Online bookstore application

   

      From previous articles, we described about the definition of both SOA and web service.

In this article, we will now discuss more about application of them.

      Nowadays, business and technology are connected with each other. Technology helps business to be more effective and efficiency in their services, for example, Internet and other communication devices. Also, business with technology involved can satisfy customers' need than in the past. As you can see now there are e-commerce and e-business that can be well successful business in today market. It is the business where you can sell or buy products via using Internet as one channel of communication. Therefore, most of companies now are use e-business such as Amazon or E-bay.

     So, now let's go back to our topic, Service oriented approach and Web services are one of technology that can helps in business process by redesigning the normal business into e-commerce. The following paragraph will involve with the example of application which is online bookstore web services application.

     First of all,  This online bookstore involves in several funtionalities such as providing interfaces to catalog browers, get an order from customer, accept online payment, etc. Customer wants to purchase book that they interested in by searching books in catalog to meet their wants and needs. However, in normal e-comerce will limit the links of book that they provided to customer, so customer will have fewer choices. If there are no book that they want, they might go to other websites and it will take longer time for customer to search for their wished book. In addtion, provider of that website will have to update more information and spend more timen and money to provide those books to customer. On the other hand, in Web service, online bookstore acts as service registry in previous article to provide interface between customer(service requester) and service provider.

Online Bookstore Application use case diagram

 

     

    BrowseCatalog Service, order service, and payment service are the services that provided by this application. Next, we will discuss each of them respectively.

• BrowseCatalog Service: This service is resbonsible for offering the customer detail of    books such as publisher or subject. First, service provider(Book publishers) register in a business registry and provide information about their services in order to provide offers of  a browseCatalog service which allows customer to see books that they provided for customer. Then, the BrowseCatalod service starts looking for the book that customer want. After that, The business registry receives the detail of customer criteria from BrowseCatalog and sends information back. Thus, the browseCataalog service can send a list of availble books from different sources(publishers) to customer. However, if there are no book available, the application will ask customer for another book. If so, it continues doing to find the book until meet customers' wants.    

•  Order Service: After the customer got a list of book that they want, it is time to order for that book. This Order Service is provided by service providers (publisher). Firstly, the service asks the customer about personal information, name, telephone, address, and the delivery date, and also keep date of birth and areas of interest as further references. Secondly it ask the customer for type of payment ( credit cards or cheque). Lastly it will pass to payment service after the customer made the order automatically.

•  Patmeny Service : This is the main process of online bookstore since it involves with essential data such as credit card number. It begins with doing lot of validation on customer informatiom. So it need high security because the information might get lost while transfering through networks. Encrypting the credit card information, authenticating the user, authorizing permission to access the service is neccessary. The application authenticates the user when log in to the system and allow permission to enter the service based on their registration.

   In conclusion,  there are more benefits on Web service application compared to normal e-commerce. Since in normal e-comerce, there are no common registry as web service does. Moreover, it is a new architectural approach which is more flexible to enhance the application

Web services

Now, let's move to the intoduction of Web services.

       Nowadays, many people can't deny to use web since the benefits of web are comfortable and easy to use for both adult and children. Some service providers think that if they have web server, they can use it to sell products around the world. Another part is users, they also can use it to contact, buy products and find something that they want around the world. Web have 3 main roles which are GET, POST and PUT in Web Service is the web is not only about data or information, it is also about service.
 

      Web Service is a new web application that can install, find and start working on Web Service. It can do since easy work such as find information or complex business process. When you start working with Web Service like E-mail, it will get data and you can work anywhere you want because it will send data to server. In addtion web services allow users to share Information via network.

      The Web Service use language of XML and HTTP for exchanging information. We know HTTP such as on the website that has internet. Another one is XML, is a language that can create by ourselves between client and service. It also use to exchange the different data between each machine.

Here is the example of Web services

      From the fiqure above, you can see the connection between three main roles which are service provider, service registry, and service requestor. All these roles connected using bind, find, and publish operations. First of all, service provider is the one that allows access to the webservice and also pubishes service description to the service registry. Then it is time for service requestor to find the service description in service registry and uses the description information to create the service by binding with service provider.

Description of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)

        From the previous article, you can see the overall picture of SOA(Service-Oriented Architecture) from the examples of CD and Oracle. In this article we will briefly explain more about SOA description or defination.

        Service Oriented Architecture or SOA is a well-known of flexible new architecture for development and integration in computing. It is the collection of many services in network which involves in communication and exchange with each other. In the past SOA was used with the DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs), but today, it is replaced by the Web Services.

        In my point of view, SOA is intangible concept, which is not similar to software. It is more similar to services or analysis and designed concept. For instance, travel agent services, hotel booking services. Someone said that "It is loosely coupled" which means it does not require other services, also it can manage and maintain itself easily. 

        To give more understanding, try to think according to this example. If I want this service, I will go to the 2nd floor and tell them my wants. After that they will give me back what I want. That is it.

  

        SOA can be divided in to 2 terms; which are Services and Connections.

1.) Services are function or business processing that is well-defined, self-contained, and does not depend on other services. For example, Weather Services, which can be used to get the weather information. So any application on the network can use this Weather Service to get the weather information.

2.) Connections are the linkage which connect self-contained with each other. It is help client for Service communication.

        This figure illustates the example of SOA.  It shows the connection between service provider and service customer. By service provider receives a service request from service consumer, after recieving the request, service provider will send back service reponse to service consumer. A service provider can also be a service consumer.

      Some will have question on their mind "Why do we use SOA ?" Here are some of advantages of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)

• SOA allows companies to use the software and hardware of their alternatives because of its independent( do not depend on other services )
• SOA has capacity of increasing development, deployment, and maintenance. 
• Companies can use the existing old software and use SOA to build applications without replacing the existing one
• Companies can hire lots of labor for running the applcation because of low cost of training