DAT is Standards Based

We believe that standards must be the basis on which systems are built to maintain a long lasting and vendor independent information system. We have made a strong commitment to implementing and driving standards for enterprise computing. DAT is a member of and an active participant in numerous Industry Consortia and Standards Development organizations. These include the Object Management Group (OMG), The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the Open Group and others.

OMG has developed some of the industry's most influential specifications, including Corba, OMG IDL, IIOP, UML, MOF, XMI, CWM, and MDA.

DAT is currently involved in a number of OMG specification activities including those related to Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM), Executable UML, Ontologies Definition Metamodel (ODM) and others.

OMG UML andModel Driven Architecture ™

UML with MDA provides an open, vendor-neutral approach to the challenge of interoperability, building upon and leveraging OMG's established modeling standards, including Unified Modeling Language. DAT uses these standards to enable the development of reduced time and cost, open system architectures.

DAT has been a major contributor to the OMG's "Enterprise Distributed Object Computing" (EDOC) standard which was ratified November 2001. EDOC is the UML based modeling paradigm for enterprise Internet computing. EDOC is a coordinated effort within the OMG to develop a series of RFPs for technologies of particular interest to the business object community. The goal of EDOC is to provide standards that support the use of object-oriented approaches in the analysis, design, and development of enterprise computing systems.

For additional information see our EDOC page.

OASIS

The Organization for the Advancement of Information Standards (OASIS) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

Hosted by OASIS, XML.org serves as an online community gathering place for those interested and involved in XML-related standards and specifications. XML.org features Focus Areas dedicated to specific OASIS Standards and to horizontal and vertical sectors of the marketplace. XML.org advances the use of open standards by providing technical and educational information, collaborative workspaces, and discussion areas.

XML & Web Services

Various approaches and technologies have been proposed and developed for enterprise integration. But for integration across the Internet, XML has become recognized as the technology of choice. XML allows businesses, information systems, and applications to be integrated and adapted easily.

By agreeing to use XML to implement Web services, by exchanging XML data over the Internet, many of the technical hurtles to integration and collaboration disappear. Business can concentrate on using and publishing XML-based application services and using off-the-shelf tools.

XML is an open standards technology. But XML alone is not enough. Open standards are required to securely and reliably send XML over the Internet, as well as to design and construct XML applications from components. These standards are coming out of organizations such as W3C, OMG, ebXML, ISO, and others. The standards make it possible to build Internet enabled solutions that can work immediately with other businesses. The use of standards for tools and infrastructure prevents proprietary lock-in and ensures that an investment in IT assets is a lasting investment.

ebXML

ebXML goes beyond web services to provide a true business-business collaboration environment based on the secure and reliable exchange of documents between business partners. ebXML defines both the model and transport for electronic business. DAT can help you apply ebXML to your business and has designed Component-X™ with ebXML in mind.

The Open Group

The Open Group is a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium, whose vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ enables access to integrated information within and between enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group works with customers, suppliers, consortia and other standard bodies to:

• Capture, understand and address current and emerging requirements, and establish policies and share best practices

• Facilitate interoperability, develop consensus, and evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies

• Offer a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia

• Operate the industry’s premier certification service

SOA

DAT takes an active role in a number of areas within the Open Group. As a vice chair of the Open Group's Architecture Forum, DAT is active in the Open Group SOA Working Group undertaking such projects as SOA Maturity Models, SOA Governance and an Ontology for SOA. DAT is also involved in an industry wide "SOA Harmonization" project that is attempting to ensure that those Industry Consortia and Standards Bodies that are woirking in the SOA space are communicating with each other to minimize duplicative efforts and ensure that the "Industry" is sending a consistant message to its SOA users and practitioners. The Open Group, OASIS, OMG, the SOA Alliance and others are active participants in this effort.

Open Group-OMG Collaboration

DAT also chairs a joint working group composed of The Open Group, the OMG, and The Integration Consortium, called the MDA-TOGAF Synergy Project that is aligning, modeling and mapping The Open Group's Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and the OMG MDA Standard Specifications. The resulting work is to take one of the world's most popular Architectural Frameworks, TOGAF, and ground its resulting artifacts in OMG Standard Specification. An initial White Paper is available from either Open Group or OMG

Component-X™ - An Example of the Standards at Work

The architecture of Component-X™ is based on standards work with the Object Management Group, OASIS, ebXML and W3C. Component-X™ implements the Component Collaboration Architecture (CCA) which is a UML profile adopted as part of EDOC and enterprise application integration.

Due to the leverage of Component Collaboration Architecture, Component-X™ has become the basis for SOA-based XML component standards.

Component-X™ and the EDOC Component Collaboration Architecture are part of the UML family of languages. Component Collaboration Architecture is defined as a "profile" of UML. A profile of UML specifies a specific way to use UML for a specific purpose. In Component-X™, the purpose is to enable components to collaborate.

Component-X™ implements the ebXML business process specification and provides option adapters for integration with the ebXML messaging infrastructure. All information exchange between Component-X™ components is XML data, as defined by W3C. Internally, information is exchanged in "DOM trees," which are W3C standard for in-memory representation of XML data.

Component-X™ is implemented in pure Java for portability and adherence to standards. Additional components may be developed in Java by any programmer and the components added to the component pallet. Using Java's capability to call many other computer languages directly and through middleware, Component-X™ components may integrate with almost any external system. Interactions between Component-X™ components within a single program or server is implemented using standard Java events carrying XML data.

By using Java as the base component language, we not only ensure portability, but an open system as well. No proprietary "scripting" languages are needed; and the library of component business and technical components can be extended to anything Java can do.

Fortunately, the consensus, standards, and the energy surrounding XML has encouraged vendors to produce off-the-shelf tools and infrastructures for assembling and deploying XML-based Internet solutions.

Component-X™ tools provide the drag-and-drop component development and assembly environment that helps put together robust and easy-to-use SOA-based solutions. Component-X™ interfaces with standard Web servers, application servers, DBMS systems, middleware, and tools to provide a complete solution.