http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/08/HNpatrickqa

» All 33 InfoWorld Newsletters
Technology & Business Daily



 

Finance
Government
Healthcare
SMB
Telecom
Technology News
 
InfoWorld Daily
Tech Watch
The Gripe Line
Jon Udell
Open Sources
Advice Line
All InfoWorld Blogs
 
Application Development
Applications
Data Management
Hardware
Networking
Platforms
Professional Services
Security
SOA
Web Services
Standards
Storage
Telecom
Virtualization
Wireless
All Technologies
 
Product Guide
Top Products
Product Finder
Reviews Archive
Analysis Archive
Test Center Home
 
 HOME
NEWS
COLUMNS
BLOGS
PODCASTS
VIDEOS
TECHNOLOGIES
TEST CENTER
EVENTS
CAREERS
IT EXEC-CONNECT
 

BEA‘s Paul Patrick discusses Project Free Flow
Chief architect talks about SOA, WS, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft

By Paul Krill
June 08, 2005E-mail  Printer Friendly Version
Paul Patrick is the chief architect for BEA Systems‘ Project Free Flow product release, which is set to be formally unveiled June 9. Project Free Flow is intended to enable deployment of services infrastructure for SOA, with an enterprise service bus serving as a key component. Previously, Patrick worked on CORBA technology at Digital Equipment. InfoWorld editor at large Paul Krill recently interviewed Patrick about SOA, Project Free Flow, and other topics, including the company‘s relationship with Java founder Sun Microsystems.
Free IT resource

Free IDC Executive Brief: Building the Next-Generation Data Center on Open Standards

Sponsored by IBM
Free IT resource

Enterprise Search Spotlight

Sponsored by Google

InfoWorld: Everyone is talking about SOA. How does BEA‘s approach to SOA differ from the approach of competitors such as IBM or Sun Microsystems?
Patrick: What‘s different is we‘re taking a broader view of the problem than just Web services. We believe it really needs an infrastructure approach. A bus will take you to a certain point, but you need richer security, richer routing, richer management, and it‘s typically found in most of the individual bus-type products. So we see it as bringing all of these pieces together and moving really up the curve, if you will, and focusing on the agility for IT to be able to react to changes in the business by making it easier to compose applications rather than code them.
InfoWorld: An enterprise service bus is featured in Free Flow. It‘s been called QuickSilver. What do you see as the criticality of the enterprise service bus? There‘s been debate in the industry about what exactly an enterprise service bus is and whether or not you need one.
Patrick: Well, an enterprise service bus filled some pretty significant voids. As enterprises start building services and the services begin to proliferate, one of the problems that can occur in a classic approach is a lot of point-to-point connections. And in making the point-to-point connections, applications are back down into riding very close to the plumbing level. A service bus can help address that point-to-point scenario, can help provide the abstraction so that an application developer, whether it be a consumer or a service [writer], can focus on the business logic itself, instead of on "How do I manipulate and deal with the plumbing that gets from point to point?" This allows for new versions of services and services that have lifecycle without having to perturb everybody in the communication path.
InfoWorld: What was your role in the development of CORBA?
Patrick: I spent 14 years at Digital Equipment prior to it being acquired by BEA, where I was the architect for DEC‘s CORBA ORB [object request broker], which BEA acquired. I‘ve been involved in the definition of CORBA and various aspects of it throughout CORBA‘s [history] as the premier object technology.
InfoWorld: BEA did not acquire DEC. I‘m a little bit confused here.
Patrick: BEA acquired two products and engineering out of DEC. They acquired the Object Broker team, [which involved the] CORBA ORB, and they acquired the DEC Message Queue team, and that [provided] our messaging product. And those technologies, as well as people, were then folded into BEA‘s products.
InfoWorld: A lot of people use CORBA, but I don‘t think it ever got the critical mass that was expected. What was the issue there?
Patrick: There are differences between Web services predecessors, whether they were CORBA or Microsoft‘s DCOM [Distributed COM] or anything, versus what we‘re seeing with Web services. One of the first really obvious differences is that all of those models started by defining a programming model and then looked at interoperability, security, and management as a secondary or tertiary thing. If we think about what‘s happened with Web services, the first thing that came out was in fact an interoperable protocol, followed by security and other things like WS-Security, XML digital signature, and XML encryption. Now [there is] work going on around management. That was one of the things. The second thing is there was still a battle going on out there in the world about not just [being] interoperable on the wire, but [also in] data representation. And XML was clearly [seen] as a better solution as it allows for the evolvability and the self-describing of data. That, you couldn‘t necessarily easily do in CORBA.
InfoWorld: The problem we‘re trying to solve here is integrating different applications and data, correct?
Patrick: Exactly. And so I think [the] Web services adoption rate has been accelerated over what we saw in CORBA mainly because it‘s ubiquitous, right? We‘ve got lots of vendors onboard, so unlike in the CORBA world, [where it is] really CORBA vs. J2EE vs. Distributed COM from Microsoft. And there was always this tension about were you a Microsoft shop or a CORBA shop or a J2EE shop. With Web services we‘ve decoupled what operating system you run on or what programming paradigm for distributed computing do you use, and made it so that we can interoperate between these different things in a consistent and [unified] way. And the other big difference that occurred, and this was not necessarily a technological failure in CORBA but more of an issue of understanding, is that we realized that a lot of people [with] CORBA tried to do what they were doing with RPC but in an object-oriented fashion, and they were modeling things. And I think one of the things that‘s come out with the Web services world [is] the concept [that] you‘re not modeling objects, you‘re modeling services [and] realizing that granularity had to be more coarse. That has helped also.
InfoWorld: I understand that Free Flow is intended to take BEA beyond Java. How is it going to do that and why do you see the need to do that?
Patrick: The reason Free Flow needs to go beyond Java is that the reality in the world out there in most of the IT shops is few if any are homogeneous. They‘re not all J2EE shops or all .Net shops. They tend to have a mix. And as a result we have to come up with a way [to] tie these together. So it‘s not about what‘s the best programming language or the best programming paradigm anymore. From a business standpoint it‘s how can I quickly, easily, and [with the] least amount of cost, solve a business problem by utilizing different technologies that I may have already had and exposing them as services? And the realization is, because of this heterogeneity, there are a number of shops that -- even if [they] were a J2EE shop -- had multiple vendors‘ [products] in it. The reality is we‘ve got to make this all tie together, because as you said, and we totally agree, this is really all about integration. Integration is not a homogeneous issue. It‘s a heterogeneous type of problem.
InfoWorld: Why is integration so critical, and what‘s happened that‘s made it maybe a bigger problem now than it was before? I guess heterogeneity would have something to do with that.
Patrick: Part of it‘s the heterogeneity problem that if we roll back to the ‘90s and such, we really talked about what operating system we were focused on because we were HP shops or Sun shops or Microsoft shops or whatever, because we were coding at that very low level. The problem was we were all reinventing things again and again. Well, the application infrastructure wave came through and really changed that. It gave us the ability to do things in standard-based ways that made development easier. So the developers spent more time focusing on solving the business problem and less time focusing on writing [code]. And so in that wave came the CORBAs and the J2EEs and such. The problem that started happening is the realization that money was suddenly tight, the bubble had burst. People couldn‘t continue to throw money at the problem, they had to start thinking, "How can I leverage the investments that I‘ve made in the past and reutilize them in new and different ways?" Because they couldn‘t afford to go back and rewrite their back-end systems, which is really where they kept the company jewels and the information that was necessary. They couldn‘t just go back and rewrite it, so they had to figure out how to reach back into those systems and unlock that information. Because those systems weren‘t J2EE or CORBA or COM or anything like that, you immediately got into this heterogeneity type of problem of legacy systems, new systems, a mix of vendors and a mix of technology.
InfoWorld: What do you see as Microsoft‘s role in SOA? It doesn‘t talk about it much. Where do you see it fitting in as maybe part of Free Flow or from a competitive viewpoint?
Patrick: Microsoft has a very strong Web presence via .Net. It is real out in the industry [and people are] using it. As such, what we keep seeing is that people on their desktop are already running Web services clients, [service] consumers, if you will. And a lot of them run and write those clients in .Net. But they‘ve also got Unix boxes and mainframes and all other kinds of things. So Microsoft is another piece of that overall service ecosystem that is occurring. I think sometimes a lot of the industry thinks about them as being the desktop only, but they‘ve also made some inroads using .Net in a service-based approach in the back room. So I think this is realization when we think about Free Flow that .Net is there, it‘s something that as an industry we can‘t ignore. [It is] Web service-based so that it can interoperate, because [Microsoft] too realized that it had to play with other people. And to play with other people on different platforms, interoperability was really the foundation that needed [to occur].
InfoWorld: BEA, IBM, and Microsoft have been working on a bunch of different WS standards. Are there any more standards coming out? What about criticism that there are so many of these so-called standards and specifications that nobody can keep track of them all, and IT shops are only going to implement a couple of them anyway instead of the seemingly dozens out there?
Patrick: Right. Well, you know as any of us, whether it‘s Microsoft or IBM and BEA together driving some of the Web services security or reliable messaging or whether it‘s management, whether it‘s OASIS or W3C, I mean, all of us realize that standardization is critical because without the standardization, interoperability is significantly hampered. There are a lot of specs. If you look at the specs, the key is that they‘re for pieces of puzzles and what the infrastructure vendors like BEA and such are going to need to do is to make usage of those standards to solve those problems. A lot of people right now are using some of the open source Web services kits, if you will, and are now writing down to those lower-level specs themselves. And as those specs evolve they can be fragile, and so part of this is, how do we as an industry get those things solidified and tied together? Instead of trying to build one überspec for everything, define a set of building blocks on which to build things out of because not everybody will need everything.
InfoWorld: Are there any more specs coming out in any areas that haven‘t been already covered?
Patrick: I think throughout the industry we‘re going to find that there are going to be additional specs that are emerging, some of them from IBM, BEA, Microsoft together, some from others. There are a number of things that are going on. There‘s discussion about metadata exchange as being one of the specs. I‘ve seen things around [such as] single sign-on. So there‘s a number of specs that are yet to come out. Not all will make it to a standard. One of the things that is really critical is if we‘re going to have interoperability, we‘ve got to start bringing some things together. Where there‘s been some good movement in, for instance, Liberty moving SAML and some of the basic federation capabilities into OASIS. Even Microsoft in their descriptions and discussions about Active Directory Federation Services has embraced SAML as one of the primary token types used in the federation scheme. So we‘re beginning to see consolidation happening. And as that consolidation happens, we‘ll better benefit the industry and the consumers.
InfoWorld: How would you describe BEA‘s relationship with Sun? I guess it‘s been kind of strained since Sun put the bundled app server in a version of Solaris. Would you call Sun a partner or a competitor?
Patrick: We still work very closely together. BEA is a member of the Java Community Process. We work with the other people in the Java Community Process to drive standards in that. There are other app servers out there. Sometimes it‘s co-opetition. Sometimes, we‘re working together. I don‘t know that [Sun‘s bundling] has made a significant impact on us, per se.
InfoWorld: Would you say that maybe it had the same impact as JBoss offering a free open source app server, or is there just no way to measure impact at this point?
Patrick: I don‘t know that there‘s a good way to measure it at this point.
InfoWorld: After project Free Flow comes out, where does BEA go from there?
Patrick: Well, Free Flow is not a one-shot thing. Free Flow will evolve and grow as we start looking deeper into the market as service infrastructure begins to expand. There are plenty of places and issues that need to be resolved, important things having to do with contact space routing and we start looking at service-level agreements. I mean, there‘s a whole gamut of places to go. The question is, where are the right ones to go to and in which order? But we can think of a number of places that we‘ll need to go, as well as expanding and enhancing and enriching our Free Flow offering.
E-mail  Printer Friendly Version


Paul Krill is an InfoWorld editor at large.

无法显示此页
解释: Web 服务器连接被关闭。
尝试下列:
刷新页: 单击“刷新”按钮来再次搜索此页。超时可能是由于 Internet 拥塞造成的。 检查拼写: 请检查您是否正确键入了网页地址。键入的网页地址不正确。 从链接访问: 如果有一个到您正在找的网页的链接，请尝试从该链接访问此页。 联系网站: 您可能想要联系网站的管理员，以确认网页仍然存在。您可以使用网站主页上列出的电子邮件地址或电话号码与他们联系。
技术信息(提供给支持人员)
错误代码 64: 主机不可用 背景信息: 与 Web 服务器的连接中断。
TOP NEWS:
» AMCC to buy networking chip maker Quake
Quake designs chips for 10-Gigabit Ethernet equipment, an emerging engine of high-speed data centers and enterprise LAN backbones
» HP extends outsourcing deal with bank
The deal marks another step in competing with CA and IBM for enterprise information management contracts
» ‘$100 laptop‘ to be loaded with Wikipedia content
Organizers are experimenting with loading pieces of the Wikipedia on to prototypes of the laptop, expected in Q1 2007
» Mobile worm variant causes alarm
Commwarrior.Q spreads via Bluetooth, MMS or an infected memory card inserted into a device
» New Google feature flags dangerous sites
Google teams with The Stop Badware Coalition to alert users about potentially dangerous sites
» Wikipedia to focus on quality issues
Founder says Wikipedia needs to improve the quality of its content in the coming year



MOBILITY MANAGEMENT MEANS SECURITY, SAVINGS
Turn your enterprise‘s mobile devices from scattered security risks into the productive, cost-saving gear they were meant to be with a device and systems management application. This Webcast will explain how to effectively manage mobile devices.
»  Click here to view this Webcast  INTELLIGENT CRM
This InfoWorld IT Strategy Guide will show you how to implement an intelligent CRM system that will forge better connections between your customers and employees that can drive revenue and profits. Sponsored by Oracle On Demand.
» Click here to download now

- Special Advertising Partners -
WHITE PAPERS

>> WHITE PAPERS LIBRARY
WHITE PAPERS E-MAIL ALERT

Find out when the latest white paper is available:


»  Numara Track-It!: An Effective Approach to Software Compliance - Utilizing automated asset management tools to track software licenses has proven invaluable to companies that have implemented them. Software License Management tools such as Numara Track-It!(R) save ...
»  Demystifying ITIL: Recommendations for the SMB Market - Recently, there’s been hype about ITIL in the US. Yet, despite the buzz, most IT professionals are still unaware of what ITIL really is and where it came from. Numara Software examines the history ...
»  Solving the spyware problem - Sophos - The explosion in spyware has presented businesses with increasing concerns about security issues, from data theft and network damage to reputation loss. Learn how spyware infiltrates and affects ...
»  Improve Enterprise Compliance and Reduce the Costs of Managing Information
»  Define your ILM Strategy
»  Customer Process Management: The Real Time Enterprise Depends on the merging of CRM and BPM

MORE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT WHITE PAPERS

WHITE PAPERS BY TOPIC

•Application development
•Applications
•Business
•Hardware
•Networking
•Platforms
•Security
•Standards
•Storage
•Telecom
•Web services
•Wireless
» Maximize SAP with HP Virtualized Solutions
This webcast explores solutions for the IT challenges faced by many enterprise-level firms today. ...
» Rackspace-Managed Servers, Fanatical Support"
Full-Scale Microsoft & Linux Solutions & 0% Network Downtime! Click here now!
» Rapid Development Platform
Download your FREE (no registration required) copy of the ProjectLocker Rapid Project Platform ...
» An introduction to testing web services
This white paper aims to give an introduction to the challenges in testing web services. It is aimed ...
» Create stable process for managing database change
Because applications grow and change continually additions and changes to database structures are a ...

SPONSORED LINKS  
»  HP - It‘s your business on paper. Make it look good. Brilliantly simple. HP.
»  Symantec - Free White Papers, Trialware and more from Symantec
»  DataDirect - Reduce Mainframe Integration Complexity! Mainframe SOA Whitepaper
»  Free Report from IDC - Leveraging Storage Virtualization to Optimize Utilization.
»  AT&T - Navigating the roadmap to a converged network.


INFOWORLD MARKETPLACE

» DevTest - Simply smarter QA test management
DevTest is the user-friendly tool for managing all of your QA testing. Create and manage test ...
» Market-leading defect tracking from TechExcel
DevTrack is a powerful, affordable and easy to use solution for project and defect tracking. It ...
» Rackspace-Managed Servers, Fanatical Support"
Full-Scale Microsoft & Linux Solutions & 0% Network Downtime! Click here now!
» Professional Trac Hosting
Get Started with Trac the Easy Way - Secure, Reliable, Easy - Get Your Free Trial Today
» Rapid Development Platform
Download your FREE (no registration required) copy of the ProjectLocker Rapid Project Platform ...
>> BUY A LINK NOW


FREE SUBSCRIPTION


Order today to get your FREE subscription (a $195 value!) to InfoWorld magazine, the weekly publication that provides indispensable product information to IT professionals.
NOTE: Complimentary subscriptions sent only to those applicants who qualify.
First Name:
Last Name:
Company Name:
Title:
Mailing Address:
City:
State/Province:
Select One        Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming ------------------------------ U.S. Military-America (AA) U.S. Military-Overseas Europe (AE) U.S. Military-Overseas Pacific (AP) ------------------------------ ALBERTA BRITISH COLUMBIA MANITOBA NEW BRUNSWICK NEWFOUNDLAND NOVA SCOTIA NORTHWEST TERRITORIES NUNAVUT ONTARIO PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND QUEBEC SASKATCHEWAN YUKON TERRITORY ------------------------------ Zip/Postal Code:
Email Address:

NOTE: Offer valid in U.S. and Canada only
Non-U.S. clickhere

SEE ALSO
• BEA eyes services vision

FIND PRODUCTS AND COMPANIES
» COMPLETE PRODUCT GUIDE



US AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY

TECHNOLOGY INDEX
• Applications
• Application Development
• Security
• Networking
• Wireless
• Platforms
• Hardware
• Data Management
• Storage
• Web Services
• Business
• Telecom
• Professional Services
• Standards
TECH WATCH 
Google aims to tame Wild West
Google has heroically donned its cowboy hat, loaded its six-shooter, and teamed up with The Stop Badware Coalition (TSBC) in an effort to protect mild-mannered Net denizens from no-good, data-swipin‘, bad-ware spewin‘ Web sites, reports the IDG News ...
Blogger‘s jailing turns up heat
The AP reports today that the jailing of freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf, 24, "is turning up the heat on the growing list of reporters order to cough up information to federal grand juries: Cooperate face prison time." Wolf was jailed on ...
JON UDELL‘S CORNER 
Tech believers, meet evolution
(InfoWorld) - “Macs suck,” my son informed me the other day. Since we use both PCs and Macs...
Jon‘s Blog |Jon‘s Column
COLUMNISTS
Venture capitalist names his terms
(InfoWorld) - I had lunch last week with Drew Clark, the lead strategy guy at IBM’s Venture Capital...
» MORE COLUMNISTS
MORE INFOWORLD BLOGS
Virtualization Report 
VMware Recognized / and FireEye Introduces a Security Appliance
VMware was recently recognized for their ACE product and was also honored as an eWeek Top Product pick... after that, ...
Open Sources 
Lenovo to preload SUSE on Thinkpad
It seems like the never-ending Linux desktop quest is finally getting a bit closer as SVN reports that Lenovo will ...


• Advice Line
• Database Underground
• The Deep End
• Enterprise Mac
• Geeks in Paradise
• Grid Meter
• The Gripe Line
• InfoWorld Daily
• Inside IT
• IT Troubleshooter
• ITXtreme
• Jon‘s Radio
• Open Sources
• ProdBlog
• Real World SOA
• Security Adviser
• SMB IT
• The Storage Network
• Tech Watch
• Virtualization Report
• Zero Day

IDG ENTERPRISE NETWORK

•More Desktops News...  (ComputerWorld)
•Juniper enhances routers for IP TV  (ComputerWorld)
GOVERNMENT IT & POLICY
•True Blue, Or Too Blue?
•Custom-Built Pathogens Raise Bioterror Fears
•The Secretive Fight Against Bioterror


ADVERTISEMENT

 HOME  NEWS  COLUMNS  BLOGS  PODCASTS  VIDEOS  TECHNOLOGIES  TEST CENTER  EVENTS  CAREERS  IT EXEC-CONNECT  About |Advertise |Awards |Store |Contact Us 
Copyright © 2006,Reprints, Permissions, Licensing,IDG Network,Privacy Policy,Terms of Service.
All Rights reserved. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses,
phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services.
ComputerWorld ::LinuxWorld ::Network World ::CIO ::PC World ::Darwin ::CMO ::CSO
IT Careers ::JavaWorld ::Macworld ::Mac Central ::Playlist ::GamePro ::GameStar ::Gamerhelp
ITWorld Canada ::Computerwoche ::Techworld UK ::tecChannel ::IDG.se ::IDG.no ::IDG.pl