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An Engineer in Wonderland - Bridges I have known (Electro-ramblings) 

I like bridges. For example, between junctions 11 (A320) and 12 (M3) on the M25 is a brutal-looking cable stay bridge that carries the Chertsey to Virginia ... Water railway. It is a magnificent thing, all concrete and steel. It looks like the one that got out of the civil engineers design office before the architectural consultant could stop it. I can imagine the instruction: "Sod what it looks like, just make it STRONG". (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)   [More...] [Less...]

Service-Oriented Architecture - Oracel.com 

SOA WORLD MAGAZINE 

I have no children myself, but I've watched my nieces and nephew grow from newborns to walking, talking, independent individuals over the years. To me, ... one of the most fascinating parts of watching a child grow is seeing them go from their first tentative, hesitant steps to toddling around, grabbing Newly-disclosed fiscal details suggest that BEA's profitability picture over the last several years is better than most once believed. President and CEO Alfred Chuang reiterated that the company is worth $21 per share, just as he has alredy stated to Larry Ellison an Oracle - whose recent takeover bid was worth only $17 per share. The ball is now back in Oracle's court. Brian Stevens, the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering of Red Hat, delivered his Virtualization Keynote this morning entitled 'The Future of the Virtual Enterprise' at SYS-CON's Virtualization Conference & Expo 2007 West in San Francisco. 'Virtualization is the The CEO and other unidentified, unnumbere   [More...] [Less...]

InfoQ: Top Ten Software Architecture Mistakes 

Top Ten Software Architecture Mistakes Posted by Niclas Nilsson on Oct 12, 2007 08:39 PM Community Architecture Topics Enterprise Architecture Eoin Woods ... , one of the IASA Fellows has published an article about what he considers to be the - mistakes that are too often learned the hard way. Brief excerpts of the ten points are below: Scoping Woes. "This is the sort of situation where a simple travel booking system ends up with full expense claim management facilities being built into it, with inevitable repercussions for project costs, timescales and quality...It is really true that no security is needed beyond simple login? Once logged into the system can users really perform any system operation?" Not Casting Your Net Widely . "A related mistake that many of us have made is to focus on just a couple of our system stakeholders – classically the acquirer (who is paying for the system) and the end users get all of the attention." Just Focusing on Functions. "…unless the system exhibits a   [More...] [Less...]

Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture 

If the principles summarized in Table 1 are complied with, we get some interesting benefits: There is real synchronization between the business and IT ... implementation perspective . For many years, business people haven't really understood the IT architecture. With well designed services we can radically improve communications with the business, and indeed move beyond alignment and seriously consider convergence of business and IT processes. A well formed service provides us with a unit of management that relates to business usage. Enforced separation of the service provision provides us with basis for understanding the life cycle costs of a service and how it is used in the business. When the service is abstracted from the implementation it is possible to consider various alternative options for delivery and collaboration models. No one expects that, at any stage in the foreseeable future, core enterprise applications will be acquired purely by assembling services from multiple sources.   [More...] [Less...]

A future for mainframes in SOA 

While it is far too early to get an answer it is now possible to ask, as a serious rather than trivial question, whether there is scope to see new sales ... of zSeries mainframes grow into the SOA and web services-based market sectors as a result of new developments in integration tools, such as the recent appearance of DataDirect Technologies' major upgrade of its Shadow integration platform, for the traditionally back-office machines. Will it be enough to prove to be a positive lever on green field zSeries sales? It might still be a brave person who answered ‘yes’ right now, the opportunity now exists where the mainframe can start to play a full part in a web-services/SOA environment, running applications that can proactively participate in that environment rather than just be a passive contributor to it. While it may not be natural to think of a mainframe as a core system in such an environment, Version 7 of Shadow does offer the potential to move IBM's zSeries systems well beyond the t   [More...] [Less...]

What is SOA, really? 

The good news is, you probably already know. The bad news is, you probably know too much. This article describes Service Oriented Architecture in a simple ... and easy to understand way that is devoid of buzzwords and vendor spin. It’s the introduction to SOA that you haven’t been able to find anywhere else. There are things in a business that don’t change very often. Gas stations in the U.S., for example, still sell gasoline by the gallon. Restaurants still sell meals from a menu. Dentists still sell cleanings every 6 months. Every business has these aspects that don’t change very frequently. They often represent a huge part of the business. We’ll call these things the _core business functions. There are other things in a business that change very frequently. Prices, tax rates, catalogs, new products, new marketing campaigns, advertising, new business areas, new customer areas, etc. Indeed, businesses must be able to change, and change quickly, in order to survive. And yet, it is vital th   [More...] [Less...]

Research Centre for Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies (BEST) 

Essentially, built environment research at LJMU involves analysing and maximising the efficiency and safety of the â man-madeâ world. The School of the ... Built Environment deals with issues that are relevant to a range of disciplines, including architecture, town and country planning, engineering, design and environmental science. BEST, the Research Centre in Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies, was established at LJMU in 2006, in response to recent government, national and international agendas. The research landscape at BEST ranges from applied research, closely linked to medium-term industry requirements through to highly theoretical â blue-skiesâ research, aimed at addressing longer-term needs of the industry knowledge base. Its research focuses on three key themes; Sustainable Technologies, Planning and Development, Construction and Facilities Management Built Environment is industry focused and externally facing. All BEST research requires close links with industrial and   [More...] [Less...]

dsgn-bk.fmb 

Corporate Headquarters Cisco Systems, Inc. 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, CA 95134-1706 USA http://www.cisco.com Tel: 408 526-4000 800 553-NETS (6387) ... Fax: 408 526-4100 Data Center Infrastructure Design March, 2004 2 Version 1.0 THE SPECIFICATIONS AND INFORMATION REGARDING THE PRODUCTS IN THIS MANUAL ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. ALL STATEMENTS, INFORMATION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS IN THIS MANUAL ARE BELIEVED TO BE ACCURATE BUT ARE PRESENTED WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. USERS MUST TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR APPLICATION OF ANY PRODUCTS. THE SOFTWARE LICENSE AND LIMITED WARRANTY FOR THE ACCOMPANYING PRODUCT ARE SET FORTH IN THE INFORMATION PACKET THAT SHIPPED WITH THE PRODUCT AND ARE INCORPORATED HEREIN BY THIS REFERENCE. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO LOCATE THE SOFTWARE LICENSE OR LIMITED WARRANTY, CONTACT YOUR CISCO REPRESENTATIVE FOR A COPY. The Cisco implementation of TCP header compression is an adaptation of a program developed by the University   [More...] [Less...]

Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: SOA Versus Web 2.0? 

At the end of last year, I posted on the . Over the past couple of months, this theme has received a lot more attention, prompted in large part by the ... writings of Dion Hinchcliffe and by the discussions at two industry gatherings – SPARK/ MIX 06 and Software 2006 . (For those who have not been following my blog, I attempted my own definition of Web 2.0 here .) Some of Dion's key postings on this topic are , and "Web 2.0 for the enterprise?" . For discussion of the SPARK/MIX 06 event, see Dion Hinchcliffe here and here , David Hill , Dan Farber , and Phil Wainewright here and here . Also, one of the highlights of the MIX 06 event was an exchange between Bill Gates and Tim O'Reilly and the transcript is available here . For commentary on Software 2006 and the Software 2006 Industry Report prepared by McKinsey & Co. and the Sand Hill Group, see Dion Hinchcliffe , Dan Farber and Ross Mayfield here , here and here . The discussions in these forums raise one key issue: what is the relationsh   [More...] [Less...]