Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community, originally proposed in 2008, [1] to define a set of specifications that enable integration of software development. It has evolved, and continues to evolve, to areas such as Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), IT Operations and more. The intention is to make life easier for tools users and tools vendors, by making it easier for tools to work together. [2]
The OSLC initiative is divided up into various OASIS TC (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards Technical Committees), as well as previously defined working groups and user groups. Each OASIS TC develops specifications in context of a specific part of the lifecycle. [3] For example, there are OASIS TCs for Change and Configuration Management, Automation and Project Management for Contracted Delivery (Supply Chain). There is also a Core TC, which defines a common specification that is extended by each lifecycle TC.
As of June 2013, the OSLC initiative is a Member Section of the Open Standard Organization OASIS. [4]
OSLC is open in the sense that anybody can participate (e.g. in User Groups). To participate in the specification developing OASIS TCs, the participants have to sign the IPR policies to ensure irrevocability. The specifications are under Creative Commons licensing and can be freely implemented by anybody. [5] Supporting the OSLC initiative there are open source projects for building an OSLC reference implementation and test suites for various programming languages and framework. The Eclipse Lyo project is one of the open source project which provides consumer and provider SDKs (primarily for Java), reference implementations, samples and test suite. [6]
The effort was formalized in 2009 with the formation of the Change Management workgroup [7] and participation of individuals from Accenture, Eclipse Mylyn/Tasktop, [8] and IBM. Since then, new workgroups have formed around other lifecycle topics and individuals representing about 30 different organizations, including Oracle, Siemens, Northrop Grumman, Tieto, and General Motors. IBM's Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure brand is also starting to use OSLC as an integration technology. [9]
The OSLC specifications build on the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF), Linked Data and REST, enabling integration at data level via links between related resources. OSLC resources are defined in terms of RDF properties. Operations on resources are performed using HTTP. OSLC also specifies user interface techniques to enable preview, creation and selection of links. [10]
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, at present or in the future, in either implementation or access, without any restrictions. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system-to-system performance. Hence, interoperability involves the task of building coherent services for users when the individual components are technically different and managed by different organizations. Types of interoperability include syntactic interoperability, where two systems can communicate with each other, and cross-domain interoperability, where multiple organizations work together and exchange information. In any collaborative effort, cross-domain interoperability is important because a lack of communication can cause misunderstandings and greatly reduce efficiency. This would especially be a problem in organizations that are meant to respond to emergencies as quickly as possible, such as law enforcement, fire fighting, EMS, and other public health and safety departments.
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for cybersecurity, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management, cloud computing, legal data exchange, energy, content technologies, and other areas.
Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. Eclipse is written mostly in Java and its primary use is for developing Java applications, but it may also be used to develop applications in other programming languages via plug-ins, including Ada, ABAP, C, C++, C#, Clojure, COBOL, D, Erlang, Fortran, Groovy, Haskell, JavaScript, Julia, Lasso, Lua, NATURAL, Perl, PHP, Prolog, Python, R, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and Scheme. It can also be used to develop documents with LaTeX and packages for the software Mathematica. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) for Java and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, and Eclipse PDT for PHP, among others.
Universal Business Language (UBL) is an open library of standard electronic XML business documents for procurement and transportation such as purchase orders, invoices, transport logistics and waybills. UBL was developed by an OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations. UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices. It is designed to eliminate the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based business correspondence and provide an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.
Service Data Objects is a technology that allows heterogeneous data to be accessed in a uniform way. The SDO specification was originally developed in 2004 as a joint collaboration between Oracle (BEA) and IBM and approved by the Java Community Process in JSR 235. Version 2.0 of the specification was introduced in November 2005 as a key part of the Service Component Architecture.
Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, project management, and release management.
Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a software technology designed to provide a model for applications that follow service-oriented architecture principles. The technology, created by major software vendors, including IBM, Oracle Corporation and TIBCO Software, encompasses a wide range of technologies and as such is specified in independent specifications to maintain programming language and application environment neutrality. Many times it uses an enterprise service bus (ESB).
Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is an open standard that allows different content management systems to inter-operate over the Internet. Specifically, CMIS defines an abstraction layer for controlling diverse document management systems and repositories using web protocols.
Pulse is now Secure Delivery Center 2014, a proprietary application lifecycle management (ALM) technology developed and maintained by Genuitec, a founding and strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation.
Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a set of software tools developed and marketed by Micro Focus for application development and testing. It includes tools for requirements management, test planning and functional testing, performance testing, developer management, and defect management.
IBM cloud computing is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. IBM Cloud includes infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) offered through public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models, in addition to the components that make up those clouds.
Rational Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System (DOORS) is a requirement management tool. It is a client–server application, with a Windows-only client and servers for Linux, Windows, and Solaris. There is also a web client, DOORS Web Access.
UNICOM Focal Point is a portfolio management and decision analysis tool used by the product organizations of corporations and government agencies to collect information and feedback from internal and external stakeholders on the value of applications, products, systems, technologies, capabilities, ideas, and other organizational artifacts—prioritize on which ones will provide the most value to the business, and manage the roadmap of how artifacts will be fielded, improved, or removed from the market or organization. UNICOM Focal Point is also used to manage a portfolio of projects, to understand resources used on those projects, and timelines for completion. The product is also used for pure product management—where product managers use it to gather and analyze enhancement requests from customers to decide on what features to put in a product, and develop roadmaps for future product versions.
Legal XML is a non-profit organization developing in the frame of the OASIS consortium open standards for legal documents, such as electronic court filing, court documents, legal citations, and transcripts, and related applications. The building block for Legal XML standards is eXtensible Markup Language ("XML").
Helix ALM, formerly called TestTrack, is application lifecycle management (ALM) software developed by Perforce. The software allows developers to manage requirements, defects, issues and testing during software development.
Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA), is an OASIS standard language to describe a topology of cloud based web services, their components, relationships, and the processes that manage them. The TOSCA standard includes specifications of a file archive format called CSAR.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a visual modeling and design tool based on the OMG UML. The platform supports: the design and construction of software systems; modeling business processes; and modeling industry based domains. It is used by businesses and organizations to not only model the architecture of their systems, but to process the implementation of these models across the full application development life-cycle.