SnapLogic Blog

Got tipped off (thanks Peter) to a post at enterprise 2.0 the bdg way about the complexity of Oracle Middleware and the need for Middleware for the REST of us.

It’s definitely worth reading. He believes that one of the few remaining alternatives to address the complexity is to….

Choose the right tool for the right problem, e.g. the WebPart adapter if you’re using Sharepoint. Use REST when appropriate, e.g. when you need a lightweight way to send some JSON or XML across the wire between nonstandard or homegrown apps. Use JSR 168/286 for your Java applications. Even use SOAP if the backend application already supports it. Keep things loosely coupled so that you can plug different components in and out as needed. This requires a lot of development — the glue — but, I don’t think there’s any way around that.

Which is exact what we’ve been saying for a long time.

Inside the enterprise where you’ve got tightly coupled, low latency EAI requirements, use a reliable messaging infrastructure or ESB, if its Java or a portal, lots of good JSRs to help you out. SOAP is unavoidable whenever you interact with modern apps inside or outside the firewall. And for SaaS, it makes sense to use something that resembles the web.

His point about ‘lots of development’ and the ‘glue’ would be true if you had to code it all yourself. But if you’ve got a way to leverage past work, and take advantage of highly productive dynamic programming languages, you’d be able to contain that complexity.

Taken together, it begins to explain why interest in SnapLogic is really taking off. Integrating SaaS apps is a bit of a mismatch for many of these alternative middleware technologies and the skills gap within the typical SaaS subscriber only makes it worse.

Who needs it? Seriously.
I just read Jim Stogdill’s post on O’Reilly Rader that describes the new data portability hub Gnip as ‘An ESB for the Web’
It’s something that occurred to me as well when I first heard about it, but I quickly realized that, while it might be useful for some Data Portability transformations [...]

Peter Laird wrote up a great analysis on Terms of Service for SaaS providers and it got me wondering: What about the emerging Platform as a Service providers?
They’ve got an especially difficult challenge because they’re running other people’s code. How do you ensure availability when it’s not your code? Google’s App Engine conspicuously [...]

Gartner recently released it’s list of Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008-2012 and it’s interesting to see what made the list:
Multicore and hybrid processors
Virtualisation and fabric computing
Social networks and social software
Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
Web [...]

I came across the Amazon Web Services bandwidth graphic again today over at AWS blog.
I remember back in January when I first saw these stats I wondered why would anyone compare these two values? They have almost no relation to one another and don’t reveal much (if anything) about true comparative metrics like users, [...]