Service Modeling Language
Innovation Enabler or Roadkill on the IT Standards Highway
By Craig Thomas, CTO, GroundWork Open Source
Last summer, mid-July to be specific, a team of vendors announced the start of public review for a new IT standard called Service Modeling Language (SML). The group plans to submit the specification to a standards body by year-end and hope for ratification sometime during 2007. The members of this impressive group are BEA, BMC, CA, Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun.
But where did SML come from? What is SML made out of? What is it good for? Why would GroundWork care? What are we doing about it?
SML did not spring fully formed into the world. Microsoft, which is perhaps the strongest driver in the SML team, brought its work on System Definition Model (SDM) in as a starting point. SDM was first introduced in 2003 as the cornerstone to Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), a 10-year plan to create a comprehensive management platform for Windows. In the neighborhood around SDM are standards like the Common Information Model (CIM), Data Center Markup Language (DCML). Microsoft is hard at work implementing features based on SML in Microsoft Operations Manager, System Management Server, System Center Service Desk, Longhorn Server and Visual Studio.
SML is essentially XML plus XML Schema 1.0 plus Schematron. Everyone knows what XML is, right? An XML Schema is a set of rules that define a valid XML document structure. SML extends XML Schema to support inter-document references and a set of constraints on those references. Schematron is an XML language for making assertions about the structure and content of an XML document. Finally, SML defines the process of model validation.
SML promises to allow a high degree of interoperability among software tools from a variety of vendors. At the end of the day, though, SML is just a language. Its real value is achieved only when there are models in common use. The use of models will allow collaborative systems to be built upon an invariant description of a service or system, composed into reusable, standard modules. The use of models also enables adaptive behavior and automated management. The SML team's members are the who's who of enterprise computing. A system built by Dell could be monitored and managed with software from HP, Microsoft, IBM, or any of the rest of the SML implementers. And GroundWork!
SML is of significant interest to GroundWork. After all, we're leveraging open source to disrupt the market space that has been dominated by BEA, BMC, CA, Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun. We can help the open source community leverage SML to continue its interoperability with the full spectrum of IT Management products. GroundWork has participated as a member of the community in the public review phase of SML's development.
But there's more. GroundWork is also working with the members of IBM, OC Systems, Cisco, Intel, Compuware, HP, and Sybase (and others may join us) to put together an open source project that will develop a framework of components built on SML. This project is still in the proposal stage before the Eclipse Community. The Eclipse community is supported by an ecosystem of major IT solution providers, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals.
I'll describe what GroundWork has been doing with Eclipse in next month's column.
About Craig Thomas
Craig brings over 20 years of experience with software engineering and architecture of enterprise-scale business-critical systems to GroundWork. Craig has a long track record at successful start-ups where he has been responsible for the overall product technical direction, leadership, and architecture as well as contributing as a hands-on developer. Most recently he was the CTO of Steelwedge Software, an innovator in the emerging field of Enterprise Planning and Performance Management (EPPM). Prior to Steelwedge, Craig was the CTO and Co-Founder of OneRelease Venture Engineering (acquired by Manugistics). Craig has also held Director of Engineering positions with ProBusiness Services, Inc., Premenos, and at Sybase where he was one of the early members of the database engineering team.
