Thu
Aug 10 2006
11:23 am
Better get your SOA governance ass in gear!
By: R. Neal

From my inbox:

Whether you've made a lot of progress in implementing SOA or are just getting started, you've probably run smack into its complexities. The solution? SOA Governance.

WE'RE HERE TO HELP.

The IBM(R) Rational(R) Method Composer SOA Governance Plug-in was created specifically to help you to implement SOA more easily. Our Webcast on planning for SOA governance was created to help you get started on the project, establish metrics and utilize a best-practices approach.

VIEW THE WEBCAST.

# LEARN SOA Planning and Best Practices.
# ALIGN people, processes, and information.
# BRIDGE the communication gap between business and IT.
# IMPROVE flexibility and time to market.

So many action words, so little time. I'm glad the metrics of my paradigm have shifted outside that box of best practices. At least for now. I may wake up someday begging them to take me back. It doesn't look like much has changed, so hopefully it will be easy to get back on the bicycle and run the ball down the field for a win-win. Or something.

P.S. "The IBM(R) Rational(R) Method Composer SOA Governance Plug-in was created specifically to help you to implement SOA more easily." Huh? How could something with a name like that be easy to implement?

Topics:
Oren Incandenza's picture

Synchronicity

Submitted by Oren Incandenza on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 11:47am.

Today's Dilbert is on your wavelength.

(link...)

 

R. Neal's picture

OMG! Classic. Still

Submitted by R. Neal on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 11:51am.

OMG! Classic. Still laughing.

R. Neal's picture

In fact, I like that so

Submitted by R. Neal on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 11:57am.

In fact, I like that so much...

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

redmondkr's picture

Every day I am happier to

Submitted by redmondkr on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 2:01pm.

 

Every day I am happier to be retired.  Buzzwords flew like horse manure in a hurricane in the meeting rooms of the government contractor that I abandoned.  One of my favorites was the insistence on referring to a problem as an “opportunity to excel”.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so - Willie the Barde

SteveMule's picture

SOA ???

Submitted by SteveMule on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 6:02pm.

Mr. Neal,

What is "SOA"?? Thanks.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

R. Neal's picture

Mr. Mule: Good question.

Submitted by R. Neal on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 6:31pm.

Mr. Mule:

Good question. SOA = Sarbanes-Oxley Act (a/k/a SOX), the Bushco/Republican effort to "police" corporate accounting practices and compliance with SEC regulations in order to protect investors, among other things, in the wake of Enron et. al., which mainly created huge opportunities for buzzword/bullshit peddling accounting firms and software companies, and headaches for people trying to do, like, actual business and stuff.

EDIT: Actually, it doesn't. See below.

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

SCate's picture

Too many 3-character acronyms

Submitted by SCate (not verified) on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 1:26pm.

Mr. Neal,

I believe you are incorrect in referring to "SOA" as an acronymn used by IBM to describe Sarbanes-Oxley ("SOX"). "SOA" as used for this product represents "Service Oriented Architecture." I imagine an effective implementation of SOA, whereby access of data in a company's information systems are controlled through well-defined interfaces, would help to insure compliance with "SOX". However, they are two different items.

I am fearful the computer industry has run out of 3-character acronyms and will be continuing to expand into acronymns with more and more characters. Last year my organization at work adopted a name with 7 words. I never learned the words nor the acronym. Fortunately, this year's reorg reduced the size of the name, but I couldn't tell you what it is if my life depended on it. It probably doesn't matter because it will likely change again next fiscal year.

R. Neal's picture

Ouch. You are correct. I'm

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 1:40pm.

Ouch. You are correct. I'm more out of it than I thought.

I just assumed, and I guess I should have attended the webcast, or at least googled "IBM(R) Rational(R) Method Composer SOA Governance Plug-in." Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

(When I left that world, IBM was still talking about "SAA", or "Systems Application Architecture", which was a gimmick to distract attention from the fact that they had eight or nine different competing architectures and OS/database platforms that they wanted developers to make up for with a common look and feel so they could compete with Unix nerds and Bill Gates. So that tells you how old I am. And in all those years since, it sounds like it has evolved by exactly one letter!)

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

Andy Axel's picture

IBM was still talking about

Submitted by Andy Axel on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 1:52pm.

IBM was still talking about "SAA", or "Systems Application Architecture", which was a gimmick to distract attention from the fact that they had eight or nine different competing architectures and OS/database platforms that they wanted developers to make up for with a common look and feel so they could compete with Unix nerds and Bill Gates.

So far as I know, one of the few takers on SAA was Novell. [shudder]

Couldn't get SAA to run over ethernet at the time my customers wanted it, so I had to get familiar with how IBM midrange machines dealt with token ring, and then buying a Cisco 2513 so the damn AS/400 could talk to the rest of the network.

(I think I stilll recall the QSECOFR password for that customer too. They never changed it in the 3 years I worked with 'em...)

Good times. Good times.

____________________________

"winkin' at my peers," quotin' Thurston.

R. Neal's picture

Sure you aren't referring to

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 1:59pm.

Sure you aren't referring to SNA, yet another TLA for "Systems Network Architecture"?

When I left that world, MVS and VTAM system programmers were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get this newfangled TCP/IP to run on their 3705 controllers over high-speed 9600 baud bisynchronous modem connections.

And yeah, whatever happened to token ring? And IBM's business model of being different than and incompatible with everybody else on the planet?

Ah, but we must stop. These old geezer war stories never end well.

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

R. Neal's picture

OK, one more, to prove these

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:11pm.

OK, one more, to prove these things never end well.

I once worked in an IBM platform called the 4700 (the successor to the 3600). It had its own proprietary CPU with its own instruction set. They expected vendors to deploy applications for it, but THEY NEVER WROTE A COMPILER FOR IT! Or even a text editor, or anything that might resemble a utility.

Instead, get this, you "compiled" for it on an 370 mainframe using 370 assembly language. But get this. The "compiler" was actually a set of assembly language macros in a library, with a separate macro to represent each 4700 machine instruction, each with a hard-coded constant representing the 4700 instruction in hexadecimal notation, that when passed through the 370 assembler emitted the 4700 binary machine code that you downloaded using one of those 8 inch floppy disks, or if you had a sharp system programmer who could actually get it to work, over a communications link with the mainframe. The geek who had to write that "compiler" must be enjoying a special place in programmer heaven as compensation for his earthly ordeal. But at least it was easy to patch, which was about every time you needed to compile something.

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

Andy Axel's picture

I once worked in an IBM

Submitted by Andy Axel on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:18pm.

I once worked in an IBM platform called the 4700 (the successor to the 3600). It had its own proprietary CPU with its own instruction set. They expected vendors to deploy applications for it, but THEY NEVER WROTE A COMPILER FOR IT! Or even a text editor, or anything that might resemble a utility.

Hey, better you than me. I've always been an integration guy.

Well, not always. I started on a PC Help Desk, but ever since I got paid more than an hourly wage, I've been an integration guy.

I had to figure out what the 8-digit product code was for the async IBM controller was so that some cheap customer could drop his expensive leased line remote offices and have his hapless employees access the main using pcAnywhere, a modem, and ProComm Plus.

____________________________

"winkin' at my peers," quotin' Thurston.

Andy Axel's picture

Sure you aren't referring to

Submitted by Andy Axel on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:15pm.

Sure you aren't referring to SNA, yet another TLA for "Systems Network Architecture"?

Positive.

____________________________

"winkin' at my peers," quotin' Thurston.

R. Neal's picture

I guess they actually made

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:19pm.

I guess they actually made some kind of product then, after my day. At first it just was a loose collection of non-standard standards, and a roadmap to some future unified theory of application development based on products no one ever expected to materialize.

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

R. Neal's picture

Ah, looking at your link, I

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:26pm.

Ah, looking at your link, I see it was a way to make PCs and such talk to mainframes over SDLC, a component of SNA. This was one of the alleged promises of SAA, that eventually everything could play nice together and IBM could keep their non-standard proprietary back end mainframes in control of the world. There were also supposed to be cross-platform compilers, a standard set of UI instructions that would let you write once for either green screen or GUI, and a bunch of other pie-in-the sky BS that, like I said, nobody ever expected to materialize. Sounds like some of it actually did.

---
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
(C) Dilbert

Andy Axel's picture

Ah, looking at your link, I

Submitted by Andy Axel on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 2:45pm.

Ah, looking at your link, I see it was a way to make PCs and such talk to mainframes over SDLC, a component of SNA.

Well, it was a way to encapsulate SDLC frames over 802.5, and the Novell SAA box would gateway that into IPX, which in this case was running over 802.3.

Same diff.

Made it look like the machine on an ethernet segment was speaking SDLC to a front-end processor. The Novell SAA gateway looked like a downstream PU to the midrange; instead of buying both a network card and an IRMA card (or, god forbid, a 3270 terminal), the PC could talk to the midrange over ethernet using emulation software.

And here I thought I'd forgotten more than I'd learned. Maybe not.

____________________________

"winkin' at my peers," quotin' Thurston.

DSK's picture

Know what's even worse that

Submitted by DSK (not verified) on Fri, 2006/08/11 - 6:44pm.

Know what's even worse that the possibility of the computer industry running out of acronyms? RECYCLING them, thus confusing us as we age. Prime example with an acronym mentioned here: people run around these days talking about SDLC, but they don't mean the networking protocol, they mean "Software Development LifeCycle." I suppose no one will ever think "DOS attack" refers to real mode OS DOS, but when a company posts that they need someone who is "familiar with SDLC", it confounds.

DSK's picture

HEY!I don't come here to

Submitted by DSK (not verified) on Thu, 2006/08/10 - 6:27pm.

HEY!
I don't come here to read the same buzzword nonsense I have to read for my job. Stop it. =)

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