Service Oriented Architecture

This page collects material about service oriented architecture (SOA), in particular, how SOA is represented at the IT-University of Copenhagen (ITU), how students can get involved in SOA, and how to do projects.

• Brief intro to SOA
• Technology involved in SOA
• Courses at ITU related to SOA
• Literature
• Projects
• Contact a supervisor

Courses at ITU related to SOA (New curriculum)

In the new curriculum, SOA projects are suited for both SDT and ITO students. SDT students have the 3rd semester course on Architecture and security, and the specialization in Mobile and distributed systems (or the ITO specialization on System Development). ITO students are prepared by taking the second semester course on Organisations and Technology, and the System development specialization. None of these covers specific aspects of SOA, so some additional reading is required.

Courses at ITU related to SOA (Old curriculum)

There are a number of course activities that can be combined to get a solid profile within SOA. The following diagram lists the main courses, mostly technical in nature, that are currently offered at ITU.

The courses on OOP, IXMR and EAT8 require at least skills at the level of an introductory programming course and a programming project. Both courses J2EE and IWSJ require solid programming skills (equivaltent to OOP) and basic knowledge of XML, which can be acquired in the course IXMR.

Other courses that fit well to a SOA profile are

• W2 Webpublishing with databases (which covers technically similar material as the client/server programming project)
• NP Networks and Protocols
• DS Distributed Systems
• IT-strategy (Danish), which comes in various flavours (ITSN, ...)
• IT project management (Danish), which also comes in various flavours and levels
• SU Software Development
• ?? Process and Data Modelling
• VSYS Enterprise Systems (Danish)

A profile with focus on service oriented architecture can be followed by either INT or SWU students. Students from EBUSS or DKM can contact Carsten Butz to discuss how SOA can be integrated in their curriculum.

Literature

There is a huge amount of literature on XML and XML-related topics. We emphasize here in particular the book

• An Introduction to XML and Web Technologies, Anders Møller & Michael I. Schwartzbach. Pearson Education, 2005.

There are also a number of books devoted to various aspects on SOA, examples are the following:

• Enterprise SOA. Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices.
  Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke and Dirk Slama. Prentice Hall 2005.
• Understanding SOA with Web Services.
  Eric Newcomer and Greg Lomow. Addison-Wesley 2005.
• Service Orienteret Arkitektur. Integration som konkurrenceparameter.
  Henrik Hvid Jensen. Litera 2004.
• Web Services Platform Architecture.
  Curbera et al. Prentice Hall 2005.
• Service Oriented Architecture Compass: Business Value, Planning and Architectural Design.
  Rose et al. Prentice Hall, 2006.

• Service-Oriented Architecture. A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services.
  Thomas Erl. Prentice Hall 2004.
• Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design.
  Thomas Erl. Prentice Hall 2005.

• Service modelling: Principles and applications.
  Vilho Räisänen. John Wiley & Sons 2006.

• Service interaction patterns: Towards a reference framework for service-based business process interconnection.
  Barros, Dumas, Hofstede. Technical Report FIT-TR-2005-2. Faculty of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, march 2005.
• Business process decomposition and service identification using communication patterns.
  Gerke Geurts, Adrie Geelhoed.

• Business Process Execution Languages for Web Services: BPEL and BPEL4WS.
  Juric/Mathew/Sarang. Packt Publ. Ltd 2004.
• Workflow Management.
  Wil v.d. Aalst, Kees v. Hee. MIT Press 2004.
• Essential Business Process Modeling.
  Michael Havey. O'Reilly 2005.
• Production Workflow. Concepts and Techniques.
  Frank Leymann and Dieter Roller. Prentice Hall 1999.
• Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design and Business Process.
  Johan Marklund, Manuel Laguna. Prentice Hall 2004
• A Pragmatic Guide to Business Process Modelling.
  Jon Holt. British Computer Society 2005

• A comparison of XML interchange formats for business process modelling.
  Jan Mendling, Gustraf Neumann, Markus Nüttgens. Preprint.

• Mobile web services.
  Ariel Pashtan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005.
• Mobile web services: Architecture and implementation.
  Frederick Hirsch, John Kemp and Jani Ilkka. John Wiley & Sons, 2006. (Targeted to applications on the Nokia mobile web service platform.)

• Core Security Patterns: Best Practices and Strategies for J2EE, Web Services, and Identity Management.
  Christopher Steel, et al. Prentice Hall PTR, September 2004.
• Security Patterns: Integrating Security and Systems Engineering.
  Markus Schumacher, Eduardo Fernandez-Buglioni, Duane Hybertson, Frank Buschmann, Peter Sommerlad. pp. 600. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2005. (ISBN: 0-470-85884-2)
• Secure Internet Programming. Security Issues for Mobile and Distributed Objects.
  Jan Vitek, Christian D. Jensen (eds.) LNCS 1603, Springer-Verlag 1999.
  (A volume in the LNCS State-of-the-art surveys.)

• Security Challenges, Threats, and Countermeasures. Version 1.
• Jongil Jeong; Dongkyoo Shin; Dongil Shin; Hyun-Mok Oh. A study on the XML-based single sign-on system supporting mobile and ubiquitous service environments.
  Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing. International Conference, EUC 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3207, 2004.
• Lim, Billy B.L. Incorporating WS-Security into a Web services-based portal
  In: Information Management & Computer Security. 2004, 12 (3), p. 206-217.
• Providing privacy for Web services by anonymous group identification
  In: Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on Web Services. Cattaneo, G. 2004, p. 166-73.
• Message level security for web services
  In: Information Security Technical Report. Kearney, P. 2005, 10 (1) , p. 41-50.
• Web services and web service security standards
  In: Information Security Technical Report. Geuer-Pollmann, C. 2005, 10 (1) , p. 15-24.
• Managing Access in Extended Enterprise Networks Web Service-Based
  In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Wang, Baoyi 2004, 3251 , p. 963-966.
• Towards Web service access control.
  In: Computers & Security. Coetzee, M. 2004, 23 (7) , p. 559-70.
• A study on the secure business Web service based on ebXML.
  In: Web Engineering. 4th International Conference, ICWE 2004. Dongil Shin 2004, p. 575-6.
• SECURE APPLICATIONS - Securing Web Services.
  In: Computer Security Journal. Galley, Jeannine Hall 2004, 20 (3) , p. 1-8.
• Techniques of Secure Web Service and its Implementation.
  In: Machine Learning and Cybernetics, 2005. Ming-Sheng Liu 2005, 1 , p. 161-164.
• A SRP based handler for Web service access control.
  In: Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing. Silva, F.O. 2004, p. 57-62.
• INTRA-/INTERNET - Solutions: Web-Service-Security.
  In: Network Computing - Munchen. 2004(4) , p. 60-67.
• Web service authorization framework.
  In: Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on Web Services. Ziebermayr, T. 2004, p. 614-21.
• Web services and web service security standards.
  In: Information Security Technical Report. Geuer-Pollmann, C. 2005, 10 (1) , p. 15-24.
• Threat modelling for web services based web applications.
  Lieven Desmet, Bart Jacobs, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen. Preprint 2004 (?).
• A generic architecture for web applications to support threat analysis of infrastructural components.
  Lieven Desmet, Bart Jacobs, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen. Eighth IFIP TC-6 TC-11 Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2004), pp. 155-160.
• Threat modelling for security tokens in Web applications. D. De Cock, K. Wouters, D. Schellekens, D. Singelee, B. Preneel. Eighth IFIP TC-6 TC-11 Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2004), pp. 213-223.
• Threat modelling for ASP.NET - Designing secure applications.
  R. Grimm, H. Eichstadt. Eighth IFIP TC-6 TC-11 Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2004), pp.175-187.
• Threat modelling for SQL Server.
  E. Bertino, D. Bruschi, S. Franzoni, I. Nai-Fovino, S. Valtolina. Eighth IFIP TC-6 TC-11 Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2004), pp.189-201.

• Web Single Sign-on Metadata exchange protocol (2005)
• Web single sign-on interoperability profile (2005)

• A taxonomy of single sign-on systems.
  A. Pashalidis, CJ Mitchel. In: The Eighth Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2003), LNCS 2727, 2003.
• Single sign-on architectures
  J. De Clercq. International Conference on Infrastructure Security (2002)
• Single sign-on in service-oriented computing.
  Kurt Geihs, Robert Kalcklösch, Andreas Grode. In: M.E. Orlowska et al. (eds.): ICSOC 2004, LNCS 2910, 384-394, 2003.
• Peer-to-peer authentication with a distributed sigle sign-on service
  W. Josephson, EG Sirer, FB Schneider. The 3rd International Workshop on Peer-to-peer systems (2004).
• Security Analysis for the SAML Signle Sign-on Browser(Artifact Profile.
  T. Gross. 19th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference 2003.

• Annual Computer Security Applications Conference

• Den gode opgave
  Lotte Rienecker, Peter Stray Jørgensen m.fl. Forlaget Samfundslitteratur Udgivet i Danmark. 3. udgave (260,00 DKK). Danish only, one of the best.
• Academic Writing for Graduate Students
  John M. Swales, Christine B. Feak. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2nd edition 2004.
  An alternative to the Danish Den gode opgave, doesn't have exactly the same focus and structure, but still a good choice if your command of Danish is not good enough and you need an English alternative.
• English in Today's Research World: A Writing Guide.
  John M. Swales, Christine B. Feak. University of Michigan Press, December 2000.
  Aimed at the young researcher, covering conference abstracts, conference poters, literature reviews, theses, and academic communication. Slightly off-target for MSc students.
• Revising Business prose
  Richard Lanham. 4th edition, Allyn and Bacon, Needham Heights, Massachusetts 2000.
  A small booklet (about 115 pages) about writing and its impact. Geared towards professionals, but not towards students. Not recommended as a first buy.
• MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing
  Joseph Gibaldi. Published by The Modern Language Association of America, 2nd edition, New York 1998.
  Partly similar to the Chicago Manual of Style (an alternative to this one), this is a reference book, covering scholarly publishing, legal issues (copyright and more), continueing with a number of chapters on stylistic conventions and the preperation of manuscripts. Good for reference, not suited to help you through the writing process (project formulation, structure, etc.).
• Prentice Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage
  Muriel Harris. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 5th edition 2005.
  Covers a lot of grounds relevant to native and non-native speakers. Good for formailities; however, weak on the writing process. Areas covered are, among others, the writing process, sentence structure and revising sentences, punctuation, meechanics and spelling, style and word choice, English as a second language, research, MLA style (see above), other documentation styles, and document design.

Other links:

• Web Service Engineering Advancing a New Software Engineering Discipline
  In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Nowak, Andrea 2005, 3579 , p. 8-18.
• Current solutions for Web service composition.
  In: IEEE Internet Computing. Milanovic, N. 2004, 8 (6) , p. 51-59.
• A peer-to-peer framework for Web service discovery with ranking.
  In: Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on Web Services. Fatih Emekci 2004, p. 192-9.

Our library gives access to many research articles, for example DADS is a good source for relevant literature.
There is also the online Computer Science Bibliography at Trier University, Germany, where you can find references to academic articles.

Projects

Students who wish to do a project related to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) have various options. The following describes the ideal prerequisites for doing an MSc thesis:

• Focus on implementation issues
  Ideally, you have solid programming skils at the level of Object Oriented Programming, preferably also Component-based Design and J2EE, and the two courses on XML-Processing and on Interactive Web-Applications.
• Focus on strategic issues
  Ideally, you have passed the courses on Enterprise Architecture, System Development, and IT Strategy. Knowledge of XML, for example the course on XML-Processing is also an asset.
• Focus on process modelling
  Ideally, you have some knowledge of business processes, knowledge of Enterprise Architecture, System Development, and of a process modelling language like the pi-calculus or BPEL4WS.

Some more specific project proposals are the following:

• SOA and Mobility
  The combination of SOA and Mobility provides some interesting challenges, for example single sign on (SSO) in a system with possibly disconected gadgets.
• Portlets
  Portlets can be used to design user interfaces and control portions of them independently. Look at the technology, available support, and how it can be used in connection with standard UI modeling methods.

Independent of the type of project students should work in groups of 2 to 5 students. On this page we will list the current groups together with their topics. Provided the group has agreed to that we will also give a link to the project agreement in my.itu (access requires affiliation to ITU).

Regular projects
Cross AppDomain Communication
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Karl Martin Gunnar Jagrin (INT)	4 week project, 23.11.2006 - 20.12.2006 (postponed)
Theses, final projects
Monitoring workflow management systems
Frank Biel Knudsen (INT) Flemming Mertz (SWU)	Thesis, 01.02.2007 - 01.08.2007
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Interoperability between SAML 2.0 and WS-Federation
Balatharan Selvarajah (SWU) Casper Rafn Møller (SWU) Nicholas Warnke Wichmann (SWU)	Thesis, 01.02.2007 - 01.08.2007
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Finished theses and final projects
Service Oriented Modeling
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Renu Kumar Kemisetti (INT) Veera Vasantha Rao Boddapati (INT)	Thesis, 01.09.2006 - 01.03.2007
Service-oriented data integration
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Harald Kvisli (SWU)	Thesis, 01.05.2006 - 01.11.2006
User Interfaces In Service-Oriented Architecture
Roderick James Ramsay (INT) Martin Jagrin (INT) Simer Singh Sawhney (INT)	Thesis, 15.02.2006 - 01.09.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Interaction in SOA
Martin Seest Christiansen (DKM)	Thesis, 15.02.2006 - 01.09.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Security and architecture of web-services in a mobile wireless environment
Venkateshwar Rao Namilakonda (INT) Mwesiga Elias Kasenene (INT)	Thesis, 15.02.2006 - 01.09.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Extending BPEL with subprocesses
Tor Martin Saur (SWU)	Thesis, 15.02.2006 - 01.09.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Security in service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Abdul Khader (INT) Rakesh Moturi (INT)	Thesis, 01.09.2005 - 01.06.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Web servics security and interoperability
Umar Farooq (INT) Umair Arif (INT)	Thesis, 01.09.2005 - 01.03.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Web servics security
Yongqiang Lu (INT) Yinghui Chen (INT)	Thesis, 01.07.2005 - 02.01.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Analysis and modeling of software patterns in business processes
Henrik Knudsen (INT)	Thesis, 01.09.2005 - 02.01.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Service-oriented architecture - the Java Perspective
Kasper Olfert Møller (SWU) Håvard Semundset (SWU)	Thesis, 01.02.2005-01.09.2005
Description:	Link to ITU's project base (report available)
Finished projects
A survey of BPEL 2.0
Jie Yang	4 week project, 23.04.2007 - 23.05.2007
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
SOA - any cultural changes?
Flemming Mertz (SWU)	4 week project, 23.11.2006 - 20.12.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Secure and reliable communication with webservices
Henrik Knudsen (INT)	16 week project, 01.09.2006 - 20.12.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Feasibility Study of BPM Tools and Standards
Mwesiga Elias Kasenene (INT) Venkateshwar Rao Namilakonda (INT)	16 week project, 01.09.2006 - 20.12.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Exploring J2EE
Umar Farooq (INT) Hafiz Hammad Rubbani (INT)	Summer project, 23.06.2005 - 11.08.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Business solution with BPWL4WS
Abdul Khader (INT)	15 ECTS summer project, 01.05.2006 - 11.08.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Single sign-on with web-services
Andreas Juul Hirszhorn (INT) Jakob Roed Kierkegaard (INT) Frank Biel Knudsen (INT)	16 week project, 01.02.2006 - 29.05.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
A walk through BPWL4WS
Abdul Khader (INT) Rakesh Moturi (INT)	4-week project, 01.05.2006 - 29.05.2006
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Service oriented architecture and web services
Roderick James Ramsay (INT) Martin Jagrin (INT) Simer Singh Sawhney (INT) Christopher John Hlasny (INT)	16 week project 01.09.2005 - 23.12.2005
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Design of applications based on SOA
Andreas Juul Hirszhorn (INT) Jakob Roed Kierkegaard (INT) Frank Biel Knudsen (INT)	16 week project, 01.09.2005 - 23.12.2005
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Harald Kvisli (SWU)	4 week project, 28.11.2005 - 23.12.2005
Description:	Link to ITU's project base
SOA as a development strategy
Martin Høgedal (SWU) Flemming Mertz (SWU)	Summer project, 02.05.2005 - 12.08.2005
Description:	Link to ITU's project base (report available)