[Info-vax] Seasons Greetings

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <495c3477$0$90271$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
	Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
> Main, Kerry wrote:
>> Yep, I still maintain there is going to be a return to the basics as
>> Companies can no longer afford grandiose SOA / "latest rip-n-replace
>> craze of the month" distributed programming strategy developed by the
>> analyst / university / whoever theorists.
> 
> Companies can not afford not to do SOA. It is pretty expensive not
> to reuse.

And you can't reuse without SOA?  I thought "re-use" was the Ada buzzword,
not the SOA buzzword.

> 
> SOA is most definitely not about replacing systems. You could argue
> that SOA is about not replacing systems.

Well, when you re-write all your COBOL in Java, sure sounds like replacing
to me.

> 
> Distributed environments is a reality today. And it is not going
> to go away tomorrow.

Let's see, I still have the newspaper article with my picture in it when
the place I was working went to "Distributed data Processing".  That was
1981.  Since then, they have gone centralized, gone back to distributed,
gone back to centralized and are now back distributed.  May not go away,
but it will definitely change.

> 
> SOA is not a university thing. They still do OCAML, Haskell and
> similar - SOA is practical thing.

Well, I recently visited another education site I used to work at.  We
use Banner where I am today (it replaced in house applications on an
IBM mainframe).  I asked if they used Banner.  I found the answer to be
rather interesting as it was 180 degrees away from my current employer.
They looked at Banner and chose not to for exactly the reasons I have
a;ways been against any of these canned programs.  No flexibility.  Where
I am now they shove a package at you and tell you to change the way you
do things to match the programs capabilities.  Now that's what I call
user friendly.  This former locations writes applications based on user
defined requirements.  Care to bet which one is paying more for their
system and its maintenance?  Oh yeah, at my current location, since
dumping their locally written systems in favor of canned packages the
programming staff has more than tripled.  Tell me again how all this
new stuff is more economical.

> 
> Typical SOA advocates have 10-25 years of experience.

Somehow, I find that very hard to believe.

> 
>> http://tinyurl.com/3crd5o
>> "Remember Cobol? If You Don't, Get Reacquainted"
>> 
>> Extract :
>> "In spite of its reputation, Cobol remains a resilient force in IT. Dale
>> Vecchio, research director at Gartner Inc., says there are roughly 180
>> billion lines of Cobol worldwide. This isn't surprising, given that Cobol
>> has been around for more than 40 years. What is surprising is Gartner's
>> comment in a February research note stating that 15% of all new application
>> functionality through 2005 will be in Cobol."
> 
> Not surprising.
> 
> If the new features is <X% of the total app, then it does not make
> any sense to rewrite the entire app in a new language to add the
> new functionality.
 
And if the old, much simpler language can do the job, it really doesn't
make sense to use newer, more complicated technology simply because it
is newer.  But, Gartner wouldn't agree and more people will listen to
them than to me.

bill


-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>