CIO Issues

The CIO should use the software confederation principle not only as the tool enhancing the user oriented properties of the confederation, but also as a paradigm enhancing the quality of software processes and offering new software engineering tools.

1. The central task is to accept the paradigm of software confederations and to find an optimal balance between the design in the large (as confederations) and in the small (e.g., using object-oriented attitude) and an optimal balance between developing and purchasing the components of the system. The confederate attitude substantially changes engineering and business properties of the resulting system as well as the processes of its development. The most important is the possibility to develop the system incrementally and to use legacy systems and third-party products. The CIO should decide what components will be developed and what purchased or outsourced. The outsourcing can be component-vise and therefore easily changeable.

2. Another task is to decide the optimal size of components that should not be further decomposed into a federation and should be developed using standard development methods like OO analysis and programming. The effectiveness issues can influence the decision.

3. The main emphasis is on the activities that can be characterized as the enhancing of existing middleware services. It requires new skills of programmers. The main problem is that software developers should be able to understand the knowledge domains being background of the functions of the components. It is important for the decision what components to integrate as well as what message formats to use in front-end components (when to use command-oriented interface, e.g., SOAP, and when data-oriented, e.g., RDF or UDDI; it is open whether SOAP is always the best solution for command oriented interface). It implies the abilities of software developers to have some interdisciplinary knowledge as well as to be able to use mathematical statistics in data mining and software processes (compare CMM methodology). For many programming-oriented persons, the ability to use statistics is a very difficult and unpleasant task. It is the task of CIO to cope with this problem. A sound knowledge of mathematics and mastering of natural (mother) language is often needed during the requirements specification, but often missing.

4. The CIO must find an optimal balance between centralized and decentralized activities. It is especially important for the policy of the standardization of message formats. The decentralized decisions are more flexible and often more optimal, but it can result into a Babel of formats. A similar situation is in the case of data. Data should be in the responsibility and localized near to they producers or main users. CIO should support the decentralized solution and decide the strategies of data replication.

5. Ad hoc modeling diagrams for software confederations must be used, as there are no satisfactory CASE tools for software confederations. Usable are Use Case diagrams, diagrams modeling the behavior of system users. Diagrams able to visualize the internal dynamics of software confederations are not available yet. Some variants of Petri net diagrams and/or a modification of data flow diagrams can be used. The use of UML is limited.

6. The decision what security transaction and authorization services where to implement/use (standard middleware, front-end components, components providing main application functions). In Rowe (2002), for example, the transactions (rollback inclusive) are controlled by a generalized user interface components (user gates).