Archive for category SOA

What is Enterprise Architecture?

A question that I am often asked by colleagues and friends alike is “What is an Enterprise Architect, anyway?” This article is the first in a series of articles that will explain the term “Enterprise Architecture,” why it is important, and how each of the disciplines that constitute Enterprise Architecture relate to each other. Most importantly, this article is going to talk about how Enterprise Architecture needs to govern the processes around software development.

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Exchange Web Services – Starting out

A couple of months back, a gentleman who has now become a friend and business partner, came to me and asked me if there was any way to get at all the calendar items in his sales organization’s calendars with the intention of integrating it with his Progress OpenEdge CRM system. Jim is using Exchange 2007 for his e-mail and calendaring solutions.

I was aware that Microsoft had released a new API for Exchange in Exchange 2007 called Exchange Web Services (EWS), and so I said that I needed to do a little research on the API, but I was pretty sure that it was possible. Sure enough, MSDN has some documentation of the API and Microsoft is touting it as the replacement for all APIs that communicate with Exchange. Web Services – how hard can it be?

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No, Ms Manes, SOA is NOT dead

This morning my RSS feeds had an update from Ms Manes’ blog again. She points to an article by Dan Woods of Forbes.com and says of his article that she is “pleased to see that Dan read beyond the first paragraph, and he understands the core message of my post (i.e., ‘SOA has been disappointing and that services should be a key focus’)” …
I wonder if Ms Manes realizes that she advocated exactly the same thing that Mr Woods advocated and then went on to slam the idea? In her original post she argued that the focus should shift from SOA to building services, and yet here she is arguing that just building services will result in fragile, expensive systems. Ms Manes is just flat-out contradicting herself.

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SOA… Dead???… Really???…

“SOA is Dead; Long Live Services,” proclaimed Amy Thomas Manes on January 5th, 2009.

When I read Ms Manes’ post, I felt like the person standing on the sidewalk in a movie. The camera is focused on me and someone (SOA) steps out into the street. From the side of the screen, off-camera, a bus comes careening past and the person that stepped into the street is hit and taken completely out of camera and I’m left standing with my jaw on my knees.

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