Martin Fowler on databases in Service Oriented Architecture

"The recent rise of Service Oriented Architecture seems to mean very different things to different people, but one plausible thread is a rise of autonomous applications with their own Application Database that communicate through service interfaces - effectively replacing shared database integration with rpc or messaging based integration. I'm very sympathetic to this view, particularly favoring integration through messaging - which is why I encouraged the development of EIP[1] In this view of the world the integration database is no longer the default assumption."

[1] EIP."Enterprise Integration Patterns. Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions"
by Gregor Hohpe, Bobby Woolf.

Amen.

Hiearchies and aesthetics

"In all branches of cognitive endeaver, our highest praise is reserved for works that build the deepest hierarchies."
Robert Jourdain.

Ok. That explains the number of musicians and audiophiles I come across in the XML world but does it justify docbook? :-).

Event driven, temporally decoupled business processes

Forget about business process execution languages and belocolus "business process engines" that will protect you from all harm.

Your problems do not stem from the lack of a silver bullet syntax or the lack of a killer programming language feature. Your problems lie in two fundamental concepts that need to be central to how you think about business processes in a distributed world - (a) event driven execution and (b) temporal decoupling.

Without those, all the WF*, BP*, WS* and *ML's in the world cannot help you.

More on this line of thought in this week's ITWorld aricle : When modelling business processes, upside down is the right way up.

XML is not a real data model

Quote from Date defends relational model:

"XML is not a real data model."

Discuss :-)

Come the glorious impersonal computer revolution

Sitting, waiting for a delayed flight to Dublin out of Jacksonville, Florida yesterday I was struck - as I always am - by the number of phone kiosks - all empty - littered all over the place.

These kiosks serve more as post-modern art installations than as useful devices these days thanks to the ubiquity of cellphones.

What to do with them? I have a suggestion : lets start The Impersonal Computer Revolution.

Balancing security, risk and freedom

The CIO summit is over. Some interesting presentations and lots of very interesting people with lots of very interesting integration problems.

Looking back on it, I think my favourite presentation was Jeffrey Rosen from George Washington University Law School who talked about ways in which security measures can be implemented without overly impacting privacy/freedom if they are approached carefully.

His book The Naked Crowd is well worth checking out if you are interested in this stuff.

Kicking back on Amelia Island

I'm posting this in the Marche Burette Deli on Amelia Island, Florida. I'm here getting ready for the FCW Government CIO Summit start starts tommorrow.

I will be talking about the Public Services Broker - an eGovernment SOA I have been working on for the last two years with the Irish Government. (Geeks go here. I travelled sans portable this time so postings will be patchy for a few days.