Monday 21 February 2011

Buzzword Bazinga: Service Orientated Architecture


... is a grand way of building a system with a lot of moving parts. A simple system has two main things: resources and functions. Resources - such as databases and file systems - is where all information is stored and retrieved. Functions, and the applications that execute them, are the means to interact with the resources. Applications come in a number of guises such as web sites, desktop applications and mobile applications.

Depending on the size and scale of the system; applications can directly connect to these resources. Kind of like a Tie Fighter docking directly into the Death Star. The Death Star being a central core of massive evil; like, for example, a Microsoft Access Database.

But let's say distributing this evil is a galactical ambition and having one place where you can arm, equip and feed the Storm Troopers and send them out to do your nefarious bidding becomes a bottleneck. To scale, you would have look at spreading the resources and facilities around a bit. You could, for instance, take over a planet and build additional docking stations, dormitories with foosball (for those times when the rebels are not trying to overthrow you), and an array of vehicles you could use to turn small furry natives into road kill. The planet would then become a disconnected, fully functioning service of evil.

Friday 18 February 2011

Buzzword Bazinga


Welcome all to the opening ceremony for Buzzword Bazinga, or BB from now on. I apologise in advance for the lack of fanfare, excitement and sparkle but I didn't have the directorial assistance of Danny Boyle . If you don't get the reference, then you clearly should pay more attention to the 2012 Olympics which is being hosted in East London - where I live. So if you are looking for a place to come and watch the proceedings and pay and exorbitant fee to stay in a tiny little pad, then drop me a line.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

The Blackberry Playbook


I recently had the pleasure of attending a pre launch event for the new shiny, shiny BlackBerry PlayBook - RIM's new poster boy for tablet computing. Or poster girl if you like; as my colleague commented, "It sure is pretty." But looking past the gloss, the neat little canapés and the intoxicating hyperbole (or was that merlot) just what does this new toy mean to us gadget obsessed humanoids?

The short answer is I don't know. With a few technical hiccups and tight lipped responses to key questions like "what will it cost?" and "when can we get our greasy swipe, prod and pinch spanners on one?", it is simply too soon to tell.

But pre-launch demons aside, there were some real glimmers of promise.