Data Standardization as the Basis for an Service-Oriented Architecture

During the last years service-oriented architectures have gotten much attention in all kinds of publications and conferences. Unfortunately the propagated breakthrough to implement service-oriented architectures has not happened in the industry yet. One of the reasons for this situation is that there is no standardization of the communication language in the existing IT landscape in enterprises. To put service-oriented architectures in place such standardization is strongly needed, for the reason that the messages between services have to be understood by all participants. Following the paradigm of today´s software development, problems rise when building IT solutions based on business processes. Different people from the business using the same process may have different understanding of the information entities they deal with. People who are responsible for the IT solutions try to put all these issues into one product, often failing because of a lack of understanding and transparency. The Siemens Plc has developed a concept for data standardization that is the basis for the creation of a service-oriented architecture. The idea is to take business level specifications and use business process documentation as a starting point to ensure that a common business language is available before the application development starts. Since the Siemens Plc is a process-driven enterprise, every business and IT change depends on business processes. Thus, to tie the data standardization to the same mechanisms seems promising