Weather Management System WMS

Question: Discuss about the Weather Management System WMS. Answer: Introduction: This paper will draw and discuss two architectures; the service oriented architecture (SOA) and the agent oriented architecture (AOA) in light of the WMS that has the following components; weather sensors for temperature, barometer, and humidity. The system has a scheduler connected to sensors that triggers reading of sensor values. A report manager collects the data from sensors and then creates a report on request; the report is displayed on a screen (Krafzig, Banke and Slama, 2005). The history tracker then stores all historical data from the report manager. Service Oriented Architecture SOA refers to an architectural style supporting service orientation. Service orientation refers to a way of thinking in terms of service based operation and services development and their outcomes. The service in this case is the logical representation of activities that are repeatable and has specific outcomes; it is also self-contained and may have other services composing it. SOA is based on the services design mirroring real world activities and the representation of the services makes use of business descriptions to create a context such as rules and goals (Krafzig, Banke and Slama, 2005). The services are implemented using service orchestration. SOA does place unique requirements on infrastructure characterized by the use of open standards. The service implementation is environment specific whereby the context enables or constrains them such that their description must be within the context. The SOA architecture has an ESB (enterprise service bus) which is an architecture havin g a set of specific principles and rules used to integrate several applications together in a bus like infrastructure. The ESB allows for the integration of different applications through the placement of communication between the applications in such a way that each application can talk to the ESB (the bus). This architecture enables systems to be decoupled from each other enabling their communication without dependence or knowledge of the other systems hosted on the bus (Qian, 2010). ESB means that there is no need for point to point integration. SOA utilizes components based development for assembling software applications from reusable components; alternatively, components can be encapsulated in standards based interfaces allowing their reuse. Agent Oriented Architecture The SOA has some challenges with client coding; the AOA aims at solving this problem by applying best practice and is especially suited to multi agent systems such as the WMS. AOA focuses on the use of agents with organizations of agents being the main abstractions. For complex multi agent software, there is no need for a bus that may be overloaded; the agents are able to communicate directly with each other and must follow all constraints at each point of interaction (Qian, 2010). Figure II below shows the WMS system based on the AOA architecture; The report manager makes requests directly to the scheduler, which then triggers the sensors to generate data and this data is transmitted to the report manager as a report. The first thing to note is that there is already a feedback mechanism based on a request sent from the report manager to the scheduler. In this case, the scheduler is an agent as is the report manager. The screen manager also interacts directly with the report manager through a request and feedback system in which the screen manager directly sends a request to the report manager and gets a feedback by way of the sensor data being sent to it. The screen manager then processes the sensor data and then sends them to the display screen as a report through interaction. The sensors have direct interaction with the report manager (Qian, 2010). As the sensor data is sent to the screen through a multi agent system, the history tracker interacts with the report manager and historical reports are sent to the history tracker which then stores this data. Both the SOA and the AOA are promising distributed systems software design, however, the AOA is programmed using syntax in which neutral applications are also turned into agents, allowing them to communicate system wide. SOA uses application components to communicate using a network protocol in a bus-like design. SOA is independent of products, vendors or technologies and is characterized by service abstraction. AOA is capable of negotiation and is also capable of role multiplicity; it has individual knowledge and domain specific roles. Services are matched with request, which makes it a faster architecture that is highly scalable without having to increase the infrastructure. For instance, the SOA will require a bigger and faster bus for multiple agents, while the AOA is dynamically able to operate on the principle of role multiplicity. There is possibility of agents and services running in multiple threads making it possible for agents to respond to multiple requests and give feedb ack with AOA because events are uncoupled while SOA is characterized by coupling through an enterprise bus. AOA gives the optimal solution for multiple requests. By way of conclusion (Cretu, n.d.); the AOA appears superior and highly scalable than the SOA architecture, especially where multi agent applications and systems are involved. References Cretu, L. (n.d.). Designing enterprise architecture frameworks: Integrating business processes with IT Infrastructure. 1st ed. New Jersey: Apple Academic Press, p.135. Krafzig, D., Banke, K. and Slama, D. (2005). Enterprise SOA. 1st ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, p.133. Qian, K. (2010). Software architecture and design illuminated. 1st ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.