Stop fighting and start integrating: Sorting out edge and hub responsiblities

Being heavily involved in multiple integration-centric projects there is usually the debate over what parts of the integration belong to the end-point applications and what part needs to be centralized and standardized by an "enterprise" (think big and expensive) team.

Joshua Fox has a very interesting article on www.architectureandgovernance.com that helps to sort out the varying responsibilities of the "Edge vs. the Hub". Scott's balanced approach allows edge applications to adopt standard protocols (WS-I) and standard formats (ACORD, FIX, etc.) and leave all the technical stuff to the hub. This is a nicely balance approach that is very well explained in the article.

Keep your Inbox at Zero

Google Video has a 1 hour video of Merlin Mann discussing the productivity concept of keeping your inbox to zero. I've been trying this out since the new year, and it has definitely helped me get my eMail monster under control.

Half Shaved Dog

I never know what I am going to find around the house when I get home from work. The only explanation I got for this, was "He got tired." Rest assured, you dog grooming purists, his haircut was eventually completed.

What's In a Name

Ever get tired of your name? Or maybe you just get tired out of giving it to every website that won't let you read it's content without turning over all sorts of personal data? Well, here is a cool tool that may help you out. It is the Fake Name Generator.

So just for today, I have decided that I will be a Hungarian living in Iceland. Feel free not to contact me at:

Borhala Forgács
Ránargata 62
670 Kópasker

Email Address: Borhala.Forgacs@dodgit.com

Phone: 470 2655

Also, don't bother trying to steal my fake identity with these even more fake personal attributes:

Mother's maiden name: László
Birthday: March 22, 1949

MasterCard: 5272 4097 7645 4400
Expires: 5/2009

Space - The Final Frontier

I know. I'm getting a little nuts about all the C. Alexander stuff. But it is so interesting. Anyway, I'm reading in Book 3 now (A Vision of a Living World). One of the concepts in that book is that the most intersting thing about buildings and other structures is the space they leave behind. It is the space that we humans actually inhabit and move through, and thus we belong in the space. The better the space the buildings leave behind, then the better we feel about the buildings.

This got me wondering. What exactly is the space in "cyberspace". Perhaps the links in a web application are the equivalent of the pedestrian space in and around buildings. It is nicer when you can walk easily from place to place in a neighborhood. An application with easy, convenient links is like that.

Another concept in Book 3 is the importance of "The Void", and "Simplicity and Inner Calm" in creating spaces for us humans to belong to. This made me think of www.google.com. If ever there was simplicity and inner calm, it is the Google site. The whole home page is the single text box that allows you to enter your search, a Google logo for ornamentation, and a few convenient links for "pedestrian" navigation to other parts of Google. The fact that the home page is stripped down to this simplicity also enables the "Echos" property to occur. That same simple text box is echoed on the Google Toolbar, and even at the top of this blog.

The space left on the home page is a visual reminder of the other spaces that the search box can fit into and therefore it enhances our feeling of belonging with that space because we can imagine it in other spaces we inhabit. The lack of other items on the page sparks creativity. It is like the difference of giving a child a crayon and a coloring book page or a crayon and a blank page. I think most children would prefer the blank page. I know I prefer the art work that comes from the blank page much more than the art work from the coloring book.

And it is all because of space.

Application Scaling the eBay Way

Just read a great post on the Dr. Dobbs site on the technique of staying as "transactionless" as possible in order to acheive scale. The author cites a presentation by eBay architect Dan Pritchett on the architecture of the eBay site. That presentation is a great read. In my experience, many enterprise applications suffer from data sprawl because of multiple siloed applications. What is interesting is that eBay has purposeful data sprawl in order to achieve concurrent scalability. However, it is accompanied by a rigorous control over application architecture into independent functional domains (buying, selling, billing, etc.). Typically I see applications built by broader "channels" - back office, customer self-service, etc. but these have broad functionality and they suffer from all-or-nothing fragility, in that if one function is down the whole site is down. Key concept: Break your enterprise architecture into functional domains to achieve maximum scalability and availability. This probably means a lot of rework for existing applications, but it may be the only choice to introduce scale.

15 Properties of Living Structure

Here are Christopher Alexander's 15 Properties of living structure. In future posts I may explore how they may possibly apply to software. All I could find on google was someone else's attempt at this here.

1. LEVELS OF SCALE
2. STRONG CENTERS
3. BOUNDARIES
4. ALTERNATING REPETITION
5. POSITIVE SPACE
6. GOOD SHAPE
7. LOCAL SYMMETRIES
8. DEEP INTERLOCK AND AMBIGUITY
9. CONTRAST
10. GRADIENTS
II. ROUGHNESS,
12. ECHOES
13. THE VOID
14. SIMPLICITY AND INNER CALM,
15. NON-SEPARATENESS.

The Nature of Order

I just finished reading the first book in the The Nature Of Order series by Christopher Alexander, who is famous in the software world as being the building architect who first wrote about design patterns.

In this new series Alexander discusses how he has found 15 properties which he thinks can objectively define which structures have "more life" than other structues. These so-called living structures are those which are more wholesome and are a closer reflection of ourselves and the rest of nature, and are therfore more satisfying over the long run. In fact, he goes so far as to say that buildings with less "life" are actually stressful to the humans that must interact with it.

I wonder how this can be applied to the software architecture world. What gives software life? How can we not stress out the users of our software? Hmmm...

I'm Not Going

It's official. I'm not relocating to the Netherlands. So many people keep asking me "So are you going?" and "When will you know?" Well the limbo is over. Thanks to all of you for your support. Now those of you here in U.S. are stuck with me.

Are you talking to your PC?

So my friend Nick is on a quest to 'trick out' his desktop. The lastest go around of this, was he turned on the speech recognition software and chose the "Michelle" voice. Then it became very easy to pick on him.

First of all, Nick and Michelle had an fairly illicit relationship. So as not to disturb his nearby office mates, Nick has to speak to Michelle in hushed tones. This made me laugh at what she must be saying back to him:

"Why are you always whispering to me? Don't you want anyone to know about me? You're ashamed of me aren't you?"

Then, whenever I would go over to his desk, he had to mute the microphone so she wouldn't hear him:

"Why do you keep muting me when Dan comes over? What are you saying to him that you can't say in front of me?"

Then, as it turned out, Michelle was finally driven to betray Nick. Scott walked up and said "Delete! Delete! Delete!"....and Michelle did.