SOA
Over the last few years SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) has been one of the most common items in the commercial range on the ICT market and has been identified by analysts as an almost indispensable model of reference for companies' information systems.
The innovation introduced by SOA is the possibility of organizing the corporate information system into services, which lets a common factor be placed into a wider and more organic view of the information system, overcoming the idea of a system with only separate functional needs.
The philosophy underlying an SOA can be summarized as follows: the integration of a new component into an existing information system entails complex work usually requiring great skills and rather a long time. The use of SOA makes it possible to design a model in which the components to be created incorporate the attributes necessary for their subsequent possible integration into a context of new and more complex services.
At the technological level the SOA is created through what is known as the enabling infrastructure. The components of this infrastructure are the following:
- Enterprise Service Bus; this provides the basic functions of connection between different systems
- Business Process Server; this is the engine for the execution of the interaction flows, which are typically expressed in the BPEL language (Business Process Execution Language)
- Business Activity Monitor; this is a tool for monitoring the operation of the processes
- Registry/Repository; this represents the core of the SOA governance activities and enables publication of all the information on the services.
In this sphere, Sogei has an expertise ranging from the architectural, design, technical and product development skills to those of the design of Governance processes requested by SOA. This is all thanks to the creation of an internal Centre of Excellence (CEO) which completes the structuring of the processes underlying the SOA approach and which develops the supporting technological platforms and knowledge of the same in the various corporate structures.
Sogei is developing three applications based on SOA:
- Electronic Invoicing: Exchange system.
The project represents the structure placed between the subject that issues the electronic invoice (supplier/intermediary) and the subject to which it is addressed (Public Administration). It is responsible for supervising reception and subsequent forwarding of the electronic invoices to the PA, and also carries out the appropriate checks on the transmission data and communicates involved the outcome of the operations to the subjects;
- Electronic Invoicing: Dematerialization.
Downstream of the Exchange System is the Dematerialization Project which provides for the management of the invoices sent by suppliers to the Revenue Agency.
The purpose of this project is to process the invoices received before entering them in the agency's current management system.
The flow is made up of an automatic process which handles reception of the invoice and carries out a number of checks on the basis of which the invoice will be sent to a second process or not. This activity consists of a check on the invoice by an operator who, after examining all the data available, decides whether to approve it or to reject it and return it to the sender (by SDI). If the invoice passes the checks, it is entered into the management system.
- Tax Litigation Telematics
The project was started to meet the need to manage the presentation of Tax Litigation documents electronically. It is composed of a web application with a user interface and a business application which manages the registration of users, and the preparation, registering and logging of the electronic documents.
- Equitalia exchange system.
This project is part of a wider system for the creation of the new tax collection system. In particular, in this first stage the Exchange System receives and processes real estate survey requests made by collection agents for property attachment measures. The system puts the request reception service into communication with the data interrogation services of the Revenue Agency and enables coordination of the workflow for management of the real estate procedures.
