Use Case - Provisioning

Hi all,

Here is the use case that I presented at the F2F. I hope that it is
useful to the group and worthy of some consideration. My use case
scenario is concerned with four primary issues:

1. Negotiation
2. Dynamic relationships or at least unexpected messages between
participants
3. Referral
4. Monitoring and non-repudiation

The theme behind this use case is provisioning. Company A is an
acquisitive company and/or has rapid turnover of personnel. Thus,
provisioning and integrating new personnel into the enterprise is an
important and expensive business process involving soft provisioning
(assigning phone numbers, email addresses, passwords, etc.) and hard
provisioning (junior executive level desk, bookshelf, PC, company cell
phone of a certain type with junior level executive cell plan, etc.).

The example called for a new employee to receive the usual junior
executive faux-oak desk. After checking internal resources that are
outside of this use case (perhaps empty offices or warehouses within the
company), no suitable desk is found. So, a choreography is "initiated"
in which an order is placed with one of the approved suppliers (Company
B) registered in the private UDDI registry of Company A.

A -> B

Company B does not have faux-oak desks, but instead of reporting zero
faux-oak desks (the usual choreography being to respond with quantity
available), company B responds with a counter-offer consisting of a
lovely faux-walnut desk for less money. This is clearly a form of
negotiation. 

A <- B

This could go back and forth for awhile, but alternately if company A
says no and insists of faux-oak (faux-walnut is for middle level
executives), then Company B may offer to refer company A to company C
perhaps for a fee or perhaps as part of a carefully monitored reciprocal
relationship. Company A may agree to be referred, and dynamically
include company C in the process.

A -> C

To keep this short, let's assume that C says yes, and the transaction
between A and C is completed after a number of message exchanges. 

A <- C

This begs some questions, at least in my mind. And, I would certainly
appreciate hearing your various perspectives to help me understand the
possibilities better:

1. How does company B monitor the choreography between A and C? Does the
referrer have to sit in the middle and be a proxy or can there be some
other way?
2. Does a choreography description need some way to describe referral or
negotiation or forbid these things when they are not desired?
3. At least in multi-party situations, is there a way to monitor
participants that don't obey the choreography? Is it always up to a
party to monitor things from its own point of view, and if so, how does
non-repudiation work in the context of choreography? How can I prove
that another company broke the rules? 

Thanks,
Paul

Paul Lipton
Technology Strategist, Office of the CTO
Technology Leader, Field Services Group
Computer Associates
P: +1 908 874-9479
F: +1 908 874-9178
E: paul.lipton@ca.com

Received on Sunday, 30 March 2003 15:59:31 UTC