DataServices World 2008 Puts Spotlight on Future of Enterprise and Web Data

By Ken North

Gurus with software and database expertise compose the faculty presenting the technical program for the launch of DataServices World at SOAWorld 2008. The conference theme is providing data for a new generation of software. It runs June 24, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. The faculty includes speakers from BEA, Care First Blue Cross Blue Shield, IBM, iWay Software, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and Sun Microsystems.

DataServices World focuses on architectures and technologies for accessing data from heterogeneous data sources for consumption by components, services and applications. A driving force behind DataServices World is the confluence of enterprise computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), Internet computing, databases, content management systems, data warehousing and business intelligence. To provide data for disparate data-aware applications and services, the use of data access tiers and data services layers to simplify development has become the norm.

Distributed Processing and Data-Aware Services

The landscape of 21st century computing is marked by high-speed networks, powerful servers, distributed processing, components and collaboration. Because SOA is increasingly gaining traction, many architects and developers are involved in the creation of data-aware services. SOA today can include web services, grid services, integration services, semantic web services, components and messaging systems – all with a requirement for data from persistent data stores such as SQL databases.

For building new systems or exploiting legacy data, the Web and enterprise computing community is looking to build collaborative applications using distributed components. For SOA, those cooperating components are often REST or SOAP web services. Besides SOA and services, developers are also using asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) and mashups that integrate information for presentation on the Web or internal networks.

Services: The New Components?

Developers who've succeeded with component-based development are embracing a new paradigm for distributed computing, with services as the new components.

The move to SOA, AJAX, mashups and linked data has spurred the development of new component architectures, programming interfaces and data access techniques, such as the Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO).

Even as the SCA and new technologies emerge, some characteristics of the new software are consistent with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), online transaction processing (OLTP) systems and legacy systems. Like previous generations of software, the new services, mashups and other applications often require data persistence.

Many organizations have a variety of persistent data stores, including SQL databases, geo-coded data files, spreadsheets, content management systems and XML-encoded data.

Services, applications, and mashups can more easily consume and integrate data from heterogeneous sources by using a data services layer.

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DataServices World 2008 Puts Spotlight on Future of Enterprise and Web Data

By Ken North

Distributed Processing and Data-Aware Services

Services: The New Components?

© 2008, Ken North Computing, LLC. All rights reserved.

This page was last updated on 04-Apr-2008 .