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GMU C4I Center Seminar
Mission-Model Driven Process:
Test & Evaluate Composition of SOA Services
Dr. Prem P. Jain
MITRE Corporation
Friday, March 28, 2008 at 2pm
Science & Technology II building, Room 320
ABSTRACT
The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm offers an opportunity to rapidly deploy new mission capabilities by composing verified SOA services thereby shifting the critical path from development of services to integration, Test and Evaluation (T&E). Realization of this potential requires a well defined integration, T&E process aligning with the Department of Defense (DOD) materiel acquisition process. In addition, some of the integration, T&E process steps must be automated to achieve the needed process agility validate and verify (V&V) speed.
The proposed semi-automated mission-model-driven MLM2SOA process exploits the Commercial off the shelf (COTS) products supporting emerging business process standards: Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Business Process Executable Language (BPEL). A prototype implementing the MLM2SOA process was used for a Missile Defense scenario processing sensor data, stored in files, and displaying tracks via web services. The prototype uses existing Track, Propagate, Associate and Google Earth SOA services.
The MLM2SOA process is an iterative process supporting the Model-Test-Model paradigm. It uses the BPMN standard to model Test Event Operational Mission Thread (OMT) and analyze mission performances via simulation using COTS tools. Mission threads, widely identified as a desirable method to capture DOD acquisition requirements, modeled in a machine-executable form can V&V operational performance early in the acquisition process. Available cost-effective COTS solutions automate the integration of executable mission models in a SOA environment, providing agility and speed to that V&V process. COTS solutions also automatically generate a SOA test environment in the form of workflow expressed in BPEL standard. Multiple COTS vendors currently support execution of BPEL (via BPEL workflow engine) in their respective environment for functional testing of the SOA services deployed at disparate nodes on a network. These services can be instrumented to collect performance parameters, which can then be fed back to the mission model to improve accuracy of projected mission performances.
We observe that fast-growing COTS support of converging SOA and Business Process Modeling (BPM) standards provide DOD an excellent opportunity to improve its process to T&E net-centric capabilities in a mission context. Current COTS maturity allows executing the first iteration of the MLM2SOA process for a simple OMT in weeks and subsequent iteration in hours and days. Each iteration consists of modeling a test event operational mission thread, analyzing mission performances for a specific composition of verified services and specific workload, generating the SOA test ready workflow and testing services.
BIO
Dr. Prem Jain is leading the development of a new "Mission Level Modeling (MLM) and Analysis" capability at MITRE Corporation. He supports Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) to Research and Develop new methods and technologies, needed to support GIG Test and Evaluation (T&E). He joined MITRE in October 2005 from BAE Systems "Center for Transformation" experimenting with computer aided analysis technologies for Family of Systems. He has spent over 20 years in Electronic Design Automation industry and was the CEO of the company "Cynergy System Design/ CAE Plus", which developed "System on a Chip" architecture analysis and architectural synthesis tools. His patents include graphical executable language, architecture synthesis algorithms and synchronous time sliced simulation. During 1988-1992, he was a faculty member in the Computer Science department of University of Texas in Austin. He received his B. Tech in EE from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, Masters and PhD is in EE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.