Re: Application design & architecture

It seems to me that if you can make a good case for payback, then the iSeries 
community will adopt SOA, though perhaps not at the same rate as other 
platforms.  Payback is a question that dogs me, and if there is a potential 
payback for offering XML based services over the Internet then wouldn't it make 
even more sense to offer HTML interfaces, rather than an XML interfaces?

I suppose a company like Walmart could come along and demand all their major 
suppliers to expose XML based services, but what would it take to motivate 
organizations generally to expose there data, procedures, and applications as 
an XML based services, knowing that they can't control how the data and service 
are presented or used?

Nathan Andelin



----- Original Message ----
From: Walden H. Leverich <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2006 12:05:54 PM
Subject: RE: Application design & architecture

>Moving a wall and adding a toilet CAN be SOA.

Yes, it CAN be. Heck, I'll argue perhaps it SHOULD be. But for may
iSeries shops the reality is they're not allowed to use something simple
like a trigger, or SQL because too many people wouldn't understand it,
and it would take "too long." SOA isn't going to be on the table for
years.

SOA is going to have the same problem CASE tools and OO design had
before it. The payback -- and it's a big one -- doesn't come on the
first and second use, it comes on the 10th and 11th. Many shops are
pressed for enough time to "do it right" using the tools they have now,
to get enough time from management to do something that _will_ add to
the timeline for the first use (even if it saves _huge_ time and money
down the line) is a nearly impossible sell.

SOA also has an uphill battle because it's not visual. I don't mean
there aren't visual tools to help you, I mean SOA is an architecture,
not a presentation (as you well know). This makes it hard to sell to the
"higher-ups." I've seen numerous cases where web applications (and
client/server before it) were frowned upon until some programmer stayed
late and make a crappy, but cute, visual interface to sales inquiry. He
showed it so management and they literally saw the light. SOA has no
such sales mechanism.

-Walden