Software Architecture Cheatsheet Part 3

In the previous post, I tried to think of the business constraints that intervene in the choices of a software architect. In this one, I’ll take a few shots at guessing which technologies are important nowadays to build software solutions for these constraints.

I see… I see…

There are so many technologies out there that I will not risk myself in designing some sort of female magazine test like “tell me about your application, I’ll tell you what technologies you should use”. That’s a very exciting part of what I perceive as what is the job of a software architect: finding the right combination of tools and techniques for a specific business context in order to develophigh-quality, high-value and robust software for customers.

That said, there are a few important areas that seem very important to explore or even master in this world, and more specifically in this new economy we’re facing.

Productive dynamic Java

Java is a very mature and popular technology, so much so that many people have predicted its death times and times again. But in my view, it’s very much alive, especially with recent developments that made Java development much more productive. Of course, SpringSource-originated frameworks like Spring and its galaxy have changed the enterprise Java environment for a long time.

But even more recently, inspiration has come from the “casual programmer” side with Ruby on Rails and Python/Django yielding even more interesting developments like Groovy and Grails that combine the flexibility of a dynamic language with the incredible power and richness of the Java platform.

In my opinion, Groovy/Grails are about to rejuvenate enterprise development in an incredible way.

Modular Java

There has been a lot of marketing fuzz a few months ago about something called Service-Oriented Architecture. Unfortunately, although it was based on common sense, marketers and tool vendors completely killed the concept in the egg, but still, some important aspects have emerged and remain limitations of the most popular technology platforms. One of them is the importance of modularity: the ability to change one part of a system without touching anything else, whether it is to adapt them or to restart them.

OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative) is a standard that has made a remarkable progression on the server side in the past few months, and with its massive adoption by major vendors, it’s definitely going to be something to watch.

Server-agnostic Rich Internet Applications

RIA-enabling technologies compose a very competive landscape: Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, Sun JavaFX, and even more niche technologies like OpenLaszlo, Curl. And I’m not even considering all those Javascript frameworks and AJAX-generating techniques that I personally don’t see as viable alternatives in an enterprise environment.

My technology of choice is definitely Adobe Flex: it’s open (and it’s even become one of the most impressive examples of Open Source development lately), it’s robust, it’s server-agnostic (it works with Java, .Net, PHP, Python, what have you), it offers desktop integration capabilities, making it possible to cover many of the use cases mentioned above, and it’s very elegant by design. More importantly it was one of the first RIA technologies out there, which makes it both very mature AND very popular.

Native Mobile Development

Mobile development has always been a hobby. Taking useful applications with you is an old fantasy. For a long time, it’s been so poor that it was difficult to turn this hobby of mine into a professional activity. That was until I came in touch with iPhone SDK development, which really blew me away. For the first time we have some great mobile hardware with unique usability capabilities, and we have the software development platform to use those capabilities like never before. And it’s going to be even better with the release of iPhone OS 3.0.

Of course, it’s about to become a very competitive area too, with the release of Palm WebOS, Google Android and Nokia Qt. But for now, the iPhone SDK is by far the most advanced native mobile development option.

What’s my point?

The purpose of this series is double:

1. try to show why software in general, and software architecture in particular are such exciting fields
2. wake up people who tend to have only one single hammer in their toolbox

Now if in addition to that, it can create a debate, then I have a few questions for you guys (and hopefully gals :oP) So, what technologies do you think are important to know in the current and future software world?

From http://sebastien-arbogast.com/