Usability evaluation for enterprise SOA APIs

Abstract

SAP recently began offering access to web services through its Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (E-SOA) plat-form. It is in the best interest of SAP that its E-SOA service operations are easier for developers to use and understand, which will contribute to higher E-SOA adoption, and a more effective means of innovation on the part of business customers. To facilitate such a change, Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute is working with SAP's E-SOA and Business Process Reno-vation Teams to analyze the E-SOA interfaces using HCI techniques and determine means by which developers assigned to create SOA APIs in general, and Enterprise SOA APIs in particular, can design superior interfaces. The identification of usable design patterns, and methodologies to determine these patterns, can streamline SOA projects for API developers and programmers who use SOA APIs.