Operational Value and Accessibility of Services in SOA-based Intelligence Information Systems

The concept of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) can be used as a foundation for establishing an integrated Intelligence System, which would be based on services as software components. It offers better coordination among institutions involved in intelligence, thus providing increase of intelligence effectiveness. In this article, the central focus is placed on determining measurement tools that allow evaluation of the service’s potential within an Intelligence Information System (IIS). The defined metrics’ aim is to estimate the accessibility status of services in IIS, thus facilitating the decision-making process prior to initializing a request for intelligence data gathering. Taking into account the individual service characteristics of reliability and cost, we gain additional insight into both momentary and periodic, weighted accessibility status of the system. By employing these estimations we hope to enhance our ability to understand, and consequently control and improve the results produced by our IIS.