Web of Web Services
In the era of BPM, with much more enhanced tools and techniques, let's look at a more common and realistic scenario. Where disparate systems identify to interface with other systems, web services, play a huge role. Need of the system is to get the information as fast as possible and accurate for sure! As cliché as it may sound, the very concept of web services is to ensure application interfaces are not affected. But, this pool of web services ensures that they are not left untouched. One of these scenarios, customer information system highlights this phenomenon clearly. Few characteristics that could have been over looked or been in place initially and lost over time:
- Business perspective to technical requirements
- Long term vision for middle ware technical architecture
- Evolve the architecture based on introduction of new entities
- Standards and guidelines for middle ware ever emerging development cycle.
Having defined a middleware tool to ensure the systems are connected is only half the job done. To ensure the operability and maintenance of what is developed is a bigger on-going challenge. Not forgetting to include enhancements. While architects struggle to identify the correct approach of which functionality to fit into which web service, developers struggle to fit the pieces of code into the existing web of web services.
With this highly complex set of interfaces, web services revolve around content and data. And much of the installation, configuration and maintenance work are done manually. This means managerial talents, user-experience knowledge are as essential as defining the technical architecture. At the core, following features when implemented would benefit the landscape of middleware:
- Simple Configuration
- Minimal or no Application Code Changes
- Interoperability
- Increased Application Performance
- Optimizing network traffic
- Increased Scalability/Maximized Network Throughput
To re-iterate the obvious, in most practical scenarios with ever reducing variables of budget and time, it becomes more of a necessity for architects to have holistic and futuristic vision of technology with business perspective.
