Blog Entries

Cloud-based Integration

kvandersluis

There has been a lot of press over the last year about cloud computing. Web-based applications like Salesforce.com have demonstrated the utility and cost-effectiveness of cloud-based resources. Integration vendors have also begun providing products designed for the cloud. Like the few other cloud-based integration products, the XAware engine can be installed and run in a cloudcomputing environment. This architecture lets you avoid local infrastructure investments, and is mos [...]

XAware to be Acquired by Sparxent

kvandersluis

Today, XAware, Inc. agreed to be acquired by Sparxent , a world-wide provider of technology and business solutions to mid-market companies. What does this mean to the XAware community and the xaware.org project? At this point, I can tell you that no major course changes are on the horizon. The friendly XAware people you see every day on the forums, wikis, and blogs will continue to support xaware.org on a daily basis, and as their one and only job responsibility. So, why [...]

Make software pay

kvandersluis

A recent front-page article by Jeff Feinman in SD Times, "Bottom Line: Software had better pay", warns that economic conditions mandate any funded project better begin paying back immediately. Supply chain management and automation improvements are cited as types of projects that continue to be funded during this economic down turn. Automation in particular is an area ripe with opportunities aligned with service-oriented architecture (SOA). Even more attractive is [...]

Salesforce BizComp JOINS

tferguson

Over the last week I have been working on enhancing the Salesforce BizComp to handle the return from a query that involves JOINS. Unlike an RDBMS, Salesforce does not allow JOINS on between any two objects, they must have a pre-established relationship. Relationships in Salesforce are heirarchical, so there is always a parent which can have many children, but the children only have oneparent record. If you want to learn more about this, http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Web_ [...]

Essense of SOA

kvandersluis

Anne Thomas Manes’ recent article proclaiming the death of SOA has started a firestorm across many SOA and IT-related blogs and forums. I wrote about it here . In the post, Anne refers to the severe disillusionment some feel towards the over-hyped term, “SOA”, and proposes we drop the term altogether and simply refer to the core concept as “services”.

The term “SOA” is at the same time ubiquitous and ambiguous. So much energy [...]

Is SOA Dead?

kvandersluis

Burton Group analyst and SOA guru Anne Thomas Manes recently blogged that “SOA is Dead ”, referring to the disillusionment and even disgust some feel towards the over-hyped term. But she was referring just to the term SOA, not the concept itself. On the contrary, service orientation has seemed to find firm roots in diverse areas such as mashups, RIA, BPM, cloud computing, and others.

I completely agree that service orientation is here to stay. But I do [...]

The Long Tail of IT

kvandersluis

In these days of recession and shrinking IT budgets, development groups are forced to do more with less. This appears to be an opportunity for growth for Open Source projects, as companies find it difficult to purchase products, or even expand use of products they currently own. Open source products are available to assist in implementations of a wide range of IT problems. And with a very low cost of entry, development groups can kick the tires, and eve [...]

SOAWorld 2008

kvandersluis

This fall’s version of SOAWorld ran November 19-21. I attended all three days, and presented a session on creating and managing data services for both SOA and RIA environments. The show was a combined conference that also included the named conferences Cloud Computing World, Virtualization World, and Data Services World. David Linthicum gave the keynote address on Wednesday, with a theme of “its time to make something work”. The [...]

Complex Event Processing

kvandersluis

At SOAWorld in San Jose last week, I attended a session by Michael Rowley of Active Endpoints, covering Complex Event Processing (CEP), another TLA (three letter acronym) that is getting some press these days. This was my first real exposure to CEP, so I’d like to briefly share my thoughts on it for others not familiar with it. CEP is a smart way to associate events in the enterprise. A typical scenario is credit card processing fraud detection. [...]

Off Topic - A Little Stock Market History Lesson

billm

I have been spending way too much time lately studying the stock market, and I am sure that I am not alone. After a debate with a friend about the possible future market directions, I put this chart together to show what is possible - if maybe unlikely. I thought others might find it interesting, so am sharing it here. What is shows is that there were six market rallies of more than 15% that occurred as the market fell between 1929 to its bottom in 1932. The message, a [...]

SOA and RIA

kvandersluis

Last week I presented a session at AJAXWorld 2008 in San Jose, titled “Hands On Data Services for RIA, WOA, and SOA”. While the “hands on” part was a demonstration of the XAware technology, where I showed building a data mashup from text data logically linked to a database, the first half of the presentation was a discussion about the key role of data services in Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Web Oriented Architecture (WOA), and Service [...]

RIA at AJAXWorld 2008

kvandersluis

I attended AJAXWorld 2008 in San Jose last week, where I sat in many sessions and also presented a session myself. It was a good and interesting show, focused mainly on Rich Internet Application (RIA) development technologies. While my day job usually has me dealing with back-end server, data integration, and data services issues, itwas a refreshing change of pace to look at what is happening on the user-facing side. I’ve always had a thirst for b [...]

XAware featured in latest ebizQ podcast

billm

An update on XAware's successful conversion to open source is the topic of the latest Dennis Byron podcast on ebizQ (an interview with yours truely). Listen to it here .

FROSST

jpeters

Last weekend, I attended the 1st FROSST (Front Range Open Space Software Testing Conference) in Thornton, Colorado. Thanks to Ben and Heidi for putting on such a great open space conference. I attended the Metrics, Open Source, Performance, Automation, and Agile sessions. Below are a few comments about each:

Metrics

This was an interesting topic with consensus for only one outcome of the metrics. Provide Management with enough valuable information about the software to make a reasonable [...]

Data Services Article from SOA World

billm

Good article in SOA World from David Besemer of Composite Software, but of course you don't need proprietary and expensive Composite Software to do this when there is an excellent open source alternative.

Data Services: Bridging the SOA and Metadata Management Gap — In today's difficult economic times, maximizing return on assets is a strategic imperative. Information assets are no exception. Service-oriented architecture (SOA), with its focus on agility and reuse, plays [...]

Service Contract Design Strategies

kvandersluis

A key design principle for a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the definition of a service contract. The contract clearly specifies the technical interface a client uses to invoke each service operation, as well as the expected behavior of the service. The contract is independent of the underlying implementation, so users of theservice don’t need to care about implementation details and are shielded from its changes over time. Implementers of [...]

XAware Podcasts

billm

As part of our continuing efforts to make information about XAware more accessible, we have added podcasts to our arsenal of information channels. You can find the podcasts at XAware.com, click here .

That's right, you can now hear yours truely wax eloquently on many of the subjects that I claim to know something about, as well as some that I just pretend to know something about. Many of the others here at XAware central, and some of our community members, power [...]

Network World calls XAware one of 10 Open Source Companies to Watch

billm

More than 160,000 applications developers have downloaded XAware and discovered how much it speeds up the development, enables reuse, and eases management of applications that require interaction with external data. Now the industry press is taking notice too. Check it out!

10open source companies to watch Products range from databases to data integration By John Fontana , [...]

How about IntraSaaS?

billm

When your hear “Software as a Service”, the image of SaaS CRM provider Salesforce.com probably comes to mind. You probably imagine a vendor that provides a software application capability, including all of the infrastructure, with a user interface accessible through a web browser and for which you pay a monthly or annual user fee. Right?

But what if the provider of a SaaS application is not an outside company? What if instead your own IT organization provi [...]

SOA Integration or Interaction?

billm

I found this article on SOA World, SOA – Integration or Interaction? We tend to forget that SOA is not just about integrating , Aristo Togliatti, Aug. 26, 2008 05:45 A

Aristo says:

SOA and integration have been working together so well that we tend to forget that SOA is not just about integrating .....

He goes one to talk about how information services are about integrating with information sources, but process services (or infrastructur [...]