A Service-Based Approach to Components for Effective Business-IT Alignment

Abstract

Although Component-Based Development (CBD) platforms and technologies, such as CORBA, COM+/.NET and Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), are now de facto standards for implementation and deployment of complex enterprise distributed systems, the full benefit of the component way of thinking has not yet been gained. Current CBD approaches and methods treat components mainly as binary-code implementation packages or as larger grained business objects in system analysis and design. Little attention has been paid to the potential of the component way of thinking in filling the gap between business and information technology (IT) issues. This chapter proposes a service-based approach to the component concept representing the point of convergence of business and technology concerns. The approach defines components as the main building blocks of business-driven service-based system architecture that provides effective business-IT alignment.