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Microsoft’s UK Architecture Resources
To Microsoft’s credit their Architecture resources are much improving. The excellent free Architecture Journal and the MSDN Architecture Centre have been going for sometime but I noticed recently that there is a new UK centric Architecture Portal written by the UK DPE Architect Team with the new free monthly Arc Magazine. The first editions of the Arc Magazine tackle the highly logical new buzz ‘Software + Services’ with links to the Microsoft Strategy Software + Services Home Page. I will talk about ......

Posted On Saturday, May 9, 2009 10:17 AM

Domain Specific Languages Toolkit Version 1
I’ve been catching up on my blog reading so forgive me if this is old news but I think it is very cool indeed, and that is the DSL Tool kit version 1 is available and is part of the new Visual Studio 2005 SDK Version 3 which can be downloaded from here. If your are not quite up to speed with what DSL, or Domain Specific Languages are there is no better place to start than here which is a URL you will want to add to favourites. ......

Posted On Monday, September 18, 2006 7:54 PM

Architects! Reach for the SkyScrapr!
Microsoft has, with very little fan-fare, launched another site specifically aimed at Architects called www.skyscrapr.net. The differences being it is aimed specifically at Solution, Infrastructure, Strategic & Industry Architects which to be fair aren't areas that Microsoft has covered much before. The site has afew articles, blogs and links to podcasts with a novel new feature called the 'Archipedia' is to provide plain english definitions of architectural topics such as for example 'What is ......

Posted On Friday, May 26, 2006 12:53 PM

What is all the fuss about Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the buzzword of the moment . It seems that applying the "cloud" label is a real desire for a lot of people out there in the marketplace. This of course leads to the arguments about whether the "cloud" label is appropriate or just marketing spin. Why on earth is Cloud Computing so appealing? I think there are a lot of factors. I'll outline a few of the main ones below … Trendy To a certain extent delivering a cloud solution suggests that organisations are on the cutting edge of ......

Posted On Tuesday, April 7, 2009 8:36 PM

A Developers Guide to Storage. What you need to know but were afraid to ask.
Does your software or database run like a dog? Running out of space? Or doesn't recover well in a disaster? ... then your storage configuration may be one of the reasons. This is a short little post just to give you a heads-up on the basics. You may know bits of it already, hence why I have broken it up into a Q&A format so you can skip what you already now. The Hard-Disk Well we've all seen a hard-disk but the likelihood is that it was in a desktop and you're the only person that uses it at ......

Posted On Tuesday, December 30, 2008 12:03 PM

Enterprise Architecture: liteEA
Every now and again you come across a real gem of a find and www.liteEA.com is one of them! It's pretty obvious that John Chi-Zong Wu has spent quite a considerable amount of time putting together this amazing EA resource! The book section is the most impressive, it literally is a 'how-to' on EA and I've only scratched the surface and it's already been very useful! Do you know what I find surprising? The site counter has only 2369 visits! Which means this is pretty much an undiscovered resource that ......

Posted On Monday, November 26, 2007 5:01 PM

Infrastructure Appreciation for Developers.
Hardware and Software are very much the modern day Yin and Yang, one serves little purpose without the other. I have noticed that on the whole many developers know little about the environments that the software they are writing is going to work in falsely believing they are truly abstracted from it . Come 'Go Live' there are blank faces when for some 'inexplicably reason' the software doesn't work and the remark, 'it worked fine in test' is often heard. Another common frustration is software that ......

Posted On Tuesday, December 30, 2008 11:55 AM

Which Enterprise Architecture Methodology do you use?
There is a bewildering array of Enterprise Architecture methodologies so it will be of great interest to me to find out which one people are actually using, if at all. So to find out, I have put together a pick poll so please take the two minutes and leave your choice. You get a chance to select up to 3 options because I suspect that people are using a combination of more than once approach, rather than following one prescriptively. This is purely for interest purposes, I'm not going to use this ......

Posted On Sunday, August 10, 2008 10:24 AM

Help your organisation to go Green, use Enterprise Architecture?
Paul Homan recently commented on Green EA which set my mind thinking ... 'being more Green' is a strategic ambition and what is the process and practice for generating strategic change? Enterprise Architecture! When EA's are struggling to find some ROI reason to justify their existence in the economic down-turn amazingly one of the main ROI reasons is one of the biggest issues of our time as the 'Return' doesn't literally mean monetary and also doesn't necessarily mean more? ... it can also mean ......

Posted On Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:33 AM

Lite EA is renamed Coherent EA
John Wu is a good guy. Out of respect for Fenix Theuerkorn and his work on Lightweight Enterprise Architecture, John has decided to rename his EA Methodology from LiteEA To Coherent EA. Coherent EA is a actually a better, more descriptive name for John’s work IMHO and as a regular contributor to the ITToolbox conversations his methodology has the benefit of faster development from genuine experience than most of the others I could mention. I certainly have benefited from Coherent EA in the past and ......

Posted On Monday, July 21, 2008 9:57 PM

The Open Groups SOA Ontology
The Open Group has recently released a draft version of a SOA ontology. The Open Group has always had a mandate to help boundaryless information flow and the ontology (specification of conceptualisation) for SOA is a demonstration of just that. The ontology is written in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium and this for me is what makes it a hurdle to learn as it's not an intuitive meta-language but then is any? Perhaps if it wasn't for the graphical tools we would ......

Posted On Wednesday, July 16, 2008 9:51 PM

The first problem with Enterprise Architecture is the name!
Job titles are often effortless in their descriptiveness. Project Manager, Business Analyst, System Tester and .Net Developer are good examples because the subject is concise and the predicate modifies successfully, all meaning some semblance of what a person does can be derived from it. However with 'Enterprise Architecture' and 'Enterprise Architect' it’s not entirely obvious what the position is and what someone holding that position does, inevitably leading to the need for further description ......

Posted On Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:32 PM

Am I an Armchair Architect?
According to James McGovern, I probably am! Why? Because I don’t code … very often. I don’t sit in an Ivory tower either making up my dictions via, Visio & Powerpoint. I think the key to being a good Architect is taking responsibility for designing a technical solution for business requirement with those who are going to built it, implement it, look after it and use it. Making good technical decisions often means getting your hands dirty and trying afew things out, if that is writing code or ......

Posted On Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:32 PM

Glossary of Terms for Architects
Graham Berrisford has set aside part of his website with a project to create a Glossary of Terms for Enterprise and Solution Architects. I think this is a simple and fantastic idea as discovering what words and acronyms mean is actually a pain in the neck. Yes, Wikipedia is great but sometimes a simple sentence rather than a full page of explanation is all that is required. Also, acronyms like 'MDA' have several meanings depending on context so it is handy to have a resource that is from the Architects ......

Posted On Monday, June 2, 2008 10:51 PM

Enterprise Architecture: The Disconnect Between Theory and Reality
I took up Mike Walkers offer in the previous posts comment section to look at his post entitled Making Sense of Architecture Standards and found it an ideal steer on what standards are out there, where they are positioned, how they fit together and who will use them and when to use them. However, what soon dawned on me was that the disconnect between theory and particular context is huge! Many of the standards are no more than helpful steers that as yet don't offer that distilled level of knowledge ......

Posted On Thursday, May 1, 2008 5:45 PM

Enterprise Architecture: TOGAF Certification
Recently I attended a TOGAF certification course up in merry old London town run by Architecting the Enterprise (AtE). My certification should show up in the list of other 5000 odd architects that have passed in the next few weeks. So what is TOGAF in a nutshell? Well it's a very generic architecture framework that helps build, in a non-prescriptive way, how to develop parts of an Enterprise Architecture capability. Notice the caveats, 'very generic', 'non-prescriptive', 'develop parts'. What am ......

Posted On Friday, April 18, 2008 11:38 AM

Who Will Write Tomorrows Code?
The BBC's Bill Thompson in his recent blog post about the state of IT development in the UK has hit the nail on the head "Universities have seen applications for computer science degrees fall off, schools do not encourage students to do computing at GCSE and A Level and primary school children are trained as users not as programmers." Recent reports from the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) indicate that skilled migration workers, specifically ......

Posted On Thursday, April 3, 2008 8:54 AM

Managing your Mind. Mindmaps, a handy tool for the Enterprise Architect.
OK, so techniques for managing our time are common place such as calendars and to-do lists. But what about managing your thinking? Being an Architect is a practice, not a process, so arguable the most important tool we have is our brain as it is our central repository for knowledge and logic but it's not like a computer. Often useful information comes flowing out it, almost randomly in no particular order that's if your lucky. Sometime the brains requires some exploration and provocation to tease ......

Posted On Monday, March 10, 2008 2:46 PM

Do you like or loath Gartner?
James Govern posses an interesting question I have often wondered “By nature or nurture, architects fall into two camps regarding their general attitude towards abstractions: Believers and Non-Believers.” Well James, I see your point but I don’t believe that I fall into either of those camps. I treat abstractions as a means to an end and try and keep them in context. The thing with percentages is that your organization may fit into the smaller side of the percentage divide and not in with the mainstream, ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:59 PM

Book Review: SOA Approach to Integration: by Ramesh Loganathan, Poornachandra Sarang, Frank Jennings, Matjaz Juric : Published by Packt Publishing
Selling the theory for SOA is pretty easy, the execution is harder because technically it isn't actually a very simple thing to do, let alone the changing of the structure of your IT organisation to house-keep. The book SOA Approach to Integration is aimed fairly and squarely at the Architect and Senior Developer who has the job of designing and implementing SOA technical level. The book is very resolute in keeping a strong focus on the technology and pleasantly realises that successful integration ......

Posted On Monday, December 31, 2007 6:44 PM

Enterprise Architecture: Paul Homan
Recently I have had the pleasure to work with Paul Homan and benefit from his wealth of experience in Enterprise Architecture which is considerable. His CV is impressive having held the role of Enterprise Architect for seven years in the wild, sat on the Open Group Architecture Executive Forum and had a hand in shaping TOGAF since version 2. He *may* even be the reason why we have the infamous TOGAF crop circles. So Paul is without doubt a thought leader in the EA space. Paul has decided that it's ......

Posted On Friday, December 21, 2007 9:35 AM

Enterprise Architecture Release 0.1
Over the last few weeks I've been off the radar knuckling down to complete the first release of our Enterprise Architecture. We decided that the as our group was small what it would take a great deal of time to produce a full blown EA, so we decided to deliver very small parts frequently and often each new increment coming every 4-6 weeks. The initial release contains only the Charter and a Release Schedule, the intended audience was the IT Director and the direct reports, the purpose was to put ......

Posted On Saturday, December 15, 2007 12:04 PM

Codename "Oslo", Microsoft's next generation SOA thinking.
Oslo is the codename for technical thinking aimed specifically at simplifying designing, building, managing and scaling of service-oriented and composite applications that can span from the enterprise to the Internet. It is thought the first version of Oslo will be delivered through the next versions of our application platform products such as Microsoft Visual Studio 10, Microsoft System Center 5, BizTalk Server 6, BizTalk Services 1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4. So, we are talking a 18 months ......

Posted On Monday, December 3, 2007 10:51 PM

Is the Open Source debate important to Enterprise Architecture?
I first started coding at the age of 10 on a Commodore Vic 20. Last week I finally un-installed Visual Studio 2003 on my laptop because I need the space and I never touch it. It was sad admitting that I don't code and my role does not require me to. If I did find myself coding then I probably shouldn't because there is so much else to do and we have more than a few guys and girls that will happily do the job and only a couple doing EA. Yep, I get the argument that a good architect should have more ......

Posted On Thursday, November 29, 2007 8:46 PM

Enterprise Architecture: Microsoft Architecture Journal Reader
Microsoft have release a really cool tool for downloading and reading the Architecture Journal magazine offline. The new reader is a locally installed application that enables you to read every issue of the Journal into a searchable and easy-to-read form. The application synchronizes with our content management services so that you'll automatically have access to the latest Journal issues without needing to download PDF files or checking online. Please note the tool is still in Beta so there is bound ......

Posted On Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:56 PM

IBM Software Architect Kit
The IBM Software Architect Kit is a nice set of goodies that introduces the world of software architecture. Grady Booch takes you through a series of podcasts that explains the past, present and future with a set of documentation that covers the world of software architecture according to IBM at reasonable high level. As I've said before I'm not really a raving fan of Grady Booch but I respect his massive contribution to the discipline. You will require an IBM ID to access the kit ......

Posted On Monday, February 27, 2006 1:41 PM

Enterprise Architecture Roles
It’s pretty clear that ‘Enterprise Architecture’ and ‘Enterprise Architect’ is considerably more than one role. As such the practice of EA isn’t very efficient because it is a ‘jack of multiple disciplines and master of none’. Naturally specialisms will occur to make up for inefficiencies and will then continue to adapt and evolve. During this process I can also see a consensus on what these new roles will be called and a broad definition and responsibilities, this will occur as we try to find people ......

Posted On Wednesday, November 28, 2007 4:41 PM

Next round of Enterprise Architecture Practice v Process Slanging Match!
I've just caught up the latest installment in the " 'To Process' or 'Not To Process' " debate that has become a blogger slanging match between James McGovern, Robert McIlree and James Robertson played out in the comments sections and blog posts. To summarise the debate has moved on from whether EA is just a set of processes or whether it's a practice. My pitch was that it's actually both and applied appropriately. So a debate about direction and ethos. So a pointless opportunity for procrastination? ......

Posted On Tuesday, November 27, 2007 5:27 PM

Enterprise Architecture and Customer 2.0
Microsoft's Nick Malik has written a thought provoking piece on understanding the customer and how EA should rise to the challenge of aligning Business and IT be focusing on the customer needs. Essentially, I agree with the sentiment whoever i disagree on a couple of huge monster key points ... 1) I don't believe that the average customer is that tech-savvy! Yep, they dabble and it's enough to get by, but code up mash-ups ... are you joking? Seriously? I can see how Microsoft's vision of the world ......

Posted On Monday, November 26, 2007 3:54 PM

Where have all the vendor agnostic BI firms gone?
BI has always been a rich vain of the IT industry. Rich because there was so much excellent competition. The really cool thing about many BI products was that they effectively could bolt onto most of the popular databases so it was pretty straight forward to chop and change and to also build your capability into one tool! The larger IT vendors however where not leaders in the BI space. The leader were the specialists, the experts. Now sadly the bigger BI vendors and market leaders are nearly all ......

Posted On Sunday, November 18, 2007 12:21 AM

What goes into version 1 of an Enterprise Architecture?
It is becoming common practice to build up the content of an Enterprise Architecture over time. Because an EA is highly dependent on feedback to grow it takes a lot of continued time and investment to constantly refine the content of an EA so it grows into being a genuinely useful and ingrained into the organisation. The best tactic is to engulf the organisation with EA overtime. It is a long game not a ‘Pot-Noodle’. Therefore a sensible approach would be to version as an effort to change control. ......

Posted On Friday, November 16, 2007 2:24 PM

Enterprise Architecture: To process or not to process
John McGovern and Robert Mcilree have fired off the latest salvo in one of EA's biggest and most maddening debates. In short the debate is about whether Enterprise Architecture is a process or practice? Maddening? Why! Because common sense has the answer and I'm surprised at the heavy weights in EA not realising that. Toyota is often hailed as the example of how processes have got the company to be a world leader in automobile manufacture. RBS and ODP diagrams that document processes and the processes ......

Posted On Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:31 PM

Enterprise Architecture: Foundation of Execution
I first came across the phase “Foundation of Execution” after reading the book Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Harvard Business School Press which was recommended by my colleague Andrew Galletly. Foundation of Execution simply means the automation of routine business tasks. Doing this allows people to concentrate on improving the business rather than just purely running it. Does this sound obvious? Well yes! So often the link between a good company and a bad one is this realisation and agressively ......

Posted On Friday, November 9, 2007 3:42 PM

SOA and REST, the interoperability conundrum
Rich Seeley recently interviewed John Michelsen, chief scientist at iTKO Inc who said ... "the service-oriented architecture (SOA) testing and governance provider, believes developers do not have to chose between Web-oriented architecture (WOA) based on a simple Representational State Transfer (REST) approach and SOA following the WS-* standards. "It's not an either/or question," he says in the following interview from Integration World 2007 this week in Orlando, Florida. However, he does argue that ......

Posted On Thursday, November 8, 2007 5:16 PM

Agile Enterprise Architecture
Last week I was lucky enough to meet Charles Edwards of ProcessWave Limited who introduced me to an Open Source project that he is collaborating on called Agile EA. In a nutshell, Agile EA isn’t another EA methodology but a set of best practices and processes put together from experiences in the field. Agile EA has influences from many EA methodologies but takes its biggest steer from TOGAF 8.1 and is organised and executed in a SCRUM agile development approach. It’s very accessible from the highly ......

Posted On Monday, November 5, 2007 3:04 PM

Enterprise Architecture: Architecture by Conversation
Aloof Schipperke (Aloof Architecture) has hit the nail of the head, where is the conversation? “As I continued to ponder the topic, I came up with a list which reflects part of the problem. • Projects are not conversations • Meetings are not conversations • Presentations are not conversations • Email storms are not conversations Hmm... Too bad we're talking about the lynchpins of modern business.” So, we have newer smarter ways of having a one-sided conversation. I remember many years back I sat ......

Posted On Thursday, October 25, 2007 4:41 PM

Channel 9 ArchTalk on DSL & Software Factories

Learn what DSL & Software Factories is all about with Steve Cook in less than 27 minutes from the Channel 9 ArcTalk podcast here.

 

Posted On Friday, December 2, 2005 8:16 PM

Enterprise Architecture: Thoughts on IT & Business Alignment
Thank you James McGovern for creating a post out of the comments left on your blog. Now I'm going to add a bit more meat to the bones. The age old battle between Formalism (Creating a system of rules that can determine the outcome of any case, without reference to external norms) and Hermeneutics (interpretation and understanding of social events by analysing their meanings to the human participants and their culture) is played out everyday in businesses, board-room and bus-stops all over the world ......

Posted On Monday, October 22, 2007 9:15 PM

SOA is getting killed!
Zapthink's recent article on Who's Killing SOA? hit the nail on the head to the reasons why SOA is not succeeding! However, reading the article I think that Zapthink has missed the two main reasons why SOA is currently not succeeding. 1) Education - I believe that people in Business & IT are not completely clued up on what SOA is in enough detail to implement it. 2) United Vision - People in Business and IT do not have a united vision of what SOA is and do not have a complete enough understanding ......

Posted On Tuesday, October 9, 2007 10:49 PM

My take on what Enterprise Architecture is?
So what is Enterprise Architecture (or EA for short) ? Before you reach for the Wikipedia definition which will just leave your brain hurting, try this on for size as your elevator pitch: "Enterprise Architecture is the practice of applying methods for describing current and future technology and supporting practices to align them with your organisation's core goals and strategic direction." Yep, you guessed it, Enterprise Architecture is about Strategy and that's it in a nutshell. As usual in the ......

Posted On Saturday, September 1, 2007 7:20 PM

Don't bet the farm on AJAX if you don't have to.
The post is a cautionary tail of the latest episode of common sense versus cool. AJAX is a great technology that allows webpages to have much richer content. Google Maps was the turning point for this technology as it brought the technology to the attention of the Technorati that has enjoyed a superficial level of hype ever since because it is encompassed as the lynch-pin of Web 2.0. The key part of AJAX is Javascript which is a language that all mainstream browsers, no matter what operating system, ......

Posted On Wednesday, June 27, 2007 9:50 PM

The Architect's Link Page
Recently, I purchased two new URL's http://www.EnterpriseArchit... & http://www.EnterpriseArchit... these URL's are linked to this blog from the moment, but this is not my long term aim! What I would like to do is turn these two pages into link pages to other Technical/Solutions/Enterprise Architects blogs and sites. I'm also happy to setup email redirects as well so you can have a more appropriate email address for our profession. My intention is to also continue to purchase other ......

Posted On Sunday, October 29, 2006 10:42 AM

ClipCode 'Gang of Four' Patterns and a recap on what is a DSL?
I thought it would only be a matter of time before the patterns from the Gang of Four appeared in Microsoft's DSL design tool add-in for Visual Studio 2005 . ClipCode has done just that. So, what is a DSL? A picture can says a thousand words and this is why greater understanding is achieved with diagrams. As you can imagine, an icon or graphic can have a different meaning depending on the group, company or industry, i.e. 'the domain' you work in. It is difficult to have a diagramming system that ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:41 PM

SXIP & Identity 2.0
Security and identity are problems that the Internet just hasn't cracked. The problem is no one organisation has a user identity mechanism that everyone else will agree to use, so the consumer is the loser as he or she has to put the same piece of personal data into multiple websites over and over again. Microsoft did think they had the answer with the passport system, this was nice and simple in my opinion, but today only Microsoft sites really use it and this is because some viewed it as expensive ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 15, 2006 12:53 PM

Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Yahoo has created a design pattern library in their developer section and can be found here. Sadly no code drops to accompany the design patterns but it's a good start. Nice one Yahoo! I hope MSN and Google will follow suit. ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 15, 2006 6:14 AM

Software Architecture Links Page

Bredemeyer Consulting have created this very handy and frequently updated links page on all things to do with Software Architecture. One to add to the favourites.

 

Posted On Monday, February 13, 2006 7:23 PM

More SOA tips from the real world
Back to Earth after my Channel 9 video. In this post I want to discuss some of my recent experiences implementing SOA. It’s important to take everyone with you. SOA is a Sea-Change in the way programs are developed and implemented in an organisation. The concept of an ‘Application’ is very much redefined. It’s so important that the reason why are communicated not only to key stake-holder in business, but everyone in the I.T department, specially those that are at the coal ......

Posted On Tuesday, October 3, 2006 7:59 PM

Microsoft Architect Insight Conference
The Microsoft Architect Insight Conference is being held in Newport, Gwent on the 22-23 March. The list of speakers is very impressive, practically a who's who of the leading lights of Architecture and they are, Dr Ivar Jacobson Martin Fowler – Chief Scientist, Thoughtworks Andrew Herbert – Director, Microsoft UK Research Centre Paul Preiss – President, IASA David Sprott – CEO & Principal Analyst, CBDI This is not an event I want to miss, but as usual getting my Boss to ......

Posted On Monday, February 13, 2006 7:52 AM

What is Ajax?
I had promised you another post on my predictions for 2006. Well, after listening to feedback (thanks all that have emailed me) it seems that most of you would like to see a deeper dive into technologies that interest me (with diagrams) but in an easy to digest way. So, this is the first in the range of these posts. What is Ajax? Introduction Ajax or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML is a term that describes the use of a combination of existing web technologies to build rich and interactive web pages. ......

Posted On Monday, January 16, 2006 12:47 PM

SCA or Service Component Architecture
When companies such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Siebel Systems, IONA and Sybase comes together it is for an important reason. There are two main reasons for this, firstly Enterprise Java Beans initially didn’t come up with the goods, it didn’t really do the job it was advertised to do and it was clunky and clumsy. Secondly, because J2EE wasn’t as good as hoped it endured a few major revisions which has made it difficult (and expensive) to get JCP certified. Ok, so there is ......

Posted On Thursday, December 22, 2005 5:50 PM

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