Richard Veryard FRSA (born 1955) is a British computer scientist, author and business consultant, known for his work on service-oriented architecture and the service-based business. [1]
Veryard attended Sevenoaks School from 1966 to 1972, where he attended classes by Gerd Sommerhoff. He received his MA Mathematics and Philosophy from Merton College, Oxford, in 1976, and his MSc Computing Science at the Imperial College London in 1977. Later he also received his MBA from the Open University in 1992. [2]
Veryard started his career in industry working for Data Logic Limited, Middlesex, UK, where he first developed and taught public data analysis courses. After years of practical experience in this field, he wrote his first book about this topic in 1984. In 1987 he became an IT consultant with James Martin Associates (JMA), specializing in the practical problems of planning and implementing information systems. After the European operation of JMA were acquired by the Texas Instruments, he became a Principal Consultant in the Software Business and a member of Group Technical Staff. At Texas Instruments he was one of the developers of IE\Q, a proprietary methodology for software quality management. [3] Since 1997 he is freelance consultant under the flag of Veryard Projects Ltd. Since 2006 he is a principal consultant at CBDi, a research forum for service-oriented architecture and engineering. [2]
Veryard has taught courses at City University, Brunel University and the Copenhagen Business School, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London. [2]
In "Pragmatic data analysis" (1984) Veryard presented data analysis as a branch of systems analysis, which shared the same principles. His position on data modelling would appear to be implicit in the term data analysis. [4] He presented two philosophical attitudes towards data modeling, which he called "semantic relativism and semantic absolutism. According to the absolutist way of thinking, there is only one correct or ideal way of modeling anything: each object in the real world must be represented by a particular construct. Semantic relativism, on the other hand, believe that most things in the real world can be modeled in many different ways, using basic constructs". [5] [6]
Veryard further examined the problem of the discovery of classes and objects. This may proceed from a number of different models, that capture the requirements of the problem domain. Abbott (1983) proposed that each search starts from a textual description of the problem. Ward (1989) and Seidewitz and Stark (1986) suggested starting from the products of structured analysis, namely data flow diagrams. Veryard examined the same problem from the perspective of data modeling. [7]
Veryard made the point, that the modeler has some choice in whether to use an entity, relationship or attribute to represent a given universe of discourse (UoD) concept. [8] This justifies a common position, that "data models of the same UoD may differ, but the differences are the result of shortcomings in the data modeling language. The argument is that data modeling is essentially descriptive, but that current data modeling languages allow some choice in how the description is documented." [8]
In the 1991 book "The Economics of Information Systems and Software", edited by Veryard, experts from various areas, including business administration, project management, software engineering and economics, contribute their expertise concerning the economics of systems software, including evaluation of benefits, types of information and project costs and management. [9]
In the 1993 book "Information Coordination: The Management of Information Models, Systems, and Organizations" Veryard gives a snapshot of the state of the art around these subjects. "Maximizing the value of corporate data depends upon being able to manage information models both within and between businesses. A centralized information model is not appropriate for many organizations," Veryard explains. [10]
His book "takes the approach that multiple information models exist and the differences and links between them have to be managed. Coordination is currently an area of both intensive theoretical speculation and of practical research and development. Information Coordination explains practical guidelines for information management, both from on-going research and from recent field experience with CASE tools and methods". [10] [11]
In the 1990s Veryard worked together in an Enterprise Computing Project and developed a version of Business Relationship Modelling specifically for Open Distributed Processing, under the name Enterprise Modelling Methodology/Open Distributed Processing (EMM/ODP). [12] [13] EMM/ODP proposed some new techniques and method extensions for enterprise modelling for distributed systems.
In 2001 Veryard introduced the concept of "component-based business". Component-based business relates to new business architectures, in which "an enterprise is configured as a dynamic network of components providing business services to one another". [14] In the new millennium there has been "a phenomenal growth in this kind of new autonomous business services, fuelled largely by the internet and e-business". [14]
The concept of "component-Based Business constitutes a radical challenge to traditional notions of strategy, planning, requirements, quality and change, and tries to help you improve how you think through the practical difficulties and opportunities of the component-based business". This applied to both hardware and software, and to business relationships. [14]
Veryard's subsequent work on organic planning for SOA has been referenced by a number of authors. [15]
In "Six Viewpoints of Business Architecture" Veryard describes business architecture as "a practice (or collection of practices) associated with business performance, strategy and structure." [16]
And furthermore about the main task of the business architect:
The business architect is expected to take responsibility for some set of stakeholder concerns, in collaboration with a number of related business and architectural roles, including
- • business strategy planning, business change management, business analysis, etc.
- • business operations, business excellence, etc.
- • enterprise architecture, solution architecture, data/process architecture, systems architecture, etc.
Conventional accounts of business architecture are often framed within a particular agenda - especially an IT-driven agenda. Many enterprise architecture frameworks follow this agenda, and this affects how they describe business architecture and its relationship with other architectures (such as IT systems architecture). Indeed, business architecture is often seen as little more than a precursor to system architecture - an attempt to derive systems requirements. [16]
Articles, papers, book chapters, etc., a selection: [17]
A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express data, information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules. The rules are used for interpretation of the meaning of components in the structure of a programming language.
BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products, which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies.
Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model for an information system by applying certain formal techniques. It may be applied as part of broader Model-driven engineering (MDE) concept.
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The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most used framework for enterprise architecture as of 2020 that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. TOGAF is a high-level approach to design. It is typically modeled at four levels: Business, Application, Data, and Technology. It relies heavily on modularization, standardization, and already existing, proven technologies and products.
An enterprise architecture framework defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It structures architects' thinking by dividing the architecture description into domains, layers, or views, and offers models – typically matrices and diagrams – for documenting each view. This allows for making systemic design decisions on all the components of the system and making long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.
Service-orientation is a design paradigm for computer software in the form of services. The principles of service-oriented design stress the separation of concerns in the software. Applying service-orientation results in units of software partitioned into discrete, autonomous, and network-accessible units, each designed to solve an individual concern. These units qualify as services.
Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is a reference model in computer science, which provides a co-ordinating framework for the standardization of open distributed processing (ODP). It supports distribution, interworking, platform and technology independence, and portability, together with an enterprise architecture framework for the specification of ODP systems.
Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.
Network Agility is an architectural discipline for computer networking. It can be defined as:
Service-oriented modeling is the discipline of modeling business and software systems, for the purpose of designing and specifying service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles and paradigms, such as application architecture, service-oriented architecture, microservices, and cloud computing.
Dennis E. Wisnosky is an American consultant, writer and former chief architect and chief technical officer of the US DoD Business Mission Area (BMA) within the Office of Business Transformation. He is known as one of the creators and initiators of the Integrated Definition (IDEFs) language, a standard for modeling and analysis in management and business improvement efforts.
A semantic data model (SDM) is a high-level semantics-based database description and structuring formalism for databases. This database model is designed to capture more of the meaning of an application environment than is possible with contemporary database models. An SDM specification describes a database in terms of the kinds of entities that exist in the application environment, the classifications and groupings of those entities, and the structural interconnections among them. SDM provides a collection of high-level modeling primitives to capture the semantics of an application environment. By accommodating derived information in a database structural specification, SDM allows the same information to be viewed in several ways; this makes it possible to directly accommodate the variety of needs and processing requirements typically present in database applications. The design of the present SDM is based on our experience in using a preliminary version of it. SDM is designed to enhance the effectiveness and usability of database systems. An SDM database description can serve as a formal specification and documentation tool for a database; it can provide a basis for supporting a variety of powerful user interface facilities, it can serve as a conceptual database model in the database design process; and, it can be used as the database model for a new kind of database management system.
A view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation of the whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns.
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Oliver Sims was a British computer scientist, former IBM employee, and enterprise architecture consultant, known for his work on business objects Object-oriented programming, and service-oriented architecture (SOA).
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