peace on the web, too

In an exclusive nine-part dialogue with an imaginary eBay
Architect, we present an accessible discussion of the
REST vs. SOA issue.

Although eBay have what they call a ‘REST’ interface, it is, in
fact, a
STREST
interface, and only works for one of the many function calls
that they make available via SOAP (GetSearchResults).

In this dialogue series,
I argue the case for eBay to adopt a truly REST approach to
their integration API.

The well-known Read/Write Web website released their predictions for the web trends to follow in 2007. Full article here.

I made a concise summary hereafter, grouping some related categories and excluding some very niche products (like online real estate):

• Structure: Semantic Web, RSS, Structured Data, Microformats, Widgets
• Enterprises: Enterprise web-based applications
• Web applications: Rich Internet Applications, Web desktop, Web office applications
• Publicity: evolution of the online ad model
• Search: Web search evolution, search verticals, semantic web integration
• Browsers evolution (aka war)
• Multimedia: VoIP, Internet TV, P2P, Virtual “spaces”
• Social networks, communities
• Internationalization - China, broadband expansion
• Mobile web - applications, integration with RSS, Social networks, ads

I recently discovered Jimmy Nilsson’s weblog, I think that it was by searching the web on Eric Evans, Domain Driven Design etc. I am trying to understand how to begin a Delphi implementation of Specification domain pattern (Martin Fowler and Eric Evans).

Anyway, Jimmy Nilsson’s recent blog post, Post-agile struck a chord with me, as he grouped in the same article the things that interested me the most in the last year, year and a half or so: Domain Driven Design, Ruby and Rails, Behavior-Driven Development and Domain-Specific Languages. He also mentioned Intentional software, but I will leave that for the next year

What I really, really wanted to say is that I feel that the semantic (web or not) approach to the software development or domain design if you like is at least as important as the other items on the list. Maybe it isn’t or doesn’t seem as “agile” as the other ones, but I think that we’ll see more and more the influence the ontologies and their use on the development process itself.

If after a couple of years and projects what you accomplish is a semantic representation of your domain or domain patterns, collaboratively built, shared with customers and on which your working software is built (through BDD and DDD), you do follow the Agile manifesto, so building it starting today should be called agile too, right?

If you don’t believe me, read on to Danny Ayers’ Raw and then search “semantic agile” on Google.

Other links:

• Semantically-Enabled Knowledge Technologies
• Semantic Web starting points
• SAKE project