TSSS: JSR208 Java Business Integration
Mark Hapner is pretty much an old school guy. He’s boring, he’s a techie, and he generally knows whereof he speaks, he also doesn’t seem to be the sort to resort to cheap circus tricks when presenting (ie, it’s boring as fuck to watch this).
The real trouble with this talk is that it’s so very…abstract. There’s absolutely nothing accessible in the whole idea. If anything, the expert group seems to be struggling to actually pin down what SOA actually entails in a ‘real’ sense, instead of the furious flapping as trademarked by the likes of Gartner.
Even setting aside the abstract nature of the concept as a whole, every one of the little (!) components are equally ambigious and fluffy. For example, you have stuff like ‘integration brokers’ and ‘policy directories’ and other such ideas. The JBI (Java Business Integration) spec wants to provide SPI’s for all these guys. Worst of all, Mark keeps saying ‘wizdle’ and ‘bepple’ instead of ‘W S D L’ and ‘B P E L’, and it’s hugely distracting. In time though I suppose it’ll provide a lot more amusmenet: ‘if you don’t stop investigating your unmentionables I’m going to have to bepple your wizdle in front of everyone’.
One note of personal interest for me was the general discomfort directed at BPEL. I’ve always vaguely considered spending some effort at it for the sake of OSWorkflow, but the general concensus is that BPEL is just too complex and unwieldly and uncomfortable to use in javaland.
Verdict? SOA is very, very boring, and it’s hard to find two people to agree what it actually is in non-arm-flapping terms.
May 7th, 2004 at 6:56 pm
No one said you had to be nice!! Real criticism is appreciated. Dammit! I wanted to be biled (and to be finally sure that you had actually looked at WebWork 2).
May 7th, 2004 at 7:14 pm
There’s too many clouds in that entry, Hani. I don’t think you actually went to a presentation. I think you just went off and had a bit of relaxed smoking. That’s okay, it is obviously how SOA was conceived anyway.
May 7th, 2004 at 7:28 pm
The internet ideal used to be “rough consensus and running code”. But who the hell needs running code any more? This is the twenty-first century, my man! Aren’t all those PPT clouds enough for you?
Confucius say: Neurotic build castle in sky; psychotic live there.
The Web Services gang could actually achieve something if they took their alphabet soup and canned it. Some carrots, some potatos, the odd lump of mystery meat, many grains of salt … num num, _now_ yer talkin’!
May 8th, 2004 at 12:16 am
Fabulous Bile!!!!!!!!
P.J. O’Rourke once did a funny bit about the proposed healthcare reforms under Clinton. He said, roughly, “The problem with the proposed reform is that I just can’t seem to LEARN anthing about it. I’ve tried to read about it in the papers, and I discovered that it cannot be summarized briefly. Then I tried to read the proposal, and I realized that it could not be described at length. Then I see the members of the commission trying to explain it on TV, and they look just as confused as I do…”
I mention this because when I think of BPEL and SOA, I am reminded of P.J. In short, there’s no There there. It is all too easy to dismiss such things are nice cloudy PowerPoint diagrams put together by “architects” who don’t actually write code. But there’s a good reason why it IS too easy, methinks. Hani’s gleefully put the sword to the whole business. Excellent.
May 8th, 2004 at 4:34 pm
Didn’t it occur to you that SOA is to SOAP what AO is to AOP ?
May 8th, 2004 at 5:32 pm
The funny thing about all the BPEL and web services stuff was that HP e-speak was 10 times ahead of it all functionally five years ago!
May 10th, 2004 at 11:41 pm
This Hani guy just slams things he doesn’t understand. Since he writes cute sarcasm, he’s popular.