I've just finished adding a middleware technical position to the Burton Group services infrastructure reference architecture. Despite us having oodles of middleware already deployed in our organizations, choosing the right middleware for a service is still a regular concern for architects. There are disruptive trends in middleware that we can use to our benefit: especially the commoditization of message-oriented middleware, the rise of AtomPub and XMPP as more generic middleware protocols, the waxing of RESTful HTTP, and the waning of the WS-* approach. And yes, I know technology doesn't matter when you slide the zoom control out, but believe me, the task of choosing protocols and formats carries on daily for our clients. The report will be published in early March. Let me know if you'd like to chat about the results earlier than that.
This means that I'm pretty excited to have just signed up for QCon London. I'm looking forward to hearing John O'Hara speak about the state of adoption of AMQP , which is mentioned in my report as a viable enterprise middleware choice. Steve Vinoski and I were colleagues at IONA technologies, so I'll be catching up with him. I'll be exchanging ideas with Alexis Richardson on what's next for financial services IT.
One aspect of the agenda this year that caught my eye is a track called "The Web as Platform", as distinct from last year's "The Cloud as the New Middleware Platform".
I'll be debating the significance of that with anyone who will listen.
Putting Tony Hoare, Steve Vinoski, Cameron Purdy, Rod Johnson, and Paul Downey into the same room is a historically good idea. Serializing access to these guys means we can think, then eat, then think again, without worrying about someone else grabbing the fork. I'm sure Tony Hoare would appreciate that!
Please drop in a comment if you'd like to meet up at QCon, 11-13 March.



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