Managing Information Access to an Enterprise Information System Using J2EE and Services Oriented Architecture

Chapter 2. Architecture 63

While we do recommend that you implement this architecture on J2SE, we do

acknowledge that some deployment architectures that have to cater for offline

processing (also sometimes referred to as disconnected processing) might not

have full J2EE compliant application servers deployed to all of remote sites.

2.4 Architecture validation

A bad “architecture can have the following characteristics:

򐂰 Monolithic, so even small changes are distributed through code and cause

unpredictable results with long compile, link, and debug cycle times

򐂰 Hidden implicit coupling in code

򐂰 Multiple and inconsistent ways of doing the same thing

򐂰 Not documented and so has a high learning curve

What is the criteria that you should use to validate an architecture? Table 2-10

lists some suggestions by Dana Bredemyer (see http://www.bredemeyer.com).

Table 2-10 Architecture validation

Note: Edward M Tuggle, in his article Migrating to a service-oriented

architecture, Part 2, discusses the Enterprise Workflow Architecture (EWA)

framework. EWA is a component and execution architecture that can be used

in a J2SE runtime environment. You can view this article at:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-migratesoa2/

Architecture validation Description

Good Technically sound and clearly represented.

A good architecture solves the problem that it solves

well, but it does not necessarily solve the right problem.

Right Meets the needs and objectives of stakeholders and the

system.

A right architecture is one that enables the development

organization to implement the current business strategy

and to evolve to keep pace with changes in business

strategy.

Successful The architecture was actually used in designing and

developing the system.

64 Managing Information Access to an EIS Using J2EE and Services Oriented Architecture