Paul Lipton

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five." - Groucho Marx  People have begun to understand that a properly implemented SOA has the potential to improve business agility and adaptability to changing business conditions, but we're still sufferi... (more)

"In the newly competitive age of regulation and globalization, SOA promises much in terms of business agility and efficiency but how do we maintain visibility, control, and appropriate governance of this new and much more highly distributed service-oriented world? Most authoritie... (more)

Significant investments in the successful management and administration of many critical business systems have had mixed success over the years. In a new, more competitive age of regulation and globalization, SOA promises much in terms of business agility and efficiency, but how ... (more)

The American comedian and actor Steven Wright once said, "It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature." Words are wonderful that way. They can give you a little blast of pleasure when used cleverly, but like everything else they are subje... (more)

Mae West said, "When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before." But, sometimes, when choosing between two equally appealing options, the best policy is to take both. WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Transfer, two new specifications for accessing... (more)

The acclaimed essayist and novelist Nora Ephron once said, "What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you." Nothing could better capture the spirit of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) than this statement from... (more)

The acclaimed essayist and novelist Nora Ephron once said "What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you." Nothing could better capture the spirit of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) than this statement from ... (more)

Is a comprehensive, highly flexible service-oriented architecture in your future? Only if the assortment of mission-critical Web services you're deploying now is highly manageable. The use of Web services as a simple means of enabling two companies to do business together in an ... (more)

One day, Snow White decided to deploy a Web service. Her IT dwarves immediately went to work and were pleasantly surprised to find how easy it was to create the Web service using modern development tools. To Snow White's development dwarves, it almost seemed like magic. Since Sn... (more)

Web Services orchestration, management, and security are among the principal challenges facing implementers of Service Oriented Architectures. There is still much confusion in the IT community about the standards themselves, which are at various stages of maturity. Also, their re... (more)

Father James Keller, the founder of a religious order called The Christophers and a popular religious television and radio personality in his day, wrote an amusing story about Mozart. He said, "A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and ... (more)

Do you want to understand our industry? Forget the big-name industry pundits and think-tanks. Look to the great poets like Donne and Shakespeare. You can't go wrong. The great poets can provide a long-term, human perspective on how we think, dream, and scheme. That insight is use... (more)

Conventional wisdom is a curious thing, especially when applied to a technology as new as Web services. Web services are often thought of as distributed business processes participating in a B2B relationship using Internet protocols and XML-based data standards. In fact, much of ... (more)

My first thought, when I heard about .NET, was "Here we go again!" It sounded like yet another attempt on the part of Microsoft to revitalize what appeared to be a fading technology and vision. Increasingly, as a programmer and architect, I was getting the impression that the exc... (more)