Some Things Architectural

Service Orientation? (SO)

An interesting and very informative debate between Rich Turner and David Ing on Service Orientation.

Read what Rich Turner thinks SO is...
"it truly is a belief system and a way of thinking. It is not a prescriptive architectural process or methodology. It's not a template that you can apply that results in a service oriented system. It's where art meets science. It's where aesthetics meets engineering. It's the thing adds a human touch to the things we create. It's inside of me and it's inside of you."(excerpt)

And this is his answer to the question - Does SOA introduce new/origianl architectural concepts? which David Ing decodes here.

And this is what David said, to which Rich replied, What Service Orientation is NOT!

I must say, reading what these guys have to say forced me to revist SO and SOA...

Really great insights guys...

Who needs an Architect?

In my previous post, I was talking about who needs Architecture. Here is a fine article by Martin Fowler on Who needs an Architect?

Who needs Architecture?

Big companies? Medium companies? Small companies?

Large corporations usually deal with huge enterprise solutions and will engage their architects to take care of the new project with their architectural skills and all the possible Architectures (TOGAF, DoDAF, etc) that could apply on this mammoth of a project.

But what about SMEs? Do small and medium sized projects need architecture?

The project which is in mid-development stage, doesn't have an architectural plan or design. Yes you don't need to employ TOGAF or DoDAF but how about a proper design explaining the architecture?

Yes, a company just want the project to be completed and get revenue out of it. So who is to care about the architecture? Who is to care about the design?

Do non-enterprise scale projects need architecture? Is Architecture today something that a company bothers about? Do Architects belong solely belong in MNCs?

Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0

Finally its out.. Check it out on MSDN...

Read what Tom, the product manager of EntLib has to say in his blog.

Overview from MSDN

Enterprise Library–January 2006 contains the following general purpose application blocks:

• Caching Application Block. With this application block, developers can incorporate a local cache in their applications.
• Cryptography Application Block. With this application block, developers can incorporate hashing and symmetric encryption in their applications.
• Data Access Application Block. With this application block, developers can incorporate standard database functionality in their applications.
• Exception Handling Application Block. With this application block, developers and policy makers can create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
• Logging Application Block. With this application block, developers can include standard logging functionality in their applications.
• Security Application Block. With this application block, developers can incorporate authorization and security caching functionality in their applications.

Enterprise Library also includes a set of core functions, including configuration, instrumentation, and object builder services. These functions are used by all other application blocks.

Scared of maintenence? Adopt Enterprise Library

In a company which essentially drives a lot of income from maintaining systems that were created by it long time ago. It’s a nightmare for developers here to do maintenance. Every project has involvement of different developers (they come and they leave, and the new ones come and they leave, and so on and so on..) who code as they like to fix an issue. Yes the blame needs to be placed on lack of documentation and standard as well. But since we don’t have access to those …......

Enterprise Library has been around for a long time. I for one have used it in .net 1.1 and now in 2.0.

I have always tried to evangelize the usage of Enterprise Library in projects, and every time it paid of.

Recently I completed a project using the DAAB from Enterprise Library. Although I didn’t get a chance to integrate the Exception and the Logging block, using DAAB alone saved the project 30% of coding. Yes, I know that’s a shocking figure.

As a Project Consultant to a new project, I have asked one of the PMs who is working on this new project to use the exception block and the Logging Block along with the DAAB. He's an enthusiastic fella...

But, it looks like I will have to halt my work and go though the effort to make easy-to-replicate samples of usage for the team. (I lost my samples to a HDD crash [:(])

I’m sure it will be worth the effort when maintenance phase comes…

Enterprise Library for .NET 2.0-December interim community drop

Past months have been very busy with work. But what was more tiring was the hide and seek play with Enterprise Library for .Net 2.0 and all the new projects at work.

I've been trying the EntLib december interim community drop and its simply awesome. Yes, it does not come with MSI or docs, but who needs them? And the cool part is that the P'n'P team included the Configuration Tool! 

Even though the Cryptography Application Block is missing, I believe the rest of the blocks will keep you busy drooling...

Go and download the EntLib here.

New on MSMVPS Domain

Hi guys, just moved my blog to the msmvps domain...

My previous blog is located at dotnetjunkies @ http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/rohanthomas/

Thanks to Susan for getting up all setup...

Cheers!