social computing

Ordinarily I wouldn’t reach back to January for such an extensive post, but I seem somehow to have missed Dion Hinchcliffe’s important set of ideas for SOA architects in the enterprise. I think I missed the post because linking to the post itself — the last one he made in this blog, which he no longer seems to use — returns an error. Hence, I’ll link to his old blog’s main url, and I’ll also include this extensive section of the long post:

Eleven Emerging Ideas for SOA Architects in 2007

1. “Making services consumable in the browser. Increasingly, the common Web browser is the place where meaningful service integration is taking place. Because of this, building services that aren’t easily consumable in the browser can be a death knell for the service… Ultimately, non-browser friendliness greatly reduces possible consumption scenarios for SOAs….
2. “Considering syndication over “service-izing.” The browser is an important consumption point but so too are the growing syndication ecosystems…. Carefully consider offering your services in RSS form or even ATOM, which has a two-way REST model. This will further increase consumption scenarios and therefore adoption. Content syndication is growing into a very potent force inside and outside the enterprise…. Not every SOA service can or should be converted to a syndication model, but if you aren’t considering this option with each service you create, you should be….
3. “Deeply embracing URI addressability. Of all the things in this list, this might be the most important one. The hyperlink is the fundamental unit of thought on the Web and it should be in your service designs and (hopefully granular) schemas as well. Giving each discrete piece of information, every service, and all content a globally addressable URI instantly gives a service, and the data it carries back and forth across its interface, access to countless new consumption and reuse scenarios. The most important of these is the leveraging of network effects via — often social — link propagation along with the ability to make all URI addressed information potentially crawlable, thereby making it transparent via search. The possibility of letting people find your service via an intranet or Web search engine because of the great content it has might seem a little odd at first but then again, that’s what makes things work so well on the Web. You can learn about URIs on Wikipedia, and they can be a SOA’s best friend.
4. “Using Ajax as the face of your SOA. …the browser model, with our newest high-speed corporate networks, fast desktops, and latest browsers, has finally becoming a very capable way of distributing software and associated updates. No admin rights are required to run an Ajax application in the browser, no plug-ins must be distributed, and users find the experiences they offer compelling. …One key barrier to this unified vision of browser front-end and services back-end is that many SOA services today are just not Ajax consumable. Worse, virtually none are easily consumable by emerging Flash platforms for RIAs such as Flex or OpenLaszlo without a lot of work…. This highlights a growing need to sort out the tolerance continuums that are probably too shallow in many enterprises….
5. Monetizing Your SOA. On the SOA projects I’ve been on, many of those who own the systems being opened up as services don’t like the results in the short term: more customer service, additional bandwidth and hardware to support unpredictable external use, more testing, and so on. Figuring out ways to meter usage, institute chargebacks, and even charging outright fees to external trading partners and customers allows the necessary negative feedback to discourage irresponsible or profligate use of services. This works well on the Web and the most successful APIs online are metered in some way.
6. Enable users as service consumers. This also cuts across some of the items above but is best exemplified by the software mashup phenomenon…. In a few years, it’s likely that end-users will be one of the largest direct consumers of your services, particularly via syndication. Enable it and encourage it; it’s just another way to make your SOA invaluable to the business and generally popular as well.
7. Virtualization, fast scaling, and on-demand architectures. …Particularly if provisioning is unmediated (thousands of informal users of your APIs.) Fast adoption is one of the worst nightmares for an SOA that is not well capacity planned and scaled. Just like operations has become a core competency of SaaS and Web 2.0 sites, so too is it in the highly spiky usage model of on-demand services where a successful network effect can cripple your availability and response times.
8. Offering an SOA as visual services via widgets. Widgets have access to back-end infrastructure (i.e. an SOA) and … allow little bits of data-driven functionality such as stock tickers, corporate news, and other information to reside in any Web page and be fed by back-end services. This is another effective way to put a “face” on an SOA and get it used in many different completely unexpected ways. And because just about anyone can drop a widget onto a Web page, this further unleashes all users — instead of a few IT staffers — to help deploy the functionality and data held within an SOA to the far reaches of an enterprise….
9. Considering JSON as a service option. XML is NOT very fast…. JSON, the Javascript Object Notation, has risen quickly in the last year as a highly compact way to send information on the wire to a Web application….
10. Encouraging and discovering emergent solutions. …I’ve come to describe (the) tight process of co-evolution via realtime feedback, harnessing user contributions, and becoming a platform that others actually build upon as Product Development 2.0. …Just remember, sites like Flickr deploy changes to production every 30 minutes while monitoring usage and making more changes in almost continuous real-time feedback loops. Other sites are literally letting their users shape the services available from the application itself …. Enterprise 2.0 is the front line where much of this particular change will begin taking place in the enterprise, with freeform, social, emergent tools like blogs and wikis that are so general purpose they can used in an almost limitless number of ways. Make no mistake; emergent application platforms are not an edge case trend and are already taking place in your organization….
11. Leveraging the Global SOA. … marry the datasets contained within enterprises with the incredibly rich landscape of information out on the Web. (my emphasis — tom) (applications that do this) are primarily impressive because of the data brought in from the Web…,the richest set of services currently available to anyone, inside or outside the enterprise. It simply no longer makes sense to have an SOA that does not have access to the Global SOA on the Web where hundreds of high-value APIs are available and millions of lesser ones in the form of RSS and ATOM. I… The challenges (is) figuring out how to bring in external services safely and provisioning them for use as part of your enterprise SOA. Those who do this successfully can potentially garner an even great uptake on SOA usage as the number of high-value services available internally ramps up quickly.

Most of these items highlight a big trend this year: consumerization of the enterprise….”

The post is from last January, but Dion’s ideas are still exciting. Take a look at the longer version here.