Jim Webber, SOA Practice Lead, ThoughtWorks

Dr. Jim Webber is the Global Head of Architecture for ThoughtWorks where he works with clients on delivering dependable service-oriented systems. Jim was formerly a senior researcher with the UK E-Science programme where he developed strategies for aligning Grid computing with Web Services practices and architectural patterns for dependable Service-Oriented computing. Jim has extensive Web Services architecture and development experience as an architect with Arjuna Technologies and was the lead developer with Hewlett-Packard on the industry's first Web Services Transaction solution.

Jim is an active speaker in the Web Services space and is co-author of the book "Developing Enterprise Web Services - An Architect's Guide" in addition to being a contributing author to other books and articles.

Jim holds a B.Sc. in Computing Science and Ph.D. in Parallel Computing both from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His blog is located at http://jim.webber.name.

Presentation: "Does my Bus look big in this?"

Time: Wednesday 18:45 - 19:30

Location: Fleming Room

Abstract:

In the early days of corporate computing, application silos were commonplace. As businesses became more sophisticated in their use of IT for competitive advantage, these silos became a bottleneck that prevented seamless straight-through processing and inhibited change.

To break down the silos, at first rudimentary and then increasingly sophisticated integration middleware came to market with the promise of freeing data from the tyranny of the silo. Over the years enterprise middleware has come to dominate corporate computing, and knowledge of such systems is part of every enterprise architect's toolkit.

Yet with the emergence of the Web as a scalable platform for connectivity, and the increasing reluctance for businesses to engage in such large-scale integration projects the future for both "enterprise" and "middleware" is anything but certain. Indeed with the Web and agile methods becoming accepted at scale and quality of service far in excess of most enterprises, "enterprise-y" has become a by-word for backward.

In this keynote, Martin and Jim will explore the history of integration middleware and take a trip into the near future where the Internet has collided with the enterprise providing scale and robustness as a ready commodity, and where agility is prized above all.

Presentation: "A couple of ways to skin an Internet-scale cat"

Track: SOA, REST and the Web

Time: Thursday 17:15 - 18:15

Location: Westminster Suite

Abstract:

The Web is alive with furious debate on the future of integration. With the former new kid on the block - Web Services - being forced to contend with the jihadist fury of the upstart REST-based approach.

This talk will explore the fundamental REST concepts and show how they can be used to created robust integration solutions - with all those -ilities that we love, but without all the complex middleware.

We'll explore how RESTful solutions can be applied to enterprise domains used by real developers writing with those "boring" statically typed languages, rather than just the Ruby fanboys (though fanboys will also be well catered for). In a shocking conclusion we'll also see that REST done right and SOA done well are actually rather similar beasts...