Author advises: Enterprise architecture for SOA is strategic, top-down, and encompasses people, practices, processes and platforms. Enterprise architect Rick Sweeney discusses an architectural-driven SOA paradigm, and what's been holding back adoption of this type of approach.



Service-oriented architecture - Enterprise architecture - Architect - Business - Arts

SAP AG and Sybase this week discussed roadmaps for their newly merged companies, pledging to create a mobile platform that better allows users to consume SAP business processes. An Eclipse-based Software Developers Kit for mobile application development is first on the to-do list.



Sybase - SAP AG - SAP - ERP - Business process

Recent discussions on Web service programming forums suggest that a review of the various formats for transporting data around networks is useful for developers new to the field. Read this article to learn the pros and cons and of data transmission formats and stay tuned to learn more about the various transport mechanisms in an upcoming article.



Data - Data transmission - Web service - Transmission - Transport

A major upgrade to Oracle's tools includes a plug-in for distributed caching design, Eclipse 3.6 (Helios), and GlassFish. Such tools can help usher in a new crop of highly scalable cloud computing applications.



Oracle Corporation - Oracle - Eclipse - Databases - Sun Microsystems

The prospect of cloud computing is changing the way people in IT think. But some viewers say the potential of the cloud may be limited without the application of a crucial enabling technology -- distributed data grids.



Cloud computing - Business - Technology - Data - Distributed computing

Oracle filed a complaint against Google for patent and copyright infringement related to Google's Android smartphone operating system stack and related Java-based software.



Google - Oracle Corporation - Oracle - Copyright infringement - Android

Legacy modernization provides a way out for IT organizations that are running out of ways to extend the capabilities of legacy systems to meet business needs. Object Management Group's ADM Task Force is developing standards to facilitate an architecture-driven modernization approach to legacy modernization.



Object Management Group - Business - Legacy system - Consultants - Programming

SOA with .NET & Windows Azure: Realizing Service-Orientation with the Microsoft Platform presents readers with a hands-on review of key issues in applying SOA techniques on the .NET platform. This is another in the series of Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing books edited by the noted SOA expert Thomas Erl.



Microsoft - Azure - Service-oriented architecture - .NET Framework - Windows Azure

The RESTful approach to Web services is widely seen as a simpler alternative to SOAP. Many big name Web services providers such as Amazon, Twitter and Google use the RESTful approach extensively. If you are contemplating getting a REST style Web service project started, but don't want to reinvent the wheel, you need to know about existing well established tools.



Web service - Representational State Transfer - Google - Twitter - SOAP

A firm managing ocean-going containers has forged a complex event processing (CEP) system to track shipments and trigger important business processes as key activity milestones are met or missed. A declarative language model supported within Tibco BusinessEvents helps the firm create flexible business rules, according to an application development manager.



Business - Complex event processing - Business process - Tibco BusinessEvents - Programming

Software is moving deeper into the real world. Embedded systems are hooking up with corporate backroom computers in new ways. A new systems ethos is emerging. IBM software scientist Grady Booch casts light on the issues, including how software design can be viewed through the lens of systems of systems.



Embedded system - Grady Booch - IBM - Companies - Software Development

For enterprise architects, the early days of EA were mostly about inventorying far-flung systems. This "documentation fever" may be giving way to enterprise architecture practices that lead to innovation and corporate agility. This and other matters were discussed at The Open Group Conference in Boston



Enterprise architecture - Open Group - Business - Boston - Design

There is a good chance the Android operating system for mobile devices can intrude far into the area currently occupied by operating systems such as Windows on the desktop. For one thing, it is service oriented. Moreover, as people spend more time online with Android they will push for more rapid release cycles with ever increasing capabilities. Android gives developers the tools to fill these needs.



Android - Operating system - Microsoft Windows - Mobile device - Windows

Today's applications can benefit from a wealth of data services supporting SOAP and REST. But enterprise applications along with SLAs must be carefully prepped to successfully employ such Web services. Enterprise mashups are growing as a means to tap into the Web data.



Web service - SOAP - Representational State Transfer - Programming - Service-Oriented Architecture

BPEL and BPMN have become closely integrated and are enabling the automation of business processes that involve not only Web services, but people processes as well.



Business process - Business Process Execution Language - Web service - Business Process Modeling Notation - Service-oriented architecture

An analytical tool from Tibco's Spotfire group does its work on a cloud computing platform. As a result, IT can more quickly deploy analytical systems and end-users can more rapidly share BI dashboards.



Tibco - Cloud computing - Business - Business intelligence - Spotfire

Facebook's highly innovative use of open APIs is proving very influential in Web application design. The company introduced a new API that will allow any page on the Internet to be managed like a Facebook fan page. The Open Graph API should make it easier to collect and manage data into the Facebook social graph.



Facebook - Application programming interface - Graph API - Social network - Open Graph API

Business process management (BPM) house Metastorm has joined the fledgling ''BPM in the cloud'' movement, releasing a cloud computing-based version of its BPM modeling tools. Metastorm joins Appian, Cordys and others testing the waters of cloud-hosted software for BPM. Notably, the Metastorm offering operate in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Metastorm M3 comprises a popular subset of its modeling tools for business process building. Supported model types include process/workflow, activity, rule, project, requirement, location and other models. Business users employing the tools can chat, whiteboard and annotate models online. The subset of Metastorm models can share a subset of Metastorm objects. ''We are using Azure to host our M3 Modeler,'' said Greg Carter, CTO, MetaStorm. ''The host and repository you store models in are on the Azure platform.'' ''It's like a gigantic copy of Windows on the cloud,'' he said, noting that M3 modeling also supports private cloud and on-premise architectures. While the runtime deployment of the BPM software still resides 'off-cloud,' one can picture a hosted runtime as a next step. The software could help cut time-to-deployment, allowing business teams to forge their models and bring process re-engineering long before IT installs runtime software and hardware. At the same time it released M3, Metastorm also announced an enterprise mashup system that allows Metastorm's software and other applications to be accessed from a single user interface.



Microsoft - Cloud computing - Microsoft Azure - Business process management - Cordys

Cost reduction efforts drive today's push for application modernization. The barriers to implementing application modernization are the initial cost, risk, business buy-in and subject matter expertise, according to a recent Forrester Research study.



Forrester Research - Business - Consulting - Risk Management - Financial services

As apps and APIs move front and center in the public consciousness, a mashup maker creates a platform for in-house application stores.



JackBe - Mashup - Application programming interface - Business - App Store