SHARE 2008 experiences

SHARE was a great experience and it was good to finally meet all the people I have corresponded with over the years.

The CICS track was great with some incredibly professional in depth sessions. The highlight of the CICS track for me was definitely Gene Linefsky's presentation on "Building an Enterprise Ready Java/CICS Environment".

I also found some Assembler, C++, Java, MQ, DB2 and USS sessions interesting. The XML processing capabilities of DB2 9 just blows my mind! The session on that subject was very informative.

The hotel facilities was overall great - the food market was a bit expensive (think Disney prices) and not always up to the quality one would expect.

The nightly SCIDS were fun and clearly there is a depth of history in the SHARE songs that I did not always fathom. Yes - I was like a real newbie at times - staring in wonder at all the proceedings.

I had some mixed experiences with the SOA track. I found it ironic that after so many years of the SOA evangelists telling us that we have to have SOAP and Web Services to have a "SOA" - now I find the emphases is to convince us that we don't have to have SOAP to have a "SOA". Well - we knew that all along.

I witnessed a so-called round table discussion on SOA by a few experts. Frankly I did not learn anything except that the experts contradicted each other on some points but they all did agree on the fact that any program in a enterprise can be a service (thanks but we knew that) and secondly that you cannot "buy" a "SOA".

Suddenly it all just seemed so abstract and fuzzy to me that I wondered how these experts think people should learn from them. Subsequent discussions I had with other people who attended the SOA sessions confirmed that I was not alone in my thinking.

So here is a message from normal IT people to the so-called SOA experts: Stop making SOA more complicated than it is by overloading it with nomenclature and highly philosophical talk. I believe that at least half of all the SOA talk out there is exactly that - talk. The noise to substance ratio is so high - it is only exceeded by the amount of SOA experts that I see.

Well - it might sound like I am on my soap box (incredibly apt pun not intended) but I feel it is about time that the SOA experts and the companies that pay these people understand that IT people want you - no need you to cut through the haze and start agreeing on the boundaries and specifics of SOA.

At one point I had a IBM distinguished engineer tell me I should stop talking about SOAP and Web Services when I talk about SOA - because "SOA is much more than SOAP and Web Services". I felt that I wanted to tell him about the years - nee decades of "services" that I have created in CICS, batch, Windows and UNIX and then ask him why he thinks he needs to treat this fact as a revelation.

Then I want to tell him that if I don't have SOAP and WSDL - I am not interested in SOA because the other methods have proved to be too hard to maintain in the long run. XML and specifically in the form of an interface definition and contract (WSDL) and a request/reply payload (SOAP) solves so many problems on so many levels that frankly - that is the only level of service that really make sense in the disparate enterprises we live in with multiple operating systems, networks and development platforms.

I think sometimes the people in the ivory towers need to come out for a little sunlight...

So the last word is that SHARE was great fun and very informative and I will definitely attend again.