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SOA + AJAX = The client layer ?

Posted on February 20, 2007

The CBDi Forum feeds are always very valuable. Yesterday I was able to find an interesting post from David Sprott, titled SOA Plus AJAX. What hit me most was:

David asserts very clearly that “it’s essential to avoid coding business logic into the client layer“.
Why? What’s wrong with coding some business logic into the client layer?

What is wrong is, imho, trying to defeat the principles of physics by mixing and shortcutting layers in a multi-layer architecture.

What is wrong also is mixing the business logic and the presentation

But this does not have much to do with coding business logic in the client.
A statement like the one of David sounds, to me, one of the myths that populate our IT culture (such as “open source is great” or “Linux is better than Windows”)

David also says “I have always been more than a little uncomfortable with composite applications because they are a kluge – to the extent that many refer to mash-ups and composite applications in the same breath“.
That’s interesting.
I have sent David a mail asking him to read my comments titled Composite Applications, Mashups and Portals: “relay race” or “team spirit” ? and Two faces of the same coin.
I hope this could be useful for triggering some more discussion.
David also mentions, in his post, an article from John Crupi, AJAX + SOA: The Next Killer App. I have met John when we both worked for Sun.
I do not agree with everything John wrote…. but I certainly agree when he makes a distinction between free-services and business-oriented services, for which a contract is required!

Update from February 22.

I have just read an interesting article from David Linthicum: Enterprise mashups meet SOA. I want to quote a couple of interesting sentences:

Mashups and SOA are part of the same continuum. By linking the new components of Web 2.0 with our own sets of information and services, mashups provide a quick and easy way to solve many of today’s simple business problems — and should scale nicely to solve more complex and far-reaching problems in the future. They make the value of an SOA much more visible over a much shorter term.

An enterprise that can’t see the new Web will have a huge strategic disadvantage in the years to come.

Let’s see…

Two faces of the same coin

Posted on August 27, 2006

by stefano

A series of articles trigger this post. Among them, two above all:

Ismael Ghalimi’s “BPM is SOA’s Killer Application“.
Ismael is the CEO of Intalio, a very bright mind in our industry and one of the people who clearly saw the importance of Business Process Management
Dion Hinchcliffe’s “Enterprise mashups: More about processes and less about services?“
We all know Dion’s contributions to the Web 2.0 promotion and understanding via his famous blog

I could summarize the ideas behind them in the following way.

Enterprise Mashups represent, on the desktop, what SOA represents on the server. And that what matters, on the client as well as on the server, is how these technologies allow the execution of Business Processes.

This is great!
In my presentation “Thoughts for a Rich Client”, I sort of developed the concept of 360 degrees integration.
Let’s represent the integration space with our Globe: we have a Southern and a Northern hemisphere.

The Southern hemisphere represents the kind of integration that happens on th server. This integration is made possible by an architectural pattern (SOA) and conveyed to us by a Portal. Ismael’s article describes so well how this is all about Business Process, because the reason to adopt an SOA is indeed the one to automate an existing Business Process (or to implement a new one).
By the way, I have written a little comment to Ismael’s article in which I try to explain my position.

The Northern hemisphere is a new territory. Until recently, the desktop has been considered simply as a projection of something that was happening on the server. Infact, a Portal is aggregating content that is simply displayed inside a browser. In the Web world, the Presentation Layer of an application has normally been executed on the server, leaving to the desktops the simple task to display something happening elsewhere.
The advent of AJAX (and of other rich client technologies, including Lotus Expeditor) and the evolution of the technologies in the browser space made it possible to actually consider the client as a first-class citizen in the SOA world; for the first time in the web era, the Presentation Layer (or a part of it) could be implemented outside of the server, “after the web server”, on the other side of the pipe….
This makes it possible to perform aggregation also on the client. call this aggregation “enterprise mashup” or “rich portal”…. at the end, what these technologies allow, is the implementation of the client side of Business Processes.

The Business Process can now be described and properly automated in its more natural way: a rich set of cooperating tools, information and applications allow users, from their desktop, to properly use orchestrated services. The formal, top-down processes described and executed on the servers are made available to users who can recompose them in ways that exploit the innovation and foster the flexibility required by new enterprises.

So, BPM on one side and Enterprise Mashups on the other, can actually represent two faces of the same coin. The coin of the “enteprise business processes”.

P.S. Other articles that contributed to this where: