Articles by Simeon Simeonov

JavaOne - The Next Programming Models, RIAs and Composite Applications

Wed, 09 May 2007 21:15:00 EDT

I've been around software for 20 years now. Looking back, I have mixed feelings about the progress we've made. The end results have been amazing but the process of building software hasn't fundamentally changed since the 80s. In fact, I see us make some of the same mistakes over and over again. One of the common anti-patterns is over-relying on tools and frameworks instead of inventing new programming models.

Flipping the Ad Model: Consumer Choice == More Money

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:30:00 EST

In the old TV world you'd make the most money if you could just turn all the TVs on in every household, tie people to their couches and prop their eyelids open. To online businesses - both the majors and those serving niche content - choice is good and the Net's ability to support infinitely many discoverable 'channels' is the key enabler.

The Web-Based Office++

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 13:45:00 EST

Emergence is a strong, albeit sometimes unpredictable force. The past two weeks have been full of some interesting conversations/observations. Google bought JotSpot. I was reminded yet again that Google Calendar is a great product, Gmail is a strange one and Docs and Spreadsheet are neither here nor there.

E-Commerce 2.0

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:15:00 EDT

With all the noise the Web 2.0 revolutionaries are making, it's easy to ignore another-this time velvet-revolution. E-commerce 2.0 is coming into maturity and getting ready to relieve its now 10+ year old predecessor. It's about time.

"E-Commerce 2.0" – The Velvet Revolution

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 12:15:00 EDT

With all the noise the Web 2.0 revolutionaries are making, it's easy to ignore another &emdash; this time velvet &emdash; revolution: 'E-commerce 2.0' is coming into maturity and getting ready to relieve its now ten-plus year old predecessor. It's about time.

How Can Metcalfe's Law Be Updated for Web 2.0?

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 08:45:00 EDT

'Metcalfe's Law is Wrong,' contended Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly recently in a much-discussed IEEE Spectrum article, in which they wrote: 'Of all the popular ideas of the Internet boom, one of the most dangerously influential was Metcalfe's Law.' Sim Simeonov disagrees.

The Next Programming Models

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 12:00:00 EDT

I've been around software for 20 years now. Looking back, I have mixed feelings about the progress we've made. The end results have been amazing, but the process of building software hasn't fundamentally changed since the 80s. In fact, I see us making some of the same mistakes over and over again. One of the common anti-patterns is over-relying on tools and frameworks instead of inventing new programming models.

Integration Matters

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 00:00:00 EST

The challenge of integrating software and systems will always be with us. In the brief but turbulent history of information technology, creation and destruction go hand in hand. Old technologies and approaches give way to new ones, sometimes quietly and sometimes with a fight. Yet, in this maelstrom of activity one thing remains unchanged. Our desire to solve bigger and more important business problems breeds increasing complexity. To battle this complexity we divide and conquer. We don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Integration Is the Killer App

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 00:00:00 EST

In 1975 Niklaus Wirth, the Swiss computer scientist who created the Pascal programming language, published a seminal book entitled Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. If Wirth had written about business applications, Computing + Storage = Applications would have been a better title. Of course, in 1975 there weren't that many business applications. Most of them ran limited back-office functions on mainframes. PCs weren't on the map. The killer app for PCs - the first spreadsheet - wouldn't be created until 1981.

Web Services Startups

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 00:00:00 EDT

You must have seen them - they're everywhere. Despite the market climate, Web services startups are popping up like mushrooms after rain. With no time to lose, these companies are readying themselves to take on the industry gorillas. Who's going to win?

The Standards Democracy

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 00:00:00 EDT

There's been much recent controversy about the role of Microsoft and IBM in the evolution of Web services standards. At a conference I attended not so long ago a pundit talked about the 'standard setting duopoly.' Several articles have been written about the 'undemocratic' practices of WS-I. Are things really that bad?

Can You Play the Standards Game?

Thu, 30 May 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Call me a cynic, but I don't think companies participate in standards development out of altruism. Enterprises are in the business of making their products and technologies successful. In an increasingly interconnected technology landscape, standards are the keys to interoperability.

Web Services Directions

Thu, 18 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

It's been a long time since the last XML in Transit column. Did you miss my musing on Web services? I doubt it. More likely, you were busy keeping up with all the new initiatives in the Web services space. Those of you with corporate responsibilities were probably wondering how to get some real ROI out of Web services. The more entrepreneurial of you were thinking how to make money in this new world.

Private UDDI Registries

Mon, 03 Dec 2001 00:00:00 EST

This article is based on the UDDI chapter in Building Web Services, to be released this month. It appears here in slightly different form by permission of the publisher, Sams. Contributors to the book are Doug Davis, Steve Graham, Yuichi Nakamura, and Ryo Neyama from IBM; Toufic Boubez from Saffron Technology; and Glen Daniels from Macromedia.

XMLGUITools: What'stheRightModel?

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 00:00:00 EST

There was a period around 1999-2000 when anything XML was hyped beyond belief. An XML-centric GUI tool, no matter how narrow in focus, attracted interest and, often enough, VC funding. The net result was a myriad of XML tools - really XML gadgets - that tried to address a large number of overlapping small problems. As a rule, all the GUI tools vied for the .xml (or .dtd, .xsd, .xsl, etc.) file extensions and interoperated poorly with other software.

Deeper into UDDI

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 00:00:00 EST

This article is based on the UDDI chapter in Building Web Services (Sams), a book I've written with Doug Davis, Steve Graham, Yuichi Nakamura, and Ryo Neyama from IBM, Toufic Boubez from Saffron Technology, and Glen Daniels from Macromedia. It's scheduled for release early next month.

Introduction To UDDI

Thu, 01 Nov 2001 00:00:00 EST

As we look at the evolution of both object and component programming models it's clear that the concept of an object or component registry is an essential element that facilitates the discovery and use of components.

Scaling Web Services Usage

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:00:00 EDT

In the last installment of XML in Transit (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 5), we established a framework for Web Services usage. The key roles in the framework are service providers, requesters, and brokers (see Figure 1). Moreover, the basic Web Services use workflow involves five steps (see Figure 2): providers enabling access to services and registering them with brokers, and requesters finding the right service to use from the broker service repository, binding their applications to the service, and finally, invoking the service directly from the provider.

A Framework For Using Web Services

Sun, 03 Jun 2001 00:00:00 EDT

In my last XML in Transit column (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 5) we looked in detail at the technical aspects of the service description layer of the Web Service interoperability stack (see Figure 1). In fact, the topic of our discussion - Web Services Description Language - has now been submitted to the W3C for review.

Web Services Description Language

Tue, 22 May 2001 00:00:00 EDT

It's time to look at the details of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) specification and, in particular, how abstract information about Web services is represented in XML and which extensibility mechanisms enable the binding of abstract specifications to concrete implementations. We start with a quick review of the WSDL information model.

Web Services Description Language

Sun, 04 Feb 2001 00:00:00 EST

In 'The Interoperability Stack' (XML in Transit, Vol. 2, issue 1), I presented my view of the Web service interoperability stack, a layered architecture for analyzing the different technologies involved at various levels of interoperability (see Figure 1). Here we begin our climb up from the basic Web service-layer toward the top of the stack, with a look at the leading specification for service descriptions, the aptly named Web Services Description Language (WSDL).

The Interoperability Stack

Mon, 08 Jan 2001 00:00:00 EST

For the past six months we've looked in detail at the nuts and bolts of XML protocols, Web services, and XML data encoding. These are the foundation technologies of next-generation Internet distributed applications. In the next several months, I'll focus on another, no less important area - higher-level description, discovery, and integration services.

XML in Transit: Encoding Data

Thu, 21 Dec 2000 00:00:00 EST

I just came back from the first face-to-face meeting of the W3C working group on XML Protocol (is it just me, or is the name somewhat odd-sounding?), and I'm wondering what topics to exclude from this column. Yes, that's right - exclude. Encoding data in XML is a difficult topic for many reasons. First, it's one of those technical subjects in which you need to look at lots of XML instance/schema/DTD snippets. Second, the devil is very much in the details and there are lots of them. Last but not least, there are as many ways to encode data in XML as there are data encoding needs. With this caveat, let's dive in. Keeping with the spirit of the column we'll touch on issues that are most relevant to XML protocols.

Intermediaries And More

Mon, 16 Oct 2000 00:00:00 EDT

In my last XML in Transit column (XML-J, Vol. 1, issue 5) I promised to complete my trilogy on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) by addressing the aspects of the latest specification that we haven't covered yet: intermediaries, error handling, and data encoding. Forgive me for deviating slightly from that plan. After fielding several questions about large-scale SOAP systems, I've gotten the impression that many people who've looked at the SOAP specification are confused by the notion of intermediaries. Therefore, I've decided to ignore data encoding for the time being and focus on intermediaries and error handling in SOAP.

SOAP Part 2

Thu, 14 Sep 2000 00:00:00 EDT

The last edition of the XML in Transit column (XML-J, Vol. 1, issue 4) introduced the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Instead of dwelling on technical issues, it focused on the driving forces behind the technology.

SOAP - What is this thing called SOAP? Here's the Background, Part 1

Fri, 18 Aug 2000 00:00:00 EDT

I wanted to kick off this new column on XML protocols with an introduction to the hot newcomer in this arena - Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Trouble is, there are too many ways to go about the topic. The first version I wrote was a technical introduction to SOAP laced with references to some of the important ongoing debates on XML protocols and XML distributed computing. When I finished I found that the two threads - detailed technical information and higher-level issues - interfered with each other. So I decided to focus on the technology in the next issue and devote this space to a discussion of the driving forces behind SOAP.

The Evolution of XML Protocols

Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:00:00 EDT

XML protocols can be broadly classified into two generations. First-generation protocols are based purely on XML 1.0. Second-generation protocols take advantage of two revolutionary XML standards - XML Namespaces and XML Schema. This article analyzes the reasons why we need to make a shift to second-generation protocols, and looks at industry activity in this area.

XML for B2B Integration

Wed, 12 Apr 2000 00:00:00 EDT

It wasn't long ago that computer industry pundits still thought that COM and CORBA would become the Internet business-to-business (B2B) integration infrastructure. Yet nowadays B2B integration on the Internet is done using XML on top of simple protocols such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP. The Web has won because of its simplicity, ubiquity and heterogeneity. XML has become the lingua franca of B2B because of its inherent capabilities: simplicity, extensibility and ease of processing.