Rickland Hollar

As a senior architect I always have a weather eye on evolving technologies in order to answer questions on how decisions made today will affect applications three to five years into the future. Occasionally, I hear or read a bellwether statement, one that makes me say, "I need to dig deeper into what was said in order to better understand its implications and track the underlying technology's evolution because it could have a significant impact on the way we are, or should be, developing applications." That was my reaction when I read Robert Brock's comments in the March 25, 2002, issue of eWeek: "If the [JSR 168] standard becomes successful, then the portal could become a commodity, just like Netscape or Internet Explorer." When I started researching Brock's comment, I ... (more)

SOAP's Two Messaging Styles

To RPC, or not to RPC: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the control and dependency of coupling, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them? The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) offers two messaging styles: RPC (Remote Procedure Call) and document style. One is for creating tightly coupled, inter-object style interfaces for Web s... (more)

Web Services + the Grid = Prime Time

Web services and the Grid are converging! The prospect of grid-based, commodity computers delivering run anywhere, anytime Web services across the Internet has hype-o-meters showing a speedy rise and marketing departments gearing up everywhere. Standards are still winding their way through community processes and early adopter products are just coming to market, but that hasn't stopped s... (more)

Who's Master of Your Domain?

W.C. Fields once said, "The practice of keyhole-listening is usually confined to hotels and boarding houses. It is absolutely indefensible to stoop so low. If the transom is not ajar, remember there are plenty of other rooms in the building." Hackers on the Web can take a similarly cavalier attitude - surfing from site to site until they find one whose "transoms are ajar." The question f... (more)

Moving Toward the Zero Latency Enterprise

The Internet makes it possible to deliver information almost instantaneously - anytime, anywhere - and is redefining the traditional boundaries around organizations and their IT systems. The Internet has turned buyers into sellers, sellers into buyers, and set new expectations for how services should be delivered. These expectations raise the bar for applications in terms of their need f... (more)