<<The expert system that configured VAX computers for Digital
Equipment made a huge splash at an international artificial
intelligence conference in 1986, only to be followed the next year by
a paper on the even more complex system that had to be built to
maintain it. I'm not saying that the second chapter turns the first
into a story of failure; I'm saying that flexibility over the long
haul, with attendant reduction of cost and containment of technical
risk, requires more than the mere form of modularity. It also requires
a match between responsibility and control.

<A single, massive, central rule base is in many ways just another
kind of monolith, vulnerable to many kinds of failure through
inconsistency or omission, while a JavaSpaces architecture actually is
a confederation that can robustly tolerate intersecting and
imperfectly coordinated efforts. If a massive effort creates something
that can only be improved, or even maintained, with an equally massive
effort at some future time when resources may not be readily
available, then success may be a premature claim; failure may be an
inevitable end. A 25-year plan for a mission to Mars is perhaps an
example of the wrong way; the alternative Mars Direct proposal is
perhaps a better route.

<IT likewise needs approaches that get something done today to make
something better possible tomorrow.

<If you want to remake the whole universe at one go, you'd better be
able to do it in a week. Mere mortals should ask themselves what they
can do within the span of their power to write budgets and make
decisions.>>

I have long been a fan of Jini/JavaSpaces (which is why my first
technical Group was about the subject) and have always felt it was unjustly
neglected by the powers-that-be at Sun, so I was fascinated to have
this article pointed out to me by one of the members, Rami Rinot, in
the Group. I certainly think it is relevant to my NGAA Group, and
haaving read the article again I think it has important implications
for building SOAs in an incremental as opposed to a big-bang,
monolithic manner.

You can find the article at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1460639,00.asp

If you want to learn about JavaSpaces go to the Files and Database
sections of http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jini_javaspaces/

In any case it would be very interesting to hear the opinions of
DotNetters and other non-Java folk as well as from those familiar with
the technology.

Gervas