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Versioning an Issue With Web Services |
To some CIOs, the process by which application developers assign unique version numbers to unique states of software programs can be distinctly counterproductive.
Take Web services, for example. As growth in this development paradigm has exploded over the last few years, programmers are changing code frequently, constantly upgrading their apps to talk to other ones. While this practice increases usability, it also complicates the user experience by requiring that the very latest version is installed.
This is a pet peeve for Alex Krapf, CEO of Codemesh, an independent software vendor in Carlisle, Mass. Krapf's company specializes in language interoperability, and he says he's experienced problems with customers who change details in particular code without knowing who uses the code and what they use it for.
"We see these instances where users change the service and three days later they get nasty phone calls from people they didn't even know were using it," he says. "It's bad enough to manage versions inside your monolithic application, but when someone publishes a new version for everyone to use, those problems are compounded."
Technically speaking, the versioning problem is one of incompatibility. Each new version of a program may add new top-level constructs (such as elements, types and groups) and extend existing constructs with optional content. Instances created based on earlier schema lack these elements, and require new schema with new target namespaces.
One solution to this problem is for clients to ignore the extra data. Another solution is to use a mapper; both the .NET XML-to-object mappers (XmlSerializer and DataContractSerializer) do this. Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0 (which is used by Java API for XML Web Services) has an option to do it, too.
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2. Open Source
The benefits of open source software are well known. Among them: Open source can encourage software re-use, improve quality and security, protect against vendor lock-in and even allow greater flexibility in customization. From a short-term perspective, open source software or services can be utilized easily to address a specific pain point.
Typically, this narrow focus allows a team to recognize a return on investment (ROI) relatively quickly, especially if longer-term goals or objectives for an application are not included in the project justification or funding criteria. For Doug Harr, CIO at Ingres Corp. in Redwood City, Calif., this is part of the appeal. Harr hails open source for three main reasons: reduced cost, large-scale availability and access to a large community of developers who have crafted either portions of the solution or extensions to it.
"At the end of the day, while we CIOs want something that's not too expensive, what we really want is reliable software," he says. "We're not looking for free, we're looking for something that's cost effective and solves the business problems at the same time."
Open source has become a key part of the strategy for organizations building on to packaged applications because it can easily be used to tweak off-the-shelf software packages. Furthermore, while most companies handle open source in-house, a number of solutions from vendors such as Red Hat and Novell are products that CIOs can buy and build on to at some point down the road.
Especially with the rise of RubyCLR, open source software for writing .NET applications, CIOs like Harr predict that reliance on open source for application development will continue to increase. Recent headlines about Oracle offering support for Red Hat Linux and Sun Microsystems launching an open source Java project emphasize these trends.
Perhaps the only downside to open source at this point is security. Alan Cox, a prominent figure in the U.K. open source movement, has been warning for a year that hackers have open source software in their sights. "Things appear in the media, like 'Open source software is more secure, more reliable and there are [fewer] bugs,' " Cox told delegates at London's LinuxWorld conference last year. "There is a lot of money going into security, but the situation is worse, because there is a lot of money going into breaking security, too."
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