of components, either individual or composite,
all form reusable units that can be run multiple times in different
environments (in much the same way as you have multiple instances
of a Java class). A composite, with its configuration information,
gets packaged into a deployable unit called a contribution
which gets contributed to the domain. Artifacts may be shared between
contributions, for example Java classes, XSD files, WSDL files,etc.
An SCA Domain represents a complete runtime configuration, potentially
distributed over a
series of interconnected runtime nodes. Domain configuration is
the overall configuration for service dependencies, properties,
policies. A domain is a logical view of the running applications
or a coherent grouping of components that are working together,
connected to each other using SCA wiring. A composite gets instantiated
when it is actually used in an SCA environment.
SCA Domains can vary in size from the very small to the very large:
- a very small domain could be one within a test environment inside
an IDE
- a medium sized domain could be a single server or small cluster
supporting a single application
- a large domain could describe all the services within a department
or company
In a large domain there may be all sorts of policies about where
components can run and how they connect to each other or to external
services. However, during development one is not concerned with
all this. The code is packaged and made available for deployment.
Tuscany SCA Java supports contributions in the form of JAR or filesystem.
Below is an example of domain with two contributions.
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