Interview with Roland Hughes Today, Tyler R. Tichelaar of Reader Views is pleased to be joined by Roland Hughes, who is here to talk about his new book, “The Minimum You Need to Know (About Service Oriented Architecture).” Roland Hughes is the president of Logikal Solutions, a business applications consulting firm specializing in VMS platforms. Hughes serves as a lead consultant with over two decades of experience using computers and operating systems originally created by Digital Equipment Corporation (now owned by Hewlett-Packard). With a degree in Computer Information Systems, Hughes's experience is focused on OpenVMS systems across a variety of diverse industries including heavy equipment manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, stock exchanges, tax accounting, and hardware value-added resellers. Working throughout these industries has strengthened Hughes's unique skill set and given him a broad perspective on the role and value of OpenVMS in industry. “The Minimum You Need to Know” book series is an effort to pass along some of his insights and skills to the next generation. Tyler: Welcome, Roland. I’m glad you could join me today. We have talked previously about your “The Minimum You Need to Know” series, but for any of our new readers, will you tell us a little bit about your previous books?
Tyler: Roland, do you recommend people read your earlier books first before they read “About Service Oriented Architecture”? Roland: Management, and most others, can read the first 5 chapters of the SOA book without reading the previous books. If you really want to get the most out of the technical chapters, you should read at least the two previous programming books as I build upon what was covered in those books without going back over it to explain. Tyler: For the lay reader who is not as knowledgeable, what would you define “service oriented architecture” as? Roland: There are many definitions floating around out there. The most fundamental definition is “splitting up existing applications into logical services which are callable from the outside world.” The marketing types will tell you this must involve the Web and all of today's latest alphabet soup of products. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tyler: Why do you disagree with the marketing types, and how do you personally define not just what “service oriented architecture” is, but what it should be? Roland: To understand my point of view, you have to understand that mail fraud is marketing's best friend. As soon as the Gartner Group is paid to market some new buzzword, EVERY product will claim to have it. Tyler: Would you briefly tell us what are some of the minimum things a person needs to know about service oriented architecture? What are some of the high points you cover in the book? Roland: Services do not need to involve the Internet. It is a method of extending the business knowledge already contained in your Heritage (what used to be called Legacy) applications in a way that makes it usable to individuals of lesser skills. This book talks about the breaking up and designing of the back end services, all of which are hosted on OpenVMS. It focuses on making the decision between an internal service and an external service. “The Outside World” doesn't necessarily mean outside of your company. Tyler: Roland, the book contains many flow charts and other examples. Will you tell us more about the purpose of these charts and how they benefit the reader? Roland: Many people cannot wrap their minds around something unless they see some kind of picture. That is the only reason the flow charts exist. Tyler: The book also contains a source code CD. Will you tell us more about the CD and its purposes? Roland: All of the source code covered in the book, and some only mentioned in the book are on the CD. I have found most technical people prefer to load the code onto their own machine and read through it before reading through the book. Most of the code can be used as starter or sample code for creating your own services. Tyler: Readers always want the most updated information. Do you envision your books soon becoming outdated, or do you plan to write updated versions of them in the future? Roland: OpenVMS is an operating system with up-times measured in decades, not minutes like the various Windows platforms. Companies and industries that need rock solid platforms do not stray from this OS. Financial trading companies having a system outage at market open measure their losses in millions of dollars per second. The steel mill that I will be developing software for over the next few months measures outages at $10,000 per second. It should be no surprise to you that nearly every steel mill on the face of the planet runs OpenVMS. This OS will still be in use long after Windows is forgotten. Tyler: What do you think will be the future for the Open VMS platform and software in general? Will it change dramatically in the next decade or so? Roland: OpenVMS is already 20-30 years in front of other operating systems. It was designed looking that far out many years ago. Dramatic changes will not happen as stability comes from backward compatibility. You are not talking about a desktop people replace every 3 years because the one they have is no longer trendy. That said, there have been some dramatic shifts from the business side at HP. This new owner of OpenVMS doesn't understand the customer base—more importantly doesn't care about it—and has been trying to migrate customers to a dramatically inferior platform called HP/UX. What I see happening, within the next decade, is a group of steel companies along with one or two financial firms forming a shell company, bringing in Mr. Murdock. The shell will be used to execute a hostile takeover of HP, one so well funded the HP family will not be able to fend it off. OpenVMS will then be owned and supported by the industries it keeps running. Tyler: Roland, what do you feel is the real advantage of “The Minimum You Need to Know (About Service Oriented Architecture)” compared to other books in the field? Has any other author attempted what you are writing about? Roland: No other author has attempted it. I've looked at a lot of books about it. They either try to “view it from 30,000 feet” or take the “re-write everything with product X” approach. The only way successfully to expose Heritage business logic as services is to have your Heritage systems developers do it. Most companies are trying to “get by” with cheap off-shore labor writing Web pages directly accessing a database that has sensitive information in it. That approach is a one way trip to prison. Tyler: What do you hope and think the greatest benefit is for people who read this book? Roland: It should open their eyes to what is possible using what they already have. It should also make them think about the reality they face when exposing systems to the Web. Passing “industry standard” XML from the Web all the way through to an application accessing your company databases is just asking to be hacked. Tyler: What sorts of responses have you received regarding this new book and the rest of “The Minimum You Need to Know” series? What have people most appreciated about the books? Roland: The book has just now been released, so only a few responses thus far. Most seem to be somewhat dismayed at the approach of the book. It is completely contrary to “industry thinking.” Tyler: I imagine, that may well be a good thing since you tend to think outside the box. Roland, do you have plans for more books in “The Minimum You Need to Know” series? Roland: Eventually I will be writing some books on Ubuntu. I have been using Ubuntu for my desktop, without any MS products, for several years now. Ubuntu is making quite a bit of progress and finding its way onto a lot of corporate desktops. Dell even pre-loads Ubuntu now. Inside of 5 years there will be two standard desktops in corporate America. Ubuntu and Apple. MS will be a memory. Vista has been a long awaited thud. Tyler: Why do you feel the industry will move in this direction? Roland: One reason, criminal trials. Wide spread industry practices which are not healthy tend to end with a lot of criminal trials and congressional hearings. We've gone down this road with Identity Theft (but still have a ways to go), and with the sub prime mortgage market. As more and more companies start directly exposing databases with sensitive information in them to the Web, we are going to read about more and more investigations into large scale identity theft. We are now starting to see news reports of organized crime making theft of personal and corporate data their main source of income. As with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, there will be a huge backlash during an election year. Some people will go to prison, some new laws will be passed, and industry practice will change. Tyler: What advice would you give to people just starting out in your field who will be confronting these changes in the near future? How can they prepare for what you feel is inevitable? Roland: I really don't know how they can prepare. Reading this book series would certainly be a good start, but without having been taught logic, learned good design from old hands, and serving nearly 20 years in the industry, I don't know how kids today could prepare. The only piece of advice I can give them is this: Tyler: Thank you for joining me today, Roland. Before we go, will you let our readers know about your website and what additional information they may find there about “The Minimum You Need to Know (About Service Oriented Architecture)”? Roland: http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com is the Web site to find out about the entire series. Barnes & Noble on-line has been vending the SOA book since it came out. There are a few other places carrying it as well. As new places come along the Web site will be updated. I currently have the Web people working on updates to the site as we speak. Tyler: Thank you, Roland. It’s been a very informative discussion. I wish you much luck with your books. Read Review of The Minimum You Need to Know (About Service Oriented Architecture)
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