It is
but it is unremarkable as predictions go:
1. One reason to build a data warehouse is to shield enterprise
systems from the Internet.
Putting mission-critical systems on today's Internet is a profoundly
risky idea given DDoS.
See
replication and isolation: inside the Intranet and on the
Internet.
2. Using a single application may or may not mean a single
database. Usually it doesn't.
Large
system database builders recognize the need to replicate. Otherwise,
locking
problems are deadly at some n scale (some relational databases are better
than others
at
locking).
3. The generalizations in that description are vast. "The
world of tomorrow will have many
more
people in it." D'oh. Yes, the bandwidth is a problem.
D'oh.
4. What does 'customized access to data in real time' mean?
In other words, a report
is a
report is a report. A form is a form is a form. Are either
'customized in real time'
or do
programmers customize forms, deliver them, and then the data they 'get' or
'post'
or
'put' is returned in 'real time' minus network hops, minus processing time on
the
server, minus traffic conditions, and so on?
5. Data that is not validated before it is stuffed into a database
is dangerous data.
Full
stop. ALL business databases use some form of business rules on the client
or the
server
or both validate data. Sometimes they validate it, then pull it back
out
and
send it to another system (think Federal reporting of crime statistics)
which
revalidates it. Again, d'oh. So what is the role
of synchronization? I can
guess
but enough.
It's
valid in the sense that yeah, that's what we do with databases. How
web services
changes that is a mystery. Wireless is just another device with
possibly server-side
XSLT
or other means to make the package sent to it light enough to
process.
A
service-oriented architecture is a big API for exchanging documents be it change
orders, contracts, or geek love letters. One can adopt an RPC
approach to that,
but
all the Internet knows is bits on the wire and all the WWW adds are ways to
name
those bits on the wire so they can be located, then put, get, posted,. and you
get
the idea. We used to call these Document architectures before that
quit being
trendy. As a thought experiment, try to visualize a set of
services that an enterprise
can
perform digitally and determine how many of those are not reliant on sending and
receiving documents. I want to know the time.
Fine. Does it send me a clock? Does
it
send me a timestamp? Does it send me a message instructing the clock on my
machine
to
display the time?
The
idea behind web services at the base is to expose parts of a database via a set
of
ports with named resources such that anyone can write a client to them.
The hope is
that a
client can then aggregate information from multiple sources, organizations, etc.
for a
specific view. Think tight fusion from loosely organized
sources. If you think
in
HumanML or ontology terms, there are some semantic issues with doing
that.
len
-----Original
Message-----
From: James Landrum
[mailto:james.landrum@ndsu.nodak.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 12,
2004 3:29 PM
To: Human Markup
Subject: [huml] is this a
valid prediction?
reference:
Betts, Mitch. 2002. “More Predictions on the Future of
Mobile/Wireless Computing.” ComputerWorld Magazine, December 16, 2002. ComputerWorld, Inc. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,76656p2,00.html
Quote:
The marriage of Web services and mobile devices will have
powerful implications for enterprise users and IT managers. It will give them
customized access to relevant data in real time. For example, remote sales
distributors using handheld devices in the field could use a single
application that could access inventory records, price lists and customer
profitability statements without having to build a huge data warehouse. Also,
synchronizing data through a Web services interface allows the application to
validate the data before writing it directly to the database, which is
critical to maintaining data integrity. However, the limitations of current
network connections will prevent the use of Web services for thin mobile
applications until after 2010. -- Joe Owen, chief technology officer,
XcelleNet Inc., Alpharetta, Ga.
--