End User Controlled Web Interaction Flow

Using Service Oriented Architecture Model

The 2nd IEEE Workshop on Enabling the Future Service-Oriented Internet

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Concept Originator & Author: Joanna Ng

Head of CAS, IBM Canada Lab, TorontoAn IBM Software Group Senior Technical Staff Member and

Master Inventor

Team Members & Co-authors: CAS Research Staff Members

Leho Nigul Elena Litani

Diana Lau

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Today’s ProblemIndividual End Users has little control over Web

InteractionProgrammers are in charge

• Web user interface and interaction flows are controlled by software programs deployed on the server

• These server side software programs are designed and implemented by software programmers

• Individual end user has no or very limited control over web interface nor interaction

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Today’s ProblemWhat you see is what you get

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Related Work

• Server Side Approach– User Categorization:

• Profile: user characteristics (e.g. roles, organization etc.)

• Behavior (e.g. Page-Ranking)References: A. Datta et al, M. Vazirgiannis, M. Eirinaki

– Portal• User customized content • E.g. iGoogle

Major Limitations:– Small degree of customization – Not on an individual level

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Related Work

• Client Side Approach– Customized rendered web pages with browser

extension• GreaseMonkey• Chickenfeet

– Web Clipping

Major Limitations:– Customization on rendered content that

bears no correspondence to units of functionality from the server side

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mySOA: It’s All About “ME”

Individual user:• chooses from units of functionalities • let the corresponding units of interaction artifacts and Flows be computed

Result: individualized web interaction experience

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An SOA Enabled Alternative• Leverage the SOA model of a “Service” as units of

measure for server side functionality

• Build an abstract visualization finite state machine as the general model for web interaction with services

• Individual end user controls selection of units of server side functionalities using service interfaces as units of measure

• Corresponding individualized web interaction artifacts & flows are computed and generated by the client side plug-in

• This results in a truly individualized web interaction artifacts & flow that does not contain unwanted server side functionalities

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The Model of a Generic Service

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Mapping of the Generic Service Model

to Create an Abstract Visualization Model

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Abstract Visualization Model

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The Enabling System

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Enabling System

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Service based Finite State Machine

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It’s all about me – mySOA and ‘Me’ Object

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Travel Services has:

Three Operations:

1. The bookHotel interface

2. The reserveFlight interface

3. rentACar

An Example:

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Summary• SOA model of a “Service” as units of measure for server

side functionality

• Build an abstract visualization finite state machine as the general model for web interaction with services

• Individual end user controls selection of units of server side functionalities using service interfaces as units of measure

• Corresponding individualized web interaction artifacts & flows are computed and generated by the client side plug-in

• This results in a truly individualized web interaction artifacts & flow that does not contain unwanted server side functionalities

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THANK YOU!Joanna Ng’s email address: jwng@ca.ibm.com