Blog Entries for billm

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 .

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 [...]

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 [...]

Technorati Link

billm

This blog is now linked to Technorati Profile If you are a Technorati user, please make sure to bookmark out posts.

Who is using XAware?

billm

We posted this question on XAware.org and received the responses shown below. 24.5% of those who have responded have said, "My role is not on this list". I am a bit surprised that we couldn't come up with a more inclusive list of choices, and somewhat curious about what we missed. Please help me out here. If your roll is not on the list, or if you think youknow what we missed, please add a comment to this post to tell us. THANKS!

< [...]

What We've Learned So Far?

billm

It has been almost six months since the GA release of XAware 5.0, our first Open Source (GPLv2) version. We just released the first upgrade, XAware 5.1 . I thought this would be a good time to review some of what we have learned so far.

We had guessed that there are between one million and five million potential users for XAware. We certainly have confirmed that there are A LOT of people interested in trying it. There have been more than 150,0 [...]

XAware version 5.1 is Now GA

billm

The General Avaiability Release of XAware Version 5.1 is now available for download at http://www.xaware.org/xaware-downloads/ v5.1 release comes after 6 months and many, many long hours of development, test, and documentation work. Thanks the the XAware core team and to our community contributors for the tremendous effort and the terrific results!

There were more than 150,000 downloads of XAware 5.0, which was a tremendous success well beyond our expectations. [...]

SOA is Not Just For Big Enterprise

billm

SOA is usually thought of as Enterprise Applicaion Infrastructure, with big "E", but smaller projects and organizations also reap big benefits from SOA.

XAware recently worked with Hire a Hero , a small U.S. non-profit organization that helps people leaving military service to find employment in the private sector. Hire a Hero used an SOA approach, using XAware Composite Data Services tools, to weave SaaS applications into a seamless business process connecting pr [...]

Off topic again - another Colorado photo

billm

These guys were playing in the hammock behind our house yesterday. Pair of bear cubs

Are ESBs Over-used?

billm

Joe McKendrick and David Linthicum have been carrying on a dialog on their respective blogs about ESBs and whether thy are, "perhaps overused, overhyped, and are in many cases not a good fit for an SOA".

Joe's posting, "Enterprise Service Busted?" does a great job of summarizing some of the thoughts on the issue and includes this poll:

Are ESBs an effective platform for SOA?

It doesn [...]

Off Topic - Colorado can be Interesting (photos)

billm

Off topic, but I thought I would share a couple of photos.

Living in Colorado can be interesting. We had two of our very intersting neighbors drop into the yard last evening.

Our first visitor came for the berries growing on the shrubs. The second seemed to be interested in our dogs, which we hurried inside (see photos).

I hear this alot, "I can't believe this is open source."

billm

It happened again today. Someone said to me, "I cannot believe this software is open source. This XAware software is just a powerful as software for which IBM, Oracle, Tibco and the like charge $50,000 plus per processor. XAware gives it away under the open source GPLv2 license. Hard to believe."

Believe it. You can use the most powerful composite data services middleware for free under the GPLv2 license. For a small fract [...]

EDIFACT Community Project - Help!

billm

Would you like to help add EDIFACT functionality to XAware?

XAware community member danga is launching a project to add UN/EDIFACT capability to the XAware Open Source Data Services middleware platform. To support this community project, we have created a CVS code repository, appropriately, "
re.cvs.sourceforge.net/xaware/edifact/">edifact " within the XAware Sourceforge project .

A discussion leading up to the project can be found [...]

Feature Article in SOA Magazine

billm

XAware's Chief Architect Kirstan Vandersluis authored this featured article in The SOA Magazine , The Benefits of a Data Abstraction Layer for SOA.

Abstract: Enterprises have complex information structures as a result of evolving applications and databases deployed through the years. In addition to modern databases, environments commonly include mainframes, outdated storage technologies and custom data sources.

Little to Lose - Much to Gain

billm

Most CIOs and their enterprise IT organizations, having been burned in the past by very expensive infrastructure software purchases that didn't work out well, have created organizations and processes aimed at preventing such costly "mistakes" from happening again. These organizations and processes are costly in their own right. They invest a lot of time, effort, and money before letting any new software approach, vendor, or product through the door, so that they can be s [...]