Sean Rhody

If you work in the IT industry long enough, you're bound to hear one particular joke (well, you'll hear a number, I want to focus on this one) - "What's the only thing worse than no architect on a project?" The answer of course is "Two or more". And of course that's true, since when you put four architects in a room, you get five opinions (at least one is schizophrenic) on anything. Nevertheless, as the joke does make clear, architecture is important. Without it, projects flounder, or worse yet succeed in a dizzying display of spaghetti code and cowboy heroics. When it does, the mess it creates comes back to roost in the future. I've visited shops where they can't make changes to their main business processes, because the COBOL code that runs it no longer even exists in source form - so they have to make changes at the compiled code level. In a very real sense, tha... (more)

Editorial: Who's in Charge Here?

If you're old enough, you probably remember the whole episode with Al Haig in the White House, saying "I'm in charge here" during the period when Reagan was shot. He wasn't really, but it's a good illustration of the concept of confusion, and how different people react to situations. How is this relevant to SOA and Web services? That's an excellent question. As in a country, an organization implementing SOA needs governance and direction. A simple example may help shine a light on this subject. Let's suppose a division of a large company implements a new security service. Since ... (more)

The End of the Beginning

I guess the title begs the question, if this is the end of the beginning, is it the beginning of the end? Hardly. But it is time to close the book on the first phase of Web services - the beginning of the hype curve. Almost a year ago we decided that Web services would receive enough attention that we should consider devoting an entire magazine to the topic. We started with two teaser issues, one of which came out this time last year, and the response was dramatic enough that it justified our existence. In fact, WSJ is one of the fastest-growing titles in the history of SYS-CON Me... (more)

A Rose By Any Other Name

What's in a name? A rose by any other name will still smell as sweet. Well, perhaps in the world of horticulture, but in the information technology arena, I'm not sure that aphorism applies. I'm sure you all realize that I'm referring to the recent purchase of Rational Software by IBM for approximately $2.2 billion dollars. This acquisition leaves me wondering what Rose will smell like a year from now. Rational as a company helped define an interesting movement and market - that of development by model. Its founders defined various modeling methodologies into UML and codified it... (more)

Get the Message

Back in the old days, when you needed to communicate with someone distant, you usually had to send a letter. There was no instant response, and there was no way to tell when your message was received. Now we have always-on e-mail, BlackBerrys, and assorted other devices to make what was once a leisurely (or agonizingly slow) process instantaneous, and synchronous. This issue is about the battle of two idioms - instant, synchronous communication, as championed by the Remote Procedure Call; and asynchronous communication (which may still be instantaneous, but doesn't have to be), ... (more)