Gotze.eu

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  • Mature standards

    InfoWorld: Web services maturity, benefits emphasized quotes Bob Sutor, IBM director of Web services technology:

    Web services is a maturing technology and IT shops need to recognize its benefits now, rather than holding off until ongoing standardization efforts conclude… Web services is no longer a brand new technology and that Web services need to be brought into the “ecosystem.”

    Microsoft’s Don Box (in SOAP author says enough specs already) comes up with four tips for developers:

    Read fewer specifications, write more applications, write less code by using tools that generate code automatically, and remember that humans matter, so if you must write a specification, make it legible…

    XML is by now “pretty stable,” Box said, and “the Holy Trinity” of Web services — meaning SOAP, WSDL and UDDI — are “complete enough for most developers to use.”

  • Newsisfree tools revisited

    Mike’s been extremely helpful with my Newsisfree tools, and my searchSources service now works (source; there’s also a hardcoded term version (source)). Do note that the search is done only in the name field. I have suggested Mike to also make it seach the description; so that my blog turns up in a search for “gov” 😉

    I now have all the bricks I need to use Newsisfree efficiently. Stay tuned.

  • Newsisfree tool

    Here’s a nice learning example about using XML-RPC and Newsisfree.

    In Newsisfree all sources have unique IDs. My blog is 1611, for example. In the web service, there is a function called hpe.getSource, which retrieves the metadata and a list of news items for a given source. I have used this in tweo different ways:

    • The Lookup Tool: Sourcecheck (source). Form for looking up news from a given source
    • The Retriever Tool: Sourcecheckbyurl (source), which does the same, but via the URL (e.g., sourcecheckbyurl.php?idnumber=1611)

    The observant reader will notice that the only difference between the two tools is that the lookup tool uses HTTP_POST_VARS and the retriever uses HTTP_GET_VARS. In good RESTian spirit I will use get in my further work.

    I have problems with hpe.searchSources (Source). Anyone see where the problem is?

  • More web services

    I’m so happy with the new web service implementation I tonight have managed to make on the GOL-IN Web Services and Enterprise Architecture Resource Portal. Not that I’m unhappy with the other web services I use there, but this one has a lot of potential. It’s an eGov news service, providing the latest news from a variety of sources, such as FCW, GCN, KableNet, GovTech, and more.

    I have been running a news service for a while, and can see that it is being used by a handful of people. These, and hopefully a few more, can look forward to some great new services.

    I’m indebted to Mike Krus and his Newsisfree, which provides all the content in the new service. Mike has magic powers – he can turn any webpage into a news feed. And has done so on my request for a number of sites out there. And he aggregates existing news feeds out there – I’m sure he’ll add your feed, if it’s not already there, if you ask him nicely. If you’re on my blogroll, I have taken the liberty to ask Mike to add some of your blog feeds, so chances are you’re there even if you didn’t know (so blame me, not Mike if you don’t want to be there).

    I have used Mike’s RSS-feeds for a while. But Mike doesn’t stop there; he also provides what I have discovered is a great XML-RPC-interface. It allows me to create a “news module” (as used on the portal) , or an expanded blogroll (which right now shows a problem Mike is working on; that all the HTML in descriptions is escaped.)

    In technical terms, XML-RPC is yet another way of doing web services – an XML-RPC message is an HTTP-POST request for an XML-based reply. So, it violates Phil Windley‘s Fourth Principle (Data queries on existing resources should be done with a GET), but I still think it’s a “real” web service. Most importantly, it’s a great service … Thanks again, Mike.

    Just for fun … I have created a qiuck poll: Would you be willing to pay for an advanced news service? If yes, start by support Mike’s work!

    There’s a lot at stake, at the end of the day:

    In News feeds to reshape the web Carolyn White writes: Journalists and web experts in the US are predicting that news feeds will re-shape the way online news is published, despite several European court rulings outlawing the practice of deep-linking. and quotes JD Lasica, senior editor of Online Journalism Review for saying that “… perhaps the biggest potential impact of news readers is the prospect that they will further level the playing field between Big Media and individual content creators.”

    Living in on of the most extreme countries when it comes to court rulings about deep-linking, I have a good old sense of disobedience as I write the above …

  • GOL-IN WS-project

    GOL-IN is launching a new project about web services. The resource portal I mentioned is part of the project.

  • Web services in practice

    One of the most exciting things about web services is that we can implement open-door policies, i.e., that web services can be used to create transparency and openness. By exposing our information and data as services, we can allow other to integrate our data into their applications. For example, the Google Web APIs service and Amazon Web Service API allow software developers to query Google’s more than 3 billion web documents and Amazon’s huge book database directly from their own applications.

    For an example, see the GOL-IN Web Service and Architecture Resource Portal. In this example, three different web services are used (twice each) directly online (hence the page loads a bit slower than normal web pages). These three web services are:

    • The Google API, which uses SOAP and WSDL, and has been implemented on practically all programming platforms.
    • The Amazon Web Services works through an XML over HTTP (RESTian) or a SOAP interface
    • The two lists of links are two RSS web services, i.e. XML/RSS-feeds that are fetched online from my GotzeLinked, the same database that powers the links directory on the Danish eGov Architecture portal.

  • White Paper Draft Public

    On 21 February 2003 the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation published a public draft of a national white paper on enterprise architecture [Read the executive summary]

    I have just translated and published a summary of our white paper about enterprise architecture. I hate doing translations (and am probably bad at it too), but I’d be happy to take questions and talk more about what we’ve written. I’m sure I can’t help doing so anyway …

    On related news:
    The UK Office of the e-Envoy has published a draft e-GIF ver 5. No major changes, but need-to-read.

  • Emergent Democracy

    Emergent Democracy by Joichi Ito is the first good essay I have read about blogging and democracy:

    The world needs emergent democracy more than ever. The issues are too complex for representative governments to understand. … Emergent democracy has the potential to solve many of the problems we face in the exceedingly complex world at both the national and global scale. The community of toolmakers will build the tools necessary for an emergent democracy if the people support the effort and resist those who try to stifle this effort and destroy the commons.

    We must make spectrum open and available to the people, resist increasing control of intellectual property, and resist the implementation of architectures that are not inclusive and open. We must encourage everyone to think for themselves, question authority and participate actively in the emerging weblog culture as a builder, a writer, a voter and a human being with a point of view, active in their local community and concerned about the world.

    Ito refers to Steve Mann’s concept sousveillance, i.e., watchful vigilance from underneath, and goes on to discuss what blogs does for democracy, and what that has to do with emergence. Very interesting. I’m not sure I agree with Ito’s conclusions, however, but that’s another story.

    For now, I’ll follow the debates on Ito’s blog.

  • Glass house governance

    Living in glass houses: good governance and how to achieve it

    Johannesburg, 2 March 2004 (yes, so it says):

    In the current deluge of corruption sweeping South African business and government, the need for good governance is stronger than ever. The most effective way to create and sustain integrity is by implementing internal checks and balances, as an ongoing principle.

  • Castles and cannon balls

    Great one by Alan:

    The real problem is that government (and I’m not singling out any one country here) is fragmented, not given to working in cross-functional, let alone cross-departmental, teams. Government is composed not of silos anymore but of well-defended, heavily reinforced forts. Ever since Cromwell signed away the power of the monarchy in 16 hundred and whatever has this been the case. Breaking down the walls of these forts requires a few hundred cannons and a big stack of balls – not just of the cannon variety either.

    Incidentally (?), the image used by the editor of the printed version of Walls of Government Come Down in Denmark shows a Danish castle, namely Egeskov Slot (slot is Danish for castle):
    Egeskov Castle
    Images from 3DPhoto.net (check for more information about Danish castles).

    I don’t know if they have any castles in Utah, but Dave has some good points anyway:

    I don’t know if we can always break down the walls, but we can begin to network these fortifications together better by understanding their purpose, taking advantage of their strengths and creating constructive communication ties with their defenders. These existing systems become part of the infrastructure. Using XML and web services, we build integrated delivery systems on top of this existing architechture and then redefine it’s role in the enterprise.

    In the work with our upcoming whitepaper on national enterprise architecture, we have also talked about silos, islands, cities, forts, and many other metaphors. I am not sure how many metaphors will make it into the final whitepaper, since people tend to misunderstand metaphors. Especially those living in big castles. They see the outside world through arrow loops, and have a hard time getting the full picture.

    I like the Machiavellian stance Alan takes. That is what we need more of in government. I also like what Dave says about networking the fortifications, and agree that we should use XML and web services to make these connections, although I also think we need to look more carefully at all layers of the architectures, and will need to open up a lot of the various black boxes out there.

    As we have seen only too often, that is a difficult process. I don’t want to make too many parallels, but here goes a dangerous description of the challenges: We risk finding a lot of stuff we really wouldn’t like to know of (we have problems enough as is). We will meet resistance and non-cooperation. We could use a “diplomatic window”. But – and that’s my point – we don’t need to send in the marines; there are and always will be other ways solve problems.