Sean Rhody

You know, I love an election year. The drama, the emotion, the positioning, it all makes me think about running for office myself - or at least going through the motions to generate a large war chest that I can dip into (I AM from New Jersey, it's a time-honored tradition). Oh, w... (more)

This month I thought I'd put on my sales hat for a moment and talk about what it takes to actually sell someone on the concept of using service-oriented architecture as the underlying paradigm for an organization's information technology implementation and direction. In part this... (more)

One of the most interesting aspects of being a consultant is that I get exposed to any number of different facets of system design in the course of an assignment. While I tend to focus more on application and integration work, I find it fascinating to deal with the concepts of se... (more)

In some ways, an industry is like a country. It has its citizens, the corporations, its own particular nuances that serve to make one industry just that much different from another (think insurance and financial services) as to be distinct, and it has a language. The language of... (more)

There's a guy I know who's incredibly gifted when it comes to building things. I've watched him repair a barn, build a new shed, put up a roof - you name it; if it can be done with wood and tools, this is the guy to do it. And I've never seen him use a plan - he just knows what t... (more)

If I were a lot more paranoid than I am (well, perhaps at least a little more than I am), I might suspect that the various free e-mail programs were a social engineering attempt by the big software coalition (yes, I know, it doesn't exist) to ultimately change the way we use our ... (more)

Nothing is more enlightening for a technologist than to observe development in progress. We're faced constantly with a bewildering array of choices and tools. We see specifications on paper that then become something completely different when we actually get to see them implement... (more)

As editor, I review a great many proposals for articles. A good portion of them deal with SOA, which is to be expected. When I review them, I'm reminded that there are two very different views of SOA, which in my opinion are both equally true. I call this the SOA Dichotomy, becau... (more)

It's sometimes funny to write about service-oriented architecture. One of the things I say often and believe is that you can't buy a service-oriented architecture. SOA is not just technology, it's philosophy, organizational change, and business transformation. There's no place to... (more)

I'm sitting in the airport, waiting for my end-of-week flight, and listening to the latest security controversy. Apparently the government has compiled a database of phone records as part of their fight against terrorism - the theory being that by analyzing the call patterns and ... (more)

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 w... (more)

Recently I happened upon a blog site that had a discussion of one of my previous articles, one in which I proposed a need for a new "browser." The discussion was very interesting, but it was obvious to me I had not been clear about what I was asking for. Some of the folks on the ... (more)

Just about every publication, marketing brochure, and IT commercial currently on parade for your enjoyment contains some mention of service-oriented architecture. If products were still sold in boxes, instead of downloaded, you would see a bright sticker on the box saying "New an... (more)

People who know me would generally agree I'm a straightforward guy - I pretty much just like to move in the direction I've said I was going, rather than try to move from side to side and finesse something. So when it comes to technology, I tend to like to go with technology becau... (more)

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 situati... (more)

It's December, and you know what that means: holiday wishes and New Year's predictions are due. That's right, once again we'll gaze into the WSJ mystic crystal ball (okay, so it's a Christmas ornament - we're on a budget here) and come up with our prognostications and pleadings. ... (more)

SOA - service-oriented architecture - seems to be on everyone's radar. It's rare to walk into an IT meeting where someone hasn't bombarded the audience with the current buzzwords, and where someone isn't extolling the virtues of an SOA. Somehow, even though it's not really about ... (more)

To paraphrase, "I come not to praise the Browser, but to bury it." Because the cold hard fact of application development is that the browser needs to die. Immediately. It's already caused more than enough damage. This may seem to be a harsh statement. After all, the browser was r... (more)

Like many people in the industry, I'm torn over open source software. I'm not opposed to developers creating software and deciding they do it for the love of programming, and have no need for payment - if they want to give their work away, I see no reason why they shouldn't be ab... (more)

Sean Rhody (pictured), editor-in-chief of SOA Web Services Journal, writes: I have a friend who's very into automobiles. He gets a new car every year or two - not expensive ones, but ones that can be used in stock racing (I know I'm getting the term wrong somehow) and time trials... (more)