SOA and So Much Metadata

Everyone probably knows that metadata is "data about data". This concept has been around throughout the short history of information technology and before. The library catalogue is the archetypal embodiment of metadata. Data structures and then databases need description and these were more technical type declarations, schemas and Entity-Relationship diagrams. XML deserves special mention in this one paragraph of metadata history as it has revolutionised the way metadata is done. Now those library catalogues, those data structures alike can be described in XML.

Now metadata and XML has a particularly important role in SOA. Metadata is the glue that holds services together in SOA. WSDL and SOAP which are both based on XML are used at runtime to communicate with services. This is not the only importance of metadata in SOA though. Metadata has an increasing role during design time if you are going to get the most reusability from your SOA.

The amount of metadata require at design time is huge. To appreciate this it is instructive to have a look at the Zachman architecture framework grid. This 30 cell grid is full of architectures that use metadata models. Some might argue that some of the material from the top rows of the Zachman grid (scope and business model) is pretty far removed from working systems and should not be bundled in with metadata more directly relevant to implemented systems. Program code might not be considered by some as metadata but nevertheless it is an abstraction of data submitted to a CPU for execution. The point is that there is an awful lot of design time metadata in enterprise architecture. It might be XML, or UML, or other diagrams or lists but it should all be recorded and it all is interrelated.

The challenge has always been to store this metadata in a way that allows it to be easily retrieved, in a way that makes the connections to other metadata explicit and a way that can be discovered for new projects. Reusability has not been something that was discovered with SOA. Business process and data models have always been relevant over multiple projects and it has always been important to be able to find metadata when the need arises or when maintenance work needs to be done on old applications.

Finding a repository for all this metadata is not easy. Where these artefacts are stored with the tools that create them it makes it difficult to combine into cohesive store of information. Taking my organisation as an example, we use Telelogic System Architect for the higher level enterprise architecture document and Rational Software Architect for some of models used in our applications. We also have and issue register, a call logging system and diagrams done in Microsoft Visio. For data warehouse we use Oracle Designer and Oracle Data Warehouse builder. We store system information in CVS (software and document versioning), our file server, our intranet and our Wiki. No wonder we sometimes have trouble finding something.

How can I be sure that a developer has looked up all the previous work that has been done previously before the developer proceeds to develop a new service or interface? We could buy a metadata repository to hold all this information, but without good governance of the process of creating metadata this would be just one more data store in which to hide our artefacts. If it is clear what goes where then multiple repositories is not such a problem although it is obviously easier, the fewer different repositories you have.

In a sequel to this posting I will write more about registries and repositories, which are technical aids to solving the metadata flood. In this posting I hope I have established a need for dealing with metadata effectively.

Web 2.0 Reaches Fever Pitch

This week I have had two acquaintances in South Australia evangelize about Web 2.0. The first was Mike Seyfang. He is interviewed in an article in "The Adelaide Review". from the world of Microsoft. The last time I was contact with Mike he was working for Microsoft in an Innovation Centre they had set up in partnership with the SA Government. The article focused on micro-blogging in twitter and facebook and did not really get to the heart of Web 2.0 which I feel is the collaboration and the easy combination of tools.

The second Web 2.0 evangelist was Kym Farnik from IBM. This is a man with huge credentials in serious IT and he was describing what big blue was doing in this space. Kym was presenting the Australian Computer Society, IT Architect SIG. He was focusing more on the tools to create product that can be used in mash-ups.

The message from both of these respected IT people was that Web 2.0 is ready to come in from the realm of the teenage hobbyists and the anarchic masses to provide some real business benefits. It is a hard message to sell. Instant messaging has been around for quite some time and does not seem to have penetrated the organizations I work for. A Wiki has found a place amongst a group of my IT people but it struggles to be recognized as an information store of any importance.

There is no doubting the utility of the Web 2.0. What is it about business that squeezes the life out of this technology? It could be the control that big business demands over its information assets. It could be the lack of freedom in relation to IT. It could be that web 2.0 succeeds in a world where people want to collaborate for the sake of collaborating. Collaboration in the business world has to be much more directed to some other outcome.

I think we'll see more applications of Web 2.0 in the business arena, especially as the power of Microsoft and IBM are behind its evangelizing. I look forward to this. Watch the mobile phone application space. This could be really big, however I do not think Web 2.0 itself will be seismic shift in the way most organizations do business. Expect a few neat add-ons to web applications to be developed with Web 2.0. I would also expect some workgroup collaborative tools that will have a fairly narrow focus rather than replacing the way we all work.

Reference
Beyond Blogging in "The Adelaide Review" , No 319, June 22-July5 2007, p8, http://www.adelaidereview.com.au/

Farnik, Kym, Making on-line communities and community collaboration real(Leveraging Web 2.0), http://sa.acs.org.au/it_arch/images/a/a7/ACS_Web_2.0.pdf

Chasers War on Wikipedia

I went to see a live show on Sunday. The performers were Julian Morrow and Charles Firth from the television program "Chasers War on Everything". This is an Australian comedy program. Some of the clips from it have been put on YouTube and circulated around the Internet. One of their more famous clips is where they put stockings over their heads and walked into shops to see what the reaction would be to this fashion statement. Charles Firth set himself a challenge to beat Michael Moore's record of being thrown out of 34 global corporate headquarters in a month by getting thrown out of 35 headquarters in a day. You get the idea. These guys like to have a dig at the Establishment.


Julian and Charles were doing a talk as part of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, which is a talk-fest that brings together some of the most respected intellectuals around the world to discuss the important issues, like global warming, inequality and indigenous rights. The Festival this year was subtitled "Which Way to the Future". Julian and Charles's session had a theme of new technology. It started with everyone SMS-ing questions to the two presenters and them responding. The performance was entertaining although not the typical serious material provided in the Festival of Ideas. Julian and Chas were good enough to give my kids signatures at the end of the show.

The purpose of this article is to not review their performance. This will probably done by others in the references below. I want to focus on the second part of their show which was about Wikipedia. Charles introduced the audience to Wikipedia and then proceeded to attempt to deface it by putting in spurious entries. On the Wikipedia entry for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) who is his employer, he wrote "Bunch of no-talent fascist dictators" or something similar. He made changes to other Wikipedia entries for politicians. Charles also related how he had edited his own Wikipedia entry to say something like "Charles is the greatest living intellectual on the earth" only to find that 15 minutes later he got a call from someone saying sternly "You can't do that".

My interest in this is not that it is possible the deface Wikipedia but that Wikipedia survives this type of onslaught. The ABC site and the other sites were fixed by the end of the show by a group of unseen and proably voluntary Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia is a testament to what can be achieved through collaboration throughout the world by a large group of well-meaning content providers and despite a few malevolent (albeit humorous) deeds the Wikipedia remains an amazing resource.

This point is put well by Lars Aronsson

"Most people, when they first learn about the wiki concept, assume that a website that can be edited by anybody would soon be rendered useless by destructive input. It sounds like offering free spray cans next to a grey concrete wall. The only likely outcome would be ugly graffiti and simple tagging, and many artistic efforts would not be long lived. Still, it seems to work very well"

The Wiki concept is something we have put in place in my organisation in a limited form. The software developers exchange and record information on Wiki software. It works very well. The organisation's intranet however is tightly controlled. The content management system provides the ability to have a work-flow of authorisation to publish almost anything. One person still has to authorise any content on the intranet. This I hope will change shortly. The tightly controlled nature of this information means that the information on the intrnet is not as complete or current as a Wiki might be. The sensitivity to freedom for internal content authors is curious given the Wikipedia success for a much more open content source.

References

That great picture is by Nattalia Alonso and appears on the blog John Beohm's blog http://idents.tv/blog/2007/05/. Spot the similarity with the Simpson's couch.

Chasers War on Everything Website: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/

Some video clips of Chasers War on Everything including the global headquarter record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ344JGAUYo

Adelaide Festival of Ideas: http://www.adelaidefestivalofideas.com.au/about.html

Other blogs on the Festival of Ideas:
http://ff.moobaa.com/blog/

http://pavlovblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/adelaide-festival-of-ideas-2007.html

http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2007/07/adelaide_festiv_3.php

http://www.frogworth.com/stuart/blog/?p=94

Lars Aronsson's quote was from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki#_note-1

Someone using Wiki for the enterprise (Spot the "bottoms-up approach"!) http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/firstlook/2007/06/scalable_wikis_made_easy_by_mi.php