Re: Application design & architecture -- MIDRANGE-L

Scott,

Thanks.

I agree with you about COMMON. I was involved in the SOA focus, and after itwas over, the message about SOA was confusing. My concern was that SOA froman IBM Software Group perspective has an ulterior motive - sellingWebSphere. This perspective is limited, and the SOA message is confused ifthe only view you are getting is from Software Group.

To help, try this article: http://www.zapthink.com/report.html?id=WP-0116 Iam not sure if you have to enroll, but it costs nothing more than your emailaddress.

At COMMON, we wrote several articles for the conference daily about SOA. Ihave reproduced them here:http://www.angustheitchap.com/Angus/COMMONSOA.htmlAnd, for the RPG-minded, I wrote this article:http://www.angustheitchap.com/Angus/SOATLA.html

I apologize for taking the bait and answering specific questions withoutaddressing the big picture first. Try some of these approaches for moredetail, although, keep clear of the vendor hype:

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/soa/index.html

"Leading companies are tackling the complexity of their application and ITenvironments with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which facilitates thedevelopment of modular business services that can be easily integrated andreused - creating a truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure."

http://h20219.www2.hp.com/services/cache/278061-0-0-225-121.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

"SOA is about improving business results. It's not an off-the-shelftechnology - rather it's an approach to architecting and organizing IT andbusiness functionality that enables you to achieve your business goals whilemanaging change."

And here is a great article about MS's concerns with IBM, which talks aboutSOA.http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=512&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog"...IBM may be a bit over-zealous in pushing SOA, complicating its messageto the market, but Microsoft has been too obtuse on its own SOA message."

And here is the big deal. SOA is simply an approach to IT that requiresbusiness thinking to be applied to the IT work we do. This is not so easy tounderstand for techies, and certainly is very scary to a lot of people - Ireference a recent midrange-L debate. However, SOA is an approach that willforge a path to the future of IT. The earth is a sphere.


Trevor

----- Original Message -----From: "Ingvaldson, Scott"

Subject: RE: Application design & architecture

C'mon now!  Are we really going to start debating about debating?

I know that both Trevor and Joe are highly intelligent gentleman and I
would hate to strip either one of their personalities just for the sake
of this or any other topic.

I also know that this is a subject that is important and misunderstood.
It was the main focus of the most recent COMMON and I still don't feel
that I understand it sufficiently.  Personally I have found this (and
the previous thread) highly entertaining and somewhat enlightening.

My advice (and I'll ignore it myself at times) is that if you don't have
anything to add to the TOPIC don't click send and PLEASE don't shoot the
piano player.

Regards,

Scott Ingvaldson
iSeries System Administrator
GuideOne Insurance Group