Electronic Services
Summary
This chapter provides an overview of two streams—the automation of activities and programming paradigms—which drove and supported the evolution of electronic services. These services are service systems implemented using important elements from the fields of automation and programming. It presents several classifications to understand the nature of services according to different views. Since services can take various forms, the chapter explains and contrasts electronic services, web services, cloud services, the internet of services, and service-oriented architectures.
Review Questions
1. ATM machines were one of the first electronic services to be developed in the late 60s. Identify other electronic services introduced in the 70s and 80s.
2. Use Froehle and Roth [3] classification to characterize the following services: expedia.com, booking.com, 99designs.com, redbeacon.com, lulu.com, threadless.com, odesk.com, and facebook.com. Give additional examples to cover all types of the classification.
3. Identify existing technology-free, -assisted, and -facilitated services which can constitute good candidates for their transformation into technology-mediated and -generated services.
4. Find programming examples of applications implementing the client-server model using RPC, CORBA, DCOM, and JRMI. The client–server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks between the service providers (requested service) and service requesters (requesting application). Contrast the benefits and difficulties of each programming techniques.
5. The interface of a SOAP web service is described with the specification language WSDL. Provide an example of a WSDL description of a web service with two operations: string getAddress(long custID) and setAddress(long custID, string regionID).
6. Which benefits can cloud services provide to businesses? What type of cost savings can be achieved? How flexible and agile are cloud services? Who typically owns the data and where it is stored?
7. Classify the following cloud services as SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS: lunacloud.com, scalextreme.com, cirrhus9.com, logicworks.net, cohesiveft.com, and appcore.com.
8. Contrast and compare web services, cloud services, and Internet of Services.