Announcing SML
by William (@vambenepe on Twitter)BEA, BMC, Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Sun just published a new modeling specification called SML (Service Modeling Language). This is the next step in the ongoing drive towards more automation in the management of IT resources. The specification makes this possible by providing a more powerful way (using Schematron) to express system constraints in a machine-readable (and more importantly machine-actionable) way. It also has the advantage (being based on XSD) to align very well with XML document exchange protocols and the Web services infrastructure.
Here is the SML spec on the HP site. Very soon there will be an HTML version of the spec there in addition to the PDF. In addition, the serviceml.org Web site is a basic but vendor-neutral home for the spec.
Those familiar with the QuarterMaster work will see a lot of commonality and know that HP has a lot of experience to contribute in this domain: paper 1, paper 2 and paper 3.
This is an initial draft, not a final specification. The major hole in my mind at this time is the lack of support for versioning. Something to address soon.
There are many good things about this specification, but unfortunately not the name. Just for kicks, here are some better candidates:
- ITSOK (IT Systems Operational Knowledge) “it’s ok”
- ITSON (IT Systems Open Notation) “it’s on”
- ITSUP (IT Systems Upkeep Profile) “it’s up”
