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December 30, 2003
SOAP Interface to Danish Reference Profile
John Gotze has written a SOAP interface to the search function for Denmark's reference profile (often called an interoperability framework). Here's the WSDL file, here's the code for a SOAP::Lite example client, and here's the client in action. If you don't speak Danish, this won't be so useful as a reference profile, but its a great example of how you can do some simple things in a few days that provide some interesting possibilities for interoperability. Web services aren't about the big thing, they're about lots of little things, arranged correctly.
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The Economics of SOA
John McDowall, CTO of Grand Central Communications, is writing about the economics of service oriented architectures:
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is changing how enterprise software is being designed and deployed. Part of the success of SOA is in the technology and is due to the convergence of web services standards creating a common interoperable set of technologies to build SOAs on. The other part of the success of SOA arises from its superior economic model for enterprises. SOA is evolving to the point where new applications will not be deployed as monolithic instances but will become a collection of services woven together in a loosely coupled framework.From Fast Takes
Referenced Tue Dec 30 2003 13:29:32 GMT-0700
The heart of John's argument, I think is a very telling phrase in the center of his document: "a significant part of the cost of enterprise software provides no significant business value to the enterprise." That's true of many products. We all pay for things when we only need part of their functionality. We do this because the convenience of having things pre-integrated is worth the cost of the parts we don't need. The promise of SOAs is that the integration cost will go down and consequently we'll be more likely to demand unbundled functionality that we can put back together in a custom implementation.
There are nay-sayers out there who don't believe this is possible. I think its a trend that already has significant legs outside of software. John's argument is essentially the argument for the modern corporate organization over the organizations that existed 20 years ago. We're much more likely to see corporations that outsource much of the manufacturing and provide the initial engineering, the final integration and the sales and marketing. Where GM used to do everything, they now manage a supply chain. John's making the argument that this same trend will extend to IT and that SOA is a significant enabling technology. I think he's right.
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The 100 Megabit Les Paul
Gibson is set to release a digital guitar. The pick-ups will go right into a D/A convertor and from there travel over ethernet. Kind of interesting that no one's done it yet. A Wired Magazine article has the usual quotes from people saying "this is a solution looking for a problem." There's some cool things you can do once you've got digital signals coming out of guitars.
In a concert hall, this means a bulky analog snake of cables could be replaced by a single Cat-5. It also means real-time collaboration. Stanford staged a concert last fall that linked several musicians at different locations who improvised with each other over a system developed by NetworkSound, the first company to build a business plan around Magic. The school was so pleased that its Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics will also tap the technology for its recording facilities. "We're dividing our studios across 2 kilometers, and we can just grab a fiber on the campus network and make remote studios with zero delay," explains music professor Chris Chafe. "It's foolproof."From Wired 12.01: The 100-Megabit Guitar
Referenced Tue Dec 30 2003 09:36:37 GMT-0700
I bought my 15-year old son a guitar modeler for Christmas. If you haven't seen these things, they're amazing. The article talks about those as well:
More recently, advances in sound modeling, using complex algorithms that simulate other instruments, have created a sort of identity crisis in the guitar world. In 2002, California-based Line 6 unveiled its Variax, which mimics 26 classic guitars - everything from a 1935 Dobro Alumilite to a 1968 Rickenbacker - with remarkable precision. Juszkiewicz is taking Gibson in the opposite direction. "We're not synthesizing sound," he says. "We're putting out a much better original signal." His claim, in essence, is that Magic makes the Les Paul sound more like itself.From Wired 12.01: The 100-Megabit Guitar
Referenced Tue Dec 30 2003 09:38:09 GMT-0700
The modeler I bought for my son is built by a company called DigiTech in Salt Lake City. For only $70 I've been incredibly impressed with the sound; it even has a drum machine built-in for solo practice. A good modeler and a powerful PA system is a much better set up than and guitar amp I've heard.