The widely accepted standards of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) have changed the way many organisations conduct their everyday business. The significant popularity of mobile devices has seen a rapid increase in the rate of mobile technology enhancements, which have become widely used for communication, as well as conducting everyday tasks. An increased requirement in many businesses is for staff not to be tied down to the office. Consequently, mobile devices play an important role in achieving the mobility and information access that people desire. Due to the popularity and increasing use of SOA and mobile devices, Mobile Service-Oriented Architecture (Mobile SOA) has become a new industry catch-phrase. Many challenges, however, exist within the Mobile SOA environment. These issues include limitations on mobile devices, such as a reduced screen size, lack of processing power, insufficient processing memory, limited battery life, poor storage capacity, unreliable network connections, limited bandwidth available and high transfer costs. This research aimed to provide an elegant solution to the issues of a mobile device, which hinders the performance of Mobile SOA. The main objective of this research was to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Mobile SOA. In order to achieve this goal, a framework was proposed, which supported intelligent compression of files used within a Web Service. The proposed framework provided a set of guidelines that facilitate the quick development of a system. A proof-of-concept prototype was developed, based on these guidelines and the framework design principles. The prototype provided practical evidence of the effectiveness of implementing a system based on the proposed framework. An analytical evaluation was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the prototype within the Mobile SOA environment. A performance evaluation was conducted to determine efficiency it provides. Additionally, the performance evaluation highlighted the decrease in file transfer time, as well as the significant reduction in transfer costs. The analytical and performance evaluations demonstrated that the prototype optimises the effectiveness and efficiency of Mobile SOA. The framework could, thus, be used to facilitate efficient file transfer between a Server and (Mobile) Client.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science and Agriculture in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Science in Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2014 / In today‘s service-oriented business environments, the standard Publish-Find-Bind model as embodied by the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm presents a new strong challenge in the consumption and applicability of services to its consumers. This is because services in SOA-based environments are not built and published for predefined consumers; rather they are advertised for potentially many unknown consumers. Thus, they could be (re) used by various anonymous consumers with varying requirements and business needs. Hence, to increase service applicability and efficiency in the consumption of services, as well as to stay relevant in today‘s global market economy, service providers are expected to provide services covering such a wide variety of demands. However, they are still faced and have to deal with a number of problems which need to be balanced. Consequently, this research work addresses the problem of how to deliver customizable software services, as a way to address and/or increase the applicability and efficiency in the consumption of software services. In particular, this research proposed a service customization framework called FreeCust, which exploits the feature modeling concepts or techniques from the Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) discipline. The FreeCust framework as suggested in this research was constructed, validated, and evaluated through practical use case scenarios, proof-of-concept prototype implementations, experiments, and a comparative (static) analysis. This was to show its utility, technical feasibility, functional correctness, and business benefits. The evaluation and validation results demonstrated that the FreeCust approach has the potential or is appropriate for minimizing the complexities involved in consumers‘ service customization processes and increasing service applicability. / Telkom SA SOC Limited

<p>One of the main trends in the IT field today is to provide more mobility to existing IT based systems and users. With this trend, more and more people are using mobile financial transactions due to a widespread proliferation of mobile phones and wireless technologies. One of the most important concerns with such transactions is their security. The reasons are based on weaknesses of wireless protocols and additional requirements for handling of financial data. These aspects make mobile financial transactions and applications even more vulnerable to fraud and illegal use than similar transactions performed over fixed networks.</p><p> </p><p>There are two important aspects related to security in mobile environments. First, security features provided by the communication protocols, such as GSM, SMS, Bluetooth, Mobile Internet, etc. are not adequate. Some security algorithms used by these protocols have even been broken, what requires upper layer applications to provide comprehensive protection in order to compensate the shortcomings of a transportation layer. Second, mobile devices have limited capabilities, limited processing speed, limited storage, etc, so that many security mechanisms are not suitable for mobile environments. Therefore, new, effective, lightweight and flexible security solutions are required.</p><p> </p><p>In order to solve these two groups of security issues, in this research we created a service-oriented security infrastructure for mobile financial transactions and applications. Based on this infrastructure, we also designed and implemented a system, which is called <em>SAFE</em> (Secure Applications for Financial Environment), that represents a secure, convenient and reliable large–scale infrastructure for mobile financial transactions. The components of the system are Secure Mobile Wallet and three <em>SAFE</em> servers: Communications (Gateway) Server, IDMS (Identity Management System) Server, and Payment Server. Those core infrastructure components with secure messages exchanged between them provide a number of secure financial services. These services may be used for various types of mobile transactions: m–Banking, m–Commerce, m–Ticketing, m-Parking, m–Loans, etc. all supported by additional Application Services Provider servers, connected to the <em>SAFE</em> security system. This report gives the details of the concept design and current implementation of the <em>SAFE</em> system.</p> / QC20100608 / Secure Applications for Financial Environments (SAFE) Project

Mobile transactions have been in development for around ten years. More and more initiatives and efforts are invested in this area resulting in dramatic and rapid development and deployment of mobile technologies and applications. However, there are still many issues that hinder wider deployment and acceptance of mobile systems, especially those handling serious and sensitive mobile transactions. One of the most important of them is security.This dissertation is focused on security architecture for mobile environments. Research issues addressed in this dissertation are based on three currently important groups of problems: a) lack of an open, comprehensive, adaptable and secure infrastructure for mobile services and applications; b) lack of standardized solutions for secure mobile transactions, compliant with various regulatory and user requirements and applicable to different types of popular mobile devices and hardware/software mobile platforms; and c) resource limitations of mobile devices and mobile networks.The main contribution of this dissertation is large-scale, secure service-oriented architecture for mobile environments. The architecture structures secure mobile transaction systems into seven layers, called trusted stack, which is equivalent to ISO/OSI layered networking model. These layers are, starting from the bottom: 1) secure element (chip) layer, 2) applets layer, 3) middleware layer, 4) mobile applications layer, 5) communication layer, 6) services broker layer, and 7) mobile service provider layer. These seven layers include all necessary components required for implementation and operations of secure mobile transaction systems and therefore provide a framework for designing and implementing such systems.Besides the architecture, four types of security services necessary and critical for serious mobile transactions, have also been designed and described in the dissertation. These services are: (1) mobile registration and identity management; (2) mobile PKI; (3) mobile authentication and authorization; and (4) secure messaging. These services are lightweight, therefore suitable for mobile environments, technologies and applications, and also compliant with existing Internet security standards.Finally, as the proof of correctness of the proposed concept and methodology, a prototype system was also developed based on the designed security architecture. The system provides comprehensive security services mentioned above to several types of mobile services providers: mobile banking, mobile commerce, mobile ticketing, and mobile parking. These types of providers have been selected only as currently the most popular and representative, since the architecture is applicable to any other type of mobile service providers.

Today, there are no standardized ways to characterize SOA, many are talking about SOA and many say they are using SOA. One way that we have chosen to characterize this phenomenon is through an evaluation that will indicate whether SOA have been used in the development. Basedon a Service Oriented Architecture literature study, we have created an evaluation pattern resulting SOA principles of integration, architecture and services. This evaluation was applied to Logica's own integration system AgrCom through an empirical study to result in a response indicating whether AgrCom is SOA based. The results of the evaluation show that AgrCom is part of an SOA solution but not an SOA as a whole concept. The study shows that it takes morethan just systems in an activity to be referred to as the SOA-based, hence the architecture of anactivity must be taken into account.

One of the main trends in the IT field today is to provide more mobility to existing IT based systems and users. With this trend, more and more people are using mobile financial transactions due to a widespread proliferation of mobile phones and wireless technologies. One of the most important concerns with such transactions is their security. The reasons are based on weaknesses of wireless protocols and additional requirements for handling of financial data. These aspects make mobile financial transactions and applications even more vulnerable to fraud and illegal use than similar transactions performed over fixed networks.   There are two important aspects related to security in mobile environments. First, security features provided by the communication protocols, such as GSM, SMS, Bluetooth, Mobile Internet, etc. are not adequate. Some security algorithms used by these protocols have even been broken, what requires upper layer applications to provide comprehensive protection in order to compensate the shortcomings of a transportation layer. Second, mobile devices have limited capabilities, limited processing speed, limited storage, etc, so that many security mechanisms are not suitable for mobile environments. Therefore, new, effective, lightweight and flexible security solutions are required.   In order to solve these two groups of security issues, in this research we created a service-oriented security infrastructure for mobile financial transactions and applications. Based on this infrastructure, we also designed and implemented a system, which is called SAFE (Secure Applications for Financial Environment), that represents a secure, convenient and reliable large–scale infrastructure for mobile financial transactions. The components of the system are Secure Mobile Wallet and three SAFE servers: Communications (Gateway) Server, IDMS (Identity Management System) Server, and Payment Server. Those core infrastructure components with secure messages exchanged between them provide a number of secure financial services. These services may be used for various types of mobile transactions: m–Banking, m–Commerce, m–Ticketing, m-Parking, m–Loans, etc. all supported by additional Application Services Provider servers, connected to the SAFE security system. This report gives the details of the concept design and current implementation of the SAFE system. / QC20100608 / Secure Applications for Financial Environments (SAFE) Project

Das Gebiet der Serviceentwicklung im Rahmen serviceorientierter Architekturen, als auch der Bereich der Geschäfts­prozessmodellierung gewannen in den letzten Jahren zunehmend an Bedeutung. Aus fachlicher Sicht stellt die Analyse, Simulation und Optimierung aktueller und zukünftiger Geschäftsprozesse ein wertvolles Instrument zur Erkennung von Schwachstellen und der Verbesserung der Leistungsfähigkeit von Unternehmen dar. Aus IT-Sicht bietet die Service­orientierung die Möglichkeit, Unternehmensressourcen über öffentliche und private Schnittstellen verfügbar, und damit die Position des Unternehmens im Netzwerk von Lieferanten, Kunden und Geschäfts­partnern zu stärken. Den Kern dieser Arbeit bildet die Untersuchung des Spannungsfeldes zwischen fachlicher Geschäfts­­­prozess- und Servicemodellierung, sowie der Ausführung von Geschäftsprozessen auf techni­scher Ebene, die durch Services unterstützt werden. Im Fokus der Betrachtung liegt der unter­nehmens- bzw. organisations­übergreifende Bereich, insbesondere der Finanzdienst­leistungs­sektor. Zu Beginn der Arbeit wird ein allgemeines Begriffsverständnis zu Bereichen Service- und Prozess­modellierung geschaffen, die im Hauptteil der Arbeit verfeinert und ergänzt werden, um die Beson­der­heiten und Problemfelder für den überbetrieblichen Bereich verständlich zu machen. Dabei wird das RosettaNet-Frame­work als Rahmenwerk zur Gestaltung von elektronischen Geschäfts­prozessen beschrieben und im letzten Teil der Arbeit zur Implementierung eines konkreten Geschäfts­­prozesses im Vertriebsprozess heran­gezogen. Zu diesem Zweck wird der ORACLE WebLogic Application Server verwendet.

Enterprises can be empowered to live up to the potential of becoming dynamic, agile and real-time. Service orientation is emerging from the amalgamation of a number of key business, technology and cultural developments. Three essential trends in particular are coming together to create a new revolutionary breed of enterprise, the service-oriented enterprise (SOE): (1) the continuous performance management of the enterprise; (2) the emergence of business process management; and (3) advances in the standards-based service-oriented infrastructures. This thesis focuses on this emerging three-layered architecture that builds on a service-oriented architecture framework, with a process layer that brings technology and business together, and a corporate performance layer that continually monitors and improves the performance indicators of global enterprises provides a novel framework for the business context in which to apply the important technical idea of service orientation and moves it from being an interesting tool for engineers to a vehicle for business managers to fundamentally improve their businesses.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance has been identified as the most important factor affecting the outcome of SOA within organisations. However, authors have failed to explain how organisations should govern specific aspects of its SOA, leaving a gap in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate established SOA governance mechanisms in order to explain implications of governance in a SOA context. The research question of the study was to identify which SOA governance mechanisms do or do not provide support for different constituents of SOA. The study also contained three sub-questions; (i) Is there a difference between how SOA governance mechanisms support technical vs. non technical constituents of SOA? (ii) Is there any SOA governance mechanism that is more important than others? (iii) Is there a relation between the SOA governance mechanisms?   The study was conducted using theories related to SOA and SOA governance. We identified the most academically accepted SOA governance mechanisms to test their support for different constituents of SOA. To get an holistic view of SOA, we used a SOA maturity framework to identify what the constituents of SOA really are. The support of the SOA governance mechanisms were then studied in relation to the different constituents of SOA, through interviews and observations, during a ten week internship at Scania.   The results showed that as good as every SOA governance mechanism supports the constituents of SOA, although the level of support varied. In general, we found patterns separating the support for technological and non-technological constituents of SOA. The technological constituents of SOA were to a great extent provided the same support from SOA governance mechanisms, which also was true for the non-technological constituents of SOA. Interestingly, except for one SOA governance mechanism, the technological constituents of SOA and the non-technological obtained different levels of support from governance. The most important SOA governance mechanisms are the creation of standards and policies, having processes to create and enforce policies, processes for education, and establishing SOA skills and training. We can also conclude that there is a relationship between many of the SOA governance mechanisms, and that academics and practitioners therefore have to view SOA governance holistically, rather than independent governance mechanisms.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an increasingly important software architecture, designed to flexibly connect separate components in response to rapid changes in the business environment. SOA focuses on the exchange of information between independent software components and on the reusability of the components by separating communication interface from internal implementation. There are several features of SOA that make legacy system modernization to SOA appealing in today’s world. These are loose coupling, abstraction of underlying logic, agility, flexibility, reusability, autonomy, statelessness, discoverability and reduced cost. Migration of legacy systems to SOA is an important problem. While migration of legacy data processing systems has been widely studied, migration of legacy web applications has not. In this thesis we review existing strategies for migration of monolithic legacy web applications to web services, noting the unique challenges due to the highly dynamic nature of the systems, poorly structured code, and weakly typed languages in web applications, and the need for automation to assist in the process. We present a new semi-automated framework for the analysis and migration of monolithic web applications to web services using source analysis and transformation techniques, and outline a set of source transformation steps that can be used to migrate existing legacy web applications to web services form. We demonstrate our framework on the analysis and automated restructuring of two large existing web applications to extract and migrate integrated internal features to independent, reusable web services. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2013-03-28 14:23:24.797