An ephemeral network is a collection of different services which are brought together for the purpose of accomplishing a particular job. The network of services persists for the length of time it takes to produce the results, which might be anywhere from a few minutes to a few months.
Imagine there exist a large collection of services on the Internet. Each service is ready to perform a kind of task and can be configured for a particular situation. Because it is the Internet, people are adding new services all the time, and changing existing ones.
Consider then that you have a job to accomplish, which requires a collection of these services. What you need to do is to connect together the services that are best fit today for handling that particular job. Those services get associated with each other around the context of a particular job. The association has to be quick and easy, because it will not be entirely automatic. The association is like plugging together a network to accomplish that job. The ephemeral network remains connected until the job is finished, at which time it is torn down and discarded. The services are still there, but the associations are no longer needed.
Home Purchase Example
A good example of an application of an ephemeral network is to a home purchase scenario. The purchase of a home is a very significant purchase for most people, and a very complex one. Many people are involved, and many things have to happen correctly, or the consequences can be even more expensive. Anyone who has purchased a home recently knows that the process is far from being automated enough. The actual process followed depends a lot on the customs and the laws of the particular region where the house is being purchased, but start by understanding a hypothetical home purchase as it might happen in California:
Most of the process of purchasing a house occurs after the buyers, sellers, and their agents come to agreement on the terms of the sale. A contract is submitted to an escrow company. The escrow company is then in charge of assuring that all conditions of the contract are met, and so becomes a central point for contact with other companies.
The sellers may request up front a credit report to be sure they know who they are dealing with. The buyers will choose their preferred mortgage company. Often the mortgage company is required to deliver some proof that they are willing to loan the buyers the money for this particular house. Before they do that, they want an independent appraiser to investigate whether the house is worth more than the loan, whether there are undue geological risks (floods, earthquakes) and whether there are other things that might damage the value of the house. These reports need to be delivered through the escrow company back to the mortgage company. There will need to be a title search and that report must be included into the escrow. Of course the seller wants to make sure that the funds are transferred to the bank of their choice, and often this transfer must be made to pay off their loan before the title can be legally transferred to the new owners. and Ultimately the tax assessor needs to be informed of the sale price of the house for tax purposes.
There are companies that provide all of these services. Often they are small companies that specialize in service in a particular geographic area, and are knowledgeable about the customs and traditions in that area.
Today the bulk of this is handled by paper. But imagine forward a few years. Each such company could offer an asynchronous service interface for automated processing, much like their web page is an interface for people using browsers. The entire house purchase takes place over time, anywhere from a few days to a few months. A lot of the work is up front deciding who is going to take care of which services when. The buyers choose a mortgage company. The escrow company then sets up an association with that mortgage company, which enables the transfer of certain information about the house purchase in both directions: the mortgage company can get basic details about the house (address, size, construction), can submit requirements for additional information needed, can pick up appraisor's report when ready, and can deliver a confirmation that they will lend the money toward the house. Similarly, the escrow company sets up an association with the appraisal company that is acceptable to both the bank and the buyers.
What makes this an Ephemeral Network?
The important thing to note about this is that the network for a house purchase might be set up differently every time. There is a certain pattern to the roles that are played, but the specifics change from case to case, and will also change over time as new players enter the field and offer new and better services. Thus, creating the association must be quick and easy to do. You can not expect to bring in a programmer to do this, it has to be able to be plugged together without doing any programming.
There are many such examples where an Ephemeral Network can be used to accomplish a particular job. The home purchase example bring to mind other large purchase examples, such are mergers and acquisitions. Any large contract, purchase, or financial transaction can end up requiring multiple parties and associations that need to be set up in advance. Outside of finance, there are a many kinds of appointments and agreements that need to be set up: agreeing to attend a meeting, speak at a conference, participate in a workshop. It does not need to be big: purchasing a book from Amazon and waiting for it to arrive can be represented as an ephemeral network. When it comes down to it, almost anything that involves humans is a candidate for support by asynchronous services and ephemeral networks. The key is: the associations can be easily configured and set up, and when the job is finished the associations can be discarded.
What is required for an association?
An association required essentially two things:
Service Address: The address of the specific service. Keep in mind that a bank may offer a large number of services, and even a number of different mortgages. This is not the address of the bank, but rather the address of the specific service being offered. This is normally represented as an URL, just like the address of a web page, but it actually is an End Point Reference to an asynchronous service.
Schema Mapping: There is no universal schema, so each such service will define a set of data values that it expects to be able to transfer. These values are often defined by custom, so different companies will have very similar quantities they are tracking (like house address) but the specific names will not necessarily be the same. So to accomplish the association, a mapping must be made between the services. This mapping can be done graphically, so that no programming is required. This mapping will be bidirectional so that information can flow each way.
It is not entirely automatic, so someone must do this. Once an association is made between two companies (two types of services) the mapping can be remembered for future use, so that if that Escrow company encounters another opportunity in the future to use that same Mortgage company, the association can be made very quickly and easily. It is only the first time that a particular pair of companies is linked that a person needs to map the schemas.
The Test of Time
Ephemeral Networks can be constructed quickly for a particular job, but remember that the association lasts for time, and whenever time is involved, so is change. What also happens during the course of a house purchase is that something may change. The mortgage company requires an appraiser because they need to be sure of the value of the house. What happens when the appraiser finds that the house is not worth the assumed amount? That mortgage company may refuse to fund the loan. What often happens is that the buyers must go an find a new mortgage company willing to work in this situation. The Escrow company needs to be able to unplug the old mortgage company, and plug in the new one.
That is another aspect of ephemeral networks is that because they are easy to set up, they are also easy to reconfigure as things change. The vision is not one os programming services that work together, but simply being able to easily plug services together as needed to make a network that is used for a particular job. Those plugs can be unplugged and changed just as easily.
Last edited by Keith Swenson 11/27/2008(Effective date 11/27/2008)
You are viewing a static copy of
a project that was originally a wiki.
These pages can not be modified
at this location even though the page
may appear incomplete.
This copy was generated on
01/29/2012
and this project information has not been
changed since 11/27/2008.
Ephemeral Network
An ephemeral network is a collection of different services which are brought together for the purpose of accomplishing a particular job. The network of services persists for the length of time it takes to produce the results, which might be anywhere from a few minutes to a few months.
Imagine there exist a large collection of services on the Internet. Each service is ready to perform a kind of task and can be configured for a particular situation. Because it is the Internet, people are adding new services all the time, and changing existing ones.
Consider then that you have a job to accomplish, which requires a collection of these services. What you need to do is to connect together the services that are best fit today for handling that particular job. Those services get associated with each other around the context of a particular job. The association has to be quick and easy, because it will not be entirely automatic. The association is like plugging together a network to accomplish that job. The ephemeral network remains connected until the job is finished, at which time it is torn down and discarded. The services are still there, but the associations are no longer needed.
Home Purchase Example
A good example of an application of an ephemeral network is to a home purchase scenario. The purchase of a home is a very significant purchase for most people, and a very complex one. Many people are involved, and many things have to happen correctly, or the consequences can be even more expensive. Anyone who has purchased a home recently knows that the process is far from being automated enough. The actual process followed depends a lot on the customs and the laws of the particular region where the house is being purchased, but start by understanding a hypothetical home purchase as it might happen in California:
Most of the process of purchasing a house occurs after the buyers, sellers, and their agents come to agreement on the terms of the sale. A contract is submitted to an escrow company. The escrow company is then in charge of assuring that all conditions of the contract are met, and so becomes a central point for contact with other companies.
The sellers may request up front a credit report to be sure they know who they are dealing with. The buyers will choose their preferred mortgage company. Often the mortgage company is required to deliver some proof that they are willing to loan the buyers the money for this particular house. Before they do that, they want an independent appraiser to investigate whether the house is worth more than the loan, whether there are undue geological risks (floods, earthquakes) and whether there are other things that might damage the value of the house. These reports need to be delivered through the escrow company back to the mortgage company. There will need to be a title search and that report must be included into the escrow. Of course the seller wants to make sure that the funds are transferred to the bank of their choice, and often this transfer must be made to pay off their loan before the title can be legally transferred to the new owners. and Ultimately the tax assessor needs to be informed of the sale price of the house for tax purposes.
There are companies that provide all of these services. Often they are small companies that specialize in service in a particular geographic area, and are knowledgeable about the customs and traditions in that area.
Today the bulk of this is handled by paper. But imagine forward a few years. Each such company could offer an asynchronous service interface for automated processing, much like their web page is an interface for people using browsers. The entire house purchase takes place over time, anywhere from a few days to a few months. A lot of the work is up front deciding who is going to take care of which services when. The buyers choose a mortgage company. The escrow company then sets up an association with that mortgage company, which enables the transfer of certain information about the house purchase in both directions: the mortgage company can get basic details about the house (address, size, construction), can submit requirements for additional information needed, can pick up appraisor's report when ready, and can deliver a confirmation that they will lend the money toward the house. Similarly, the escrow company sets up an association with the appraisal company that is acceptable to both the bank and the buyers.
What makes this an Ephemeral Network?
The important thing to note about this is that the network for a house purchase might be set up differently every time. There is a certain pattern to the roles that are played, but the specifics change from case to case, and will also change over time as new players enter the field and offer new and better services. Thus, creating the association must be quick and easy to do. You can not expect to bring in a programmer to do this, it has to be able to be plugged together without doing any programming.
There are many such examples where an Ephemeral Network can be used to accomplish a particular job. The home purchase example bring to mind other large purchase examples, such are mergers and acquisitions. Any large contract, purchase, or financial transaction can end up requiring multiple parties and associations that need to be set up in advance. Outside of finance, there are a many kinds of appointments and agreements that need to be set up: agreeing to attend a meeting, speak at a conference, participate in a workshop. It does not need to be big: purchasing a book from Amazon and waiting for it to arrive can be represented as an ephemeral network. When it comes down to it, almost anything that involves humans is a candidate for support by asynchronous services and ephemeral networks. The key is: the associations can be easily configured and set up, and when the job is finished the associations can be discarded.
What is required for an association?
An association required essentially two things:
Service Address: The address of the specific service. Keep in mind that a bank may offer a large number of services, and even a number of different mortgages. This is not the address of the bank, but rather the address of the specific service being offered. This is normally represented as an URL, just like the address of a web page, but it actually is an End Point Reference to an asynchronous service.
Schema Mapping: There is no universal schema, so each such service will define a set of data values that it expects to be able to transfer. These values are often defined by custom, so different companies will have very similar quantities they are tracking (like house address) but the specific names will not necessarily be the same. So to accomplish the association, a mapping must be made between the services. This mapping can be done graphically, so that no programming is required. This mapping will be bidirectional so that information can flow each way.
It is not entirely automatic, so someone must do this. Once an association is made between two companies (two types of services) the mapping can be remembered for future use, so that if that Escrow company encounters another opportunity in the future to use that same Mortgage company, the association can be made very quickly and easily. It is only the first time that a particular pair of companies is linked that a person needs to map the schemas.
The Test of Time
Ephemeral Networks can be constructed quickly for a particular job, but remember that the association lasts for time, and whenever time is involved, so is change. What also happens during the course of a house purchase is that something may change. The mortgage company requires an appraiser because they need to be sure of the value of the house. What happens when the appraiser finds that the house is not worth the assumed amount? That mortgage company may refuse to fund the loan. What often happens is that the buyers must go an find a new mortgage company willing to work in this situation. The Escrow company needs to be able to unplug the old mortgage company, and plug in the new one.
That is another aspect of ephemeral networks is that because they are easy to set up, they are also easy to reconfigure as things change. The vision is not one os programming services that work together, but simply being able to easily plug services together as needed to make a network that is used for a particular job. Those plugs can be unplugged and changed just as easily.