Tag Archives: SOA
Upcoming Webcast: The ‘Right Way’ to Do Data Integration for Applications
Enterprise data integration is often brushed over in projects involving approaches such as enterprise application integration (EAI) or service-oriented architecture (SOA).
People who attempt to manage data within these types of initiatives often find themselves in hot water: Data issues are very complex — and typically greatly underestimated — and EAI and SOA-based approaches just aren’t up to the task. Successful data integration requires finding the right tool for the job.
This October 1st (at high noon Eastern Time), I have the pleasure of moderating an Informatica-sponsored Webinar, hosted by ebizQ, featuring Dave Linthicum, CEO of the Linthicum Group and one of the world’s leading authorities on SOA, Cloud, and application and data integration.
Dave will take the mystery out of data integration, providing his recommendations for the best implementation approaches and technologies. He will also provide a method for understanding your own data integration requirements, review existing solution patterns, and discuss the technology that is available today to make sure you can get your job done.
Topics to be discussed include emerging data integration patterns; limitations of existing data integration approaches; approaching SOA with “A”rchitecture; Informatica’s Data Services; and a plan of action.
Dave has been contributing his insights here at the Informatica Perspectives community, with posts on bringing enterprise data integration into SOA domains.
Dave’s latest book, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide, connects the dots between SOA and cloud, and is scheduled for released in October.
Tune into the Webinar on October 1st, at noon Eastern Time, to learn more about data integration.
Good SOA Begins With Healthy Data
I count many SOA projects amongst my journeys. Within those projects are common patterns of SOA success, and common patterns of SOA failure.
The common patterns of failure are around projects that ignore the data, and typically work from the services or application behavior, back to the data. This means defining and designing services without good metadata context, which leads to constant redevelopment of those services as the project progresses and the data is better understood. (more…)
A Lesson In Simplicity
In the book RESTful Web Services(1), the forward by David Hansson admonishes “what the merchants of complexity are trying to ram down everyone’s throats”. It is not clear from his brief forward who exactly Hansson (creator of Ruby on Rails) considers to be the “merchants” that are creating complexity. While there are indeed people and organizations that benefit from excessive software complexity, I’m not as cynical as Hansson and wouldn’t give suppliers, standards bodies, or industry analysts as much credit for a premeditated complexity strategy that the term “merchant” suggests. (more…)
Enough Already About “What Is SOA?” Let’s Discuss Some Real-World Myths About SOA…
I am back after a somewhat self-imposed hiatus during which I have been doing some soul-searching, or rather talking to a number of practitioners, experts, thought-leaders and analysts in the integration space. My singular quest was to uncover some real-world myths about SOA.
I spoke to a variety of integration experts – enterprise and application architects, application developers, data architects and data integration developers. During these interesting conversations, we discussed real-world SOA…or let me qualify that term further as real-world “service-orientation.”
Of course we discussed paradigms such as “loose-coupling,” “modularity,” “services,” etc., but more importantly in many cases, we spoke at length about how they were falling short of realizing the promised benefits of SOA. On probing each usage scenario further, I chanced upon a couple of interesting myths about SOA, which I would like to share with you. (more…)
Service Oriented Architecture or ‘Service Oriented Integration’?
John Schmidt recently wrapped up an insightful two-part series on the next “big thing” that will help bring data integration along. He notes that service-oriented architecture, which held a lot of promise, has certainly not turned out to be the silver bullet of integration that people had been hoping for. SOA may have disappointed to some extent on the integration front, and now, within the SOA community itself, there has been a raging debate as to whether the ultimate purpose of SOA even is integration. (more…)
A Solid Case for Integration Competency Centers
For some time, many in the industry have intuitively understood the advantages provided by Integration Competency Centers, as a resource for enterprises seeking to elevate integration efforts to an enterprise level. Now, a new study provides concrete evidence about the return on investment to be gained from an ICC, in combination with standardizing on a common integration platform.
Forrester Research’s study, commissioned by Informatica, provides estimates that with best practices involving standardized data integration – centrally managed and governed by an ICC — a typical enterprise can realize more than $5.5 million in IT and business benefits over a five-year period. (more…)
What is the NEXT BIG THING?
The most recent “big thing” in the integration arena was SOA. That is, it was the promised silver bullet solution that would enable efficient, fast, and seamless integration. As good as SOA is, it didn’t quite live up to all the hype and as a result leaves many of the fundamental integration challenges unresolved.
To be clear, the kinds of integration challenges I am referring to in this blog article are at the enterprise level – the “system of systems”. Integration at this level must deal with systems and data that were independently developed, are based on incompatible technologies and data models, remain independently managed, evolve at their own pace, and yet need to work together seamlessly. (more…)
Measure, and Measure Some More: Building a Business Case for SOA
SOA doesn’t just automatically proliferate across organizations – it often requires a great deal of selling and evangelizing. That’s because SOA is a cross-enterprise effort, requiring active support from various constituencies. Whether it’s projects involving data integration or enhanced security, SOA proponents need to document benefits that will be seen across the business.
There’s been quite a bit of trepidation lately as to whether SOA projects can deliver their promised results. And, ironically, even if SOA is a raging success, many organizations may not even be aware of this success, because they’re not measuring it. (more…)
In Turbulent Times, It Pays to See Information as It Happens
Real-time and near real-time capabilities have been the watchwords of the industry for about a decade now, but only recently have we seen a convergence of the technology and methodologies – such as data warehousing and data integration platforms – that make it an affordable reality for most companies.
The drive to real-time was highlighted in a recent InformationWeek report, which says that manufacturers and retailers lead the way in using up-to-the-minute point-of-sale data to avoid stock-outs and overproduction.
The InformationWeek article points to the challenges manufacturers and retailers face in demand forecasting, in which manufacturers analyze weekly and even daily point-of-sale data from retailers so that they can better see what’s selling and where. Retailers have had a tough time predicting demand in today’s turbulent economy. (more…)
Why the Downturn is Good for SOA, Information-as-a-Service or Data Services!
With so much talk out there about how SOA is being affected by the downturn, a recent article by David Linthicum seems to point in the direction of pragmatic optimism.
In a column entitled Why the Downturn is Good for SOA from a recent issue of SOAWorld Magazine, Dave says that “as budgets contract and SOA teams downsize, you’d think that SOA projects would be all doom and gloom and lacking in productivity. However, the opposite seems to be occurring, at least inside my client base.” This is encouraging coming from an SOA expert, so let’s see what else he had to say.