For the past several weeks, we've been working on creating a viewpoint of our future-state architecture that enables a greater degree of low-hurdle innovation with technology than we currently enable. The goal is to enable anyone across the globe, inside of the organization or out, to make use of public information we provide to create applications of value, even if that value is only seen by a single individual. Call it Web 2.0; Call it Enterprise 2.0. Call it what you will. We're calling it either Freedom within a Framework or the Framework for Rapid and Empowering Development (FRED) depending on to whom we're currently pitching the idea. The latter is our EA marketing savvy at work...
The idea is simple: We want to create an environment when enterprise applications can be created and managed in an enterprise way, and opportunistic applications (i.e. ad-hoc process applications and mashups) can be created freely and with little to no involvement from the IT organization. IT does what it does best, but explicitly steps back from "owning" all information and technology in an organization. From concept to implementation, I believe that one way to foster such an environment is to allow the world of WS-* and the world of REST to co-exist within the enterprise. Rather than an either/or decision, we want enable and encourage both styles for certain types of situations.
The culmination of our work around this idea was a paper published internally at the end of November, along with a demo that provides an example RESTful interface (which depends on our existing SOA) and a couple of applications which consume information presented by those interfaces.
Over the next few weeks, I plan to post excerpts from this paper and some of the meat from the demos. My intent in doing so is twofold:
1) To posit an alternative to the REST vs. WS-* debate. I am certainly not the first to argue for cohabitation of these styles. I only wish to add my voice and provide another perspective.
2) To obtain feedback from Enterprise and SOA Architects who have either already considered, are considering, or have implemented a similar design. I'd love to hear feedback in the coming weeks from anyone wanting to way in on any of the topics below.
I'll publish the first post tomorrow, and the subsequent ones every couple of days after that. Here are the topics I plan to post about, in order:
- Embracing the Long Tail
- IFaPs: Enabling the Long Tail and Protecting the Enterprise
- REST: The Entry Point for Innovation
- Benefits of a RESTful Interface
- REST and Security
- A Demo RESTful Interface
- Demo Opportunistic Applications
As I add posts, I'll return to this post and add the hyperlinks.
Looking forward to the discussion!