30 September 2011

Wow! What a wild ride the last few years! Digging into my old web presence I found this blog. I haven't used it since 2008, and I'm surprised to see it is still here. Then, I was involved in Semantic Web solutions; since then, I refocused on realtime web solutions which are also amenable to the Cloud.

The last few years have been a wild ride technology-wise and I have an updated perspective on the web...nothing earth shattering or paradigm shifting if you already know this stuff...here is a high-level summary:

  • Microformats are a very good thing; the tactical, practical semantic web (lower case)
  • JavaScript is a wonderful programming language, in spite of it being forced into the HTML DOM
  • jQuery is an amazing and useful framework.
  • REST is all you need for distributed web architectures (sure, there are a few more foundational standards)
  • Realtime web is viable, but not well-known in terms of value and technologies to most mid-large size organizations who stick with their big name, high cost technology solution providers and bloatware.
  • Realtime web solutoins can be designed to use a small set of common standards and wide range of open source software.
  • Enterprise architecture - where's the value realization? For those who have embarked on enterprise architecture initiatives, have large teams of enterprise architects with all the necessary certifications (and/or consultants too) have you seen real ROI? Have you broken even? Are you even tracking this?
  • WOA > SOA
  • Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering provide implicit value but don't sell well if stated explicitly and directly.  One needs to use more popular buzzwords and euphemisms.
Going forward, I will focus on my experience and findings regarding WOA and realtime web architectures, designs, technologies, web standards, as well as using the same for server-side with mobile and desktop clients (web, native); JavaScript and related frameworks, server-side JavaScript. Of course, I will continue to ask for information on enterprise architecture value realization and ROI.

Thanks for reading!
Siorc