S3 – Service Interfaces

The S3 Service Interfaces View defines the interfaces presented by a service. A service presents one or more interfaces to consumers (a ‘consumer’ being any agent capable of using the service – a person, an organization, a system or another service). An architect may specify provided and required interfaces – i.e. the interfaces the service exposes, and those it requires in order to operate.

Concerns Addressed

• Detailed Service Specifications.
• Requirements for Service compatibility.
• Service implementation guidance.

Background

Specifying the interfaces that a service provides and uses defines which services are compatible with which other services. If Service A provides an interface, X, and Service B requires Interface X, then Service B can call upon at least some of the functionality of Service A.

Usage

• Service-oriented architecture governance.
• Detailed Service specification.
• Service interoperability.

Representation

• Tabular.
• UML.

Detailed View Description

Service interfaces are defined in terms of their operations (methods of access) and parameters (data that must be passed to the service, or produced by the service). The interfaces and their operations all have names. Parameters may be simple types (text, numbers, Boolean) or typed by an entity that is to be specified in a Physical Schema (P7, Physical Data Model).

Figure 3-18

Figure

Key Elements and Their Relationships

Figure

Meta-Model

The detailed meta-model and element list for S3 Service Interfaces is at paragraph 4.3.4.