Passion * Technology * Ruthless Competence

Monday, March 26, 2007

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Morning Coffee 52

I finally found a use for the free SOA book I got from attending that Thomas Erl workshop. I'm using it to prop up one end of my daughter's mattress while she's sick so she can sleep better.
Jeff Tash states axiomatically that CASE has evolved into Enterprise Architecture. I agree with his points about why software construction isn't like manufacturing, but he seems to be describing BDUF rather than EA. I'm anti-BDUF too, but why blame EA? (via John deVadoss)
Joe McKendrick comments on my SaaS/SOA post and wonders if SOA should stand for "SOA Oriented Architecture". He also writes that most organizations these days don't have an SOA, they have an AOS, "Agglomeration Of Services". So true, so true.
JD Meier talks up the new VSTS guidance available on CodePlex. Looks like some good stuff in there. I like how the p&p guys are moving from documents to wikis to deliver their guidance.
I've held off on getting the HD-DVD drive for my Xbox, but I think I'm going to cave soon, where soon == about two months. That's when The Matrix Trilogy is released on HD-DVD. Right around my birthday too, how convienent.

Posted By Harry Pierson at 9:33 AM Pacific Standard Time

Architecture | SOA | Morning Coffee | Visual Studio

Tuesday, April 03, 2007 9:15:51 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I looked at the article about CASE morphing into EA, and I have to say I think it is well wide of the mark. He is right that CASE was top-down, and that software creation analogies to manufacturing are of limited value. However, EA is fundamentally different to CASE. CASE was about using higher-order modeling to generate solutions. EA does not cover that area. I would argue that CASE has morphed into Software Factories/DSLs. The DSL wave is an attempt to re-introduce higher-order models as a source for code generation in a more limited way, with less of the top-down "stone tablets" approach.
The explanation that CASE failed because of "too many promises made by too many vendors" is deficient. That reason is a contributory factor to the failure of just about any recent I.T. technology failures; all vendors tend to over-sell new offerings (expansive hype gets you noticed in a crowded marketplace; modesty doesn't). There are a collection of inter-related reasons why CASE failed, ranging from under-investment, through the impact of disruptive technologies in the 1990's (client-server and the emergence of UML)...the list goes on. Over-selling by vendors is a very small part of the root causes. (I know...I was a CASE consultant for 8 years).

Graham Shevlin

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