InfoQ Homepage Architecture Content on InfoQ
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IBM affirms Restful SOA & dynamic languages with Project Zero
In a recent interview, IBM WebSphere CTO Jerry Cuomo affirms that REST has become a core focus for IBM with Project Zero, a new web application development framework continues the trend away from pure java and towards dynamic languages for web application development and also emphasizes RESTful service development.
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Do You Need a Data Layer?
With LINQ nearing release, the need for a separate data access layer needs to be reevaluated. Is it still an essential part of an application's design? Or has it become an appendix of the past?
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Linked-In, Second Life, eBay, Orbitz, Yahoo! architectures to be presented @ QCon SF
The 'architectures you've always wondered about' track at QCon San Francisco this year will be featuring the architectures of Linked-In, Second Life, eBay, Orbitz, & Yahoo!, presented directly from key architects at those companies. QCon itself also has a number of other tracks on architecture, Java, .NET, Ruby, Agile, research technologies, and more.
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Erlang's Mnesia - a distributed DBMS for highly scalable apps
Not every application has the scalability requirements of Google, Flickr or Amazon, however the ideas behind the Mnesia DBMS are compelling: a fast, in-process DBMS that takes advantage of concurrency, with the ability to replicate tables across distributed nodes for high scalability and fault tolerance.
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Amazon FPS: customized payment service & DSL
Amazon released a beta of its new Amazon Flexible Payment Service – Amazon FPS. FPS lowers transaction costs and supports micro payments. An unlimited number of Payment Instructions can be defined using a DSL. FPS makes it possible and easy to build customized payment management services, which, according to Amazon, will ultimately result in creation of innovative business models.
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What is an Architect anyway?
An MSDN Blogger poses some pretty broad questions, including: What exactly is software architecture? Do we really need it? Why have we only recently been discussing it? He then attempts to tackle some of these questions by taking us through a short history of the role of the Architect.
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Is Erlang the Java for the concurrent future?
The future of computing is going to be concurrent. Even desktop CPUs are multicore nowadays, and when customers are buying more and more CPUs to their servers, they expect their applications to scale well to utilize their new investment. But that's not going to happen with many software systems of today. Can Erlang help?
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Data normalization, is it really that good?
Normalization is one of the corner-stones of database design. Recently some discussion emerged on the need for normalization suggesting denormalization as a more scalable solution.
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Presentation: Erik Meijers on Democratizing the Cloud
As the Dutch artist MC Escher once said "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible". At Microsoft, Erik Meijers is trying to stretch .NET to cover the Cloud such that developers can incrementally and seamlessly design, develop, and debug complex distributed applications using your favorite existing and unmodified .NET compiler and deploy these applications anywhere.
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Presentation: Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on Availability and Consistency
When we move to distributed architectures for scalability and/or fault-tolerance reasons we are also introducing additional complexities. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels dives into the different parameters that play in the tension between availability and consistency and presents a generalized model that we can use to reason about the trade-offs between different solutions.
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DSLs bringing the end of single language development?
For many years, mainstream practice in enterprise software development has been to standardize on a single general purpose language on software projects, with Java and C# today being the mainstream choices. With the rise of interest in DSLs, we may be entering into a phase in which multiple languages on software projects becomes the norm, but not with the same problems of the 80's and early 90's.
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Are Mashups EAI 2.0?
Mashups are a lightweight, agile approach to application integration that utilize the protocols and standards of the web. Gregor Hohpe explores the use of Mashups and asks the question - Are Mashups EAI 2.0?
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New patterns and middleware architecture needed for true linear scalability?
Nati Shalom says existing tier-based middleware cannot for true linear scalablility. Instead he proposes a new middleware stack based on self-sufficient processing units that supports a partitioned/scale-out model. Pat Helland at Microsoft some years ago proposed some new transactional patterns and formalizations to be used in what he calls almost-infinite scalable systems.
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Does specific technology knowledge matter when recruiting?
Does technology matter when it comes to recruiting developers? Or is the way of thinking the only thing that’s really important? In a time when many job advertisements are flooded with technology buzzwords, Dan Creswell found an Amazons recruitment ad that solely focuses on thinking and understanding.
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A case study of Apache peer/code review processes
Peter C. Rigby and Daniel M. German have released a case study of peer/code review processes used at Apache which looks at the types of reviews, frequency of them, and other characteristics. Although some question the data collection methodology, the papers offer an interesting set of discussions comparing and contrasting various review methodologies.