Taxonomy and SOA

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the classification of things based on their structural characteristics and evolutionary history. Animal taxonomy is a good real world example for classification and it is based on the tree like structure, and scientists have classified animal kingdom based on the phyla and classes.

Taxonomy and SOA

In SOA world, every asset can have its own attributes which are specific to the asset type or it’s instances. So we can classify assets based on the business classification or asset type level classification. Most of the time, SOA Taxonomy is defined using the business classification.

“Asset type level classification” is totally based on the common attributes in the given asset type and they can be used to filter assets based on “Refined By” option. However, in this article, we are mainly focused on the SOA Taxonomy which is based on the business classification. The Business classification also can be divided into two major taxonomy(classification) types as information taxonomy and compliance taxonomy.

Information taxonomy is mainly based on the business namespace, and examples are like  business area, Own by Team, Geo Location, etc . When considering the compliance taxonomy, they are more generic to the industry (ex: PCI for Internet payments).

The terms which are absorbed from the classification, can be used to tag assets(mainly services) in your Enterprise Governance Solution. Later Asset consumers can easily search and find services that match their needs based on the classification. In addition to that, by looking at taxonomy hierarchy, consumers can easily determine Asset related classifications as well.

However when classifying assets based on the taxonomy and their filtering, should be more user-friendly, and UX should be clearly understandable by the non-technical user as well.