From SOA buzzwords to WS-Confusion and back to Earth

better later than never eh? (had some problems with login name added to publishers group or something like that)

So what was the entire course about?!

Well it was about soa, where it lives, why it lives, how it lives and is born. Also how could it be used, and what makes soa actually service oriented not just simple application.

What is the added value of attending this course for you?

Insight on what is there available for use and for free. How certain elements could enrich a website with as much hassle as possible, this was basically the main thing. Also some insight on technologies and companies behind the scenes.

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation?

At the moment none, but in the near future a website project is on the horizon so some web services might just be used in there

How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment?

Many already available and implemented solutions for upcoming works and tasks to fulfill.

How do you see SOA in 5 years from now?

I think eventually such an idea as soa will be de facto and more or less all software will have similar qualities and properties, and will be available for use in one way or another on some more or less generalized interface.

What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing?

Pros: easy maintenance, administration, access control, bug fixes and developement, also easy to use on distributed environment, using widespread technologies.

Cons: security, network bandwidth requirements, network instability issues and possible problems.

How would you use Web 2.0 in commercial projects?

For added services, marketing, rich content, for maintaining a user with new features and new ideas.

How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.

I would have gone pretty much same way it was presented. One thing that was in one way bad (looking at academic perspective), but good in another (more common sense way) was some minor fluctuations on the subject of the lectures, as sometimes they got a bit out of hand and went too wide, thus giving common sense on the problem, but avoiding specific situations and probable solutions.

What the lecturers did wrong?

Long lectures on weekends… irregular evaluation system, very complex and probably uncalled for evaluation results, as community (in this case students) are rude in the way that they tend not to forgive mistakes and sometimes one mark given by the students can hamper the overall result witch is not that bad afterall…

What the lecturers were good at?

Interaction with students, subject selection and presentation. Also many examples and situations from real life described and explained, and this is where true experience lies and what many of us still lack.

Karolis Pociūnas

There were questions about the final marks – when they will be announced.

Unfortunately I can’t answer this question without discussing this with Giedrius and I was not able to reach him recently.

Well, I guess the best thing to do is to send (or keep sending) emails to me and Giedrius (gzlatkus@gmail.com)… I am sorry for the delay.

I am personally much less involved into the operational marking of your efforts than I was in “architecting” the course (no matter how ad-hoc it looked at the end)…

Once again, thanks very much for your valuable feedback (IMHO it was the first time of such two-way dialogue at MIF), I will try to sum your posts up an respond with some concluding remarks shortly.

Not only feedback I want to thank you for – I was able to get a lot of inspiration from you guys and you (unknowingly) served as a secret weapon in some battles I had recently I used your projects to energize and provoke colleagues of my projects by stating “c’mon fellas, show some pride and enthusiasm, my students from VU MIF can outperform you easily!”. It helped. Still I think some of you would outdo them

Why I have chosen this course?

I was always interested in computer networks, so naturally I chose this course over the others.

What is the added value of attending this course for you?

Forgetting the fact, that the name of this course was „Advanced computer networks“, I believe this course was as compelling as possible. Though whole concept of SOA was not new for me, it was very interesting to get to know how people think about it, how they use it and, more interestingly, how would they use it in different situation, create mash-ups, etc. This course really helped me widen my perspective on the current evolution of the whole WEB 2.0 – from both user and system developer point of views.

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation?

I can’t name an immediate benefit from this course, as my work does not involve intense usage of web services.

How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment?

The whole concept of SOA is helpful by itself As for me, I believe there are a lot of fields where SOA should be used; the developers are yet to understand the importance of this. We’ve seen WEB 2.0 going up – I am sure this trend will only increase.

How do you see SOA in 5 years from now?

I would certainly agree with most of members of this course in saying that the SOA will get a lot more credit that now. As for the trends, some monopolization could be possible – monopolization in the sense of de facto standards will arise (Google Maps vs. Microsoft Live Maps). I also think, that mash-up will become a lot more common than now.

What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing?

Pros for this would be the ease of access to your personal /public information – we can now easily store information on Google spreadsheets (and etc.) – I wonder where this will lead.

As for a con (hm..?) – totally online computing will have to iterate through more than double than 15 years of life in order to fully satisfy our requirements.

From a personal over-the-top paranoid point of view – not going to happen

How would you use Web 2.0 in commercial projects?

I can’t answer this question, since it would depend on the project itself. As for a basis, I would really try to implement web-services, if there was any actual benefit to anyone else.

How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.

The course was great, since we had lots and lots of interesting discussions, people from other universities, the projects were also interesting to also make and judge

What the lecturers did wrong? What the lecturers were good at?

The main problem with this course was timing – to sit in a classroom on Saturday, for (most commonly) 6 hours is not what we anticipated.

One more feedback is here… (more…)

Why I have chosen this course?

To be honest, I‘ve chosen this course, because I expected to have more leisure time. I‘ve attended similar course of Adomas a few years ago, and this course seemed to be the same. But I was wrong, and don‘t regret „lost“ saturdays.

What is the added value of attending this course for you?

This course helped to realise what‘s happening in the internet (world?) today. Now I understand what is web 2.0 and what benefits it gives. Also this course helped to reveal my goals, because lecturers talked not only about SOA related things. I gained useful information about project (and life) management, though it was superficial.

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation?

I work in data warehouse and data analysis field, and currently my job is not related with SOA.

How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment?

Data warehouses are essential part of enterprises and „SOA broadens the range of impact that the data warehouse has on the enterprise.“ So to understand the big picture of enterprise information systems is very useful.

How do you see SOA in 5 years from now?

World is changing all the time. And I think it is changing to service oriented direction, so SOA principles will be used more extensively in the future.

What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing?

Pros: optimized hardware and software resources, faster application development.
Cons: reliability and security of services.

How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.

I would concentrate more on main subject – SOA, to understand it at deeper level.
The form of lectures I liked, and wouldn‘t change. Of course it would be better to give practical tasks in the beginning of course.

What the lecturers did wrong?

Rules of assessment should be determined at the beginning of course.

What the lecturers were good at?

Lecturers were good at communicating with students and analyzing their needs. I liked how they were showing real world examples. The idea of inviting guest, SOA professionals, was brilliant. I didn‘t have anything similar courses before.

To sum all this up, it was one of most valuable and enjoyable course I have ever had.

Remigijus Kilas

This blog is beginning to get overwhelmed by feedback posts and I’m putting in my 2 cents worth..

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What is the added value of attending this course for you?

I’ve got some valuable knowledge about SOA principles and technologies and gained a bit of experience in creating web-services.

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation?

None. I’m not using SOA today and I don’t plan to use it in near future for my current projects do not involve web access in any form.

How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment? Please elaborate what would you suggest if you would become the chief system architect of your company for a day.

I am the system architect (just because nobody else is involved in software analysis and design) of my company. But the specific features of my projects require high processing speed on small amounts of data and high security level. Therefore SOA would give no benefit here.

How do you see SOA in 5 years from now? Please take both the “local” (LT) perspective and global one.

It’s quite hard to predict anything in information technologies, but in my opinion, SOA will continue spreading, both in Lithuania and world-wide.

What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing?

The main advantage is the ability to create a distributed system easily. The main disadvantages are data transfer speed and security.

How would you use Web 2.0 in a commercial project? Web 2.0 is, in short: social computing + data mash-ups + rich interfaces.

It depends on project requirements and specific features only.

How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.

A bit more technical details and no lectures on Saturdays.

Sincerely,

Sergej Christoforov.

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Here are my thoughts about the course.

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I hope you will excuse me for not using feedback template. I think there is no point in writing the same things like my course mates, just a few thoughts that weren’t posted in SoaMif blog yet.

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Everything that has a beginning has an end. At last this course is over (Wohoo!) (more…)

Why have I chosen this course?

It was two possibities : SOA or coding teory. Coding teory I already had.So I am here J

# What is the added value (if any) of attending this course for you, as a future software systems architect (please maintain this longer-term perspective)? I don’t use skills from this SOA course, because I don’t need it NOW. Maybe in the feature… What  I’ve gained?

1.      What is SOA?

2.      How do it?

3.      Something about projects management

4.      Something about life

# How do you see SOA in 5 years from now?

Major part of today’s technologies will be service-oriented. All business organizations will use SOA approach to manage their business processes. It will be more SOA tools.

# What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing? Think of the Yahoo Pipes – you basically depend totally on the connections.

Pros fresh data at any moment, ability to select from a variety of services,

Cons SECURITY. It is very important to save PC resources.

# How would you use Web 2.0 in a commercial projects? Web 2.0 is, in short: social computing + data mash-ups + rich interfaces.

Data mach-up is GOOD. Our project shown that there are a lot of things we can do with web 2.0. So, we need just to sit and think for a while….

# How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective. What the lecturers were good at? What the lecturers did wrong?

Good

 1.      inviting other people to talk about SOA(their personal experience): Jonathan Briggs J, … 

  2.      each student had a possibility to ask and start a  discussion

3.      the alive and friendly communications

4.      practical project

Wrong:

1.      I miss more specific about technologies in SOA

2.      lectures could be shorter

3.      sometimes too many “philosophy of life”

4.      lectures Saturdays!!! Not good!

5.      too long dinner break

6.      very short time to do the project

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation? How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment?

I didn’t find immediate benefit for my current professional situation. But who knows, maybe in the future I will use skills from this SOA course, because (from Laimis feedback J ) „I think SOA idea will have a devastating power in near future, especially with new technologies and new emerging possibilities.“

What’s the matter with all these people feeding someone’s back here? I mean, guys, it’s just a back. How to hell can you feed it? But maybe it’s some kind of new trend… I’ll try to join it then As I’m not a great writer, the feedback will be provided in Q & A form rather than that of an essay.

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Another interesting topic from Guy Kawasaki: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/by_the_numbers_.html

Ups, I’m almost the last one… Ok, here are my voting results: 12 points go to… oh, sorry, not this one…

Here are my comments about the course…

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Firstly, my english is wide from beeing fluent. So, please sit up, read and don’ t scare… 

What is the added value of attending this course for you?

Really, I can’t evaluate the added value of this course now. In current situation I don’t use skills from this course (if we talk about SOA), because I don’t need it. I learned something about projects management ( but sorry, what is title of this course?!?). 

What is the immediate benefit for you in your current professional situation?

Sorry, but I don’t feel any immediate benefit in my current professional situation…

How do you see SOA being helpful in your professional environment?

I will use SOA products on internet with pleasure for searching.

How do you see SOA in 5 years from now?

I don’t know, maybe for 5 or more years I think all internet will change. I heard something cosmonautics –  semantic web.

What are the pros and cons of “totally online” computing?

I think this kind of computing is too much sensitiv for all changes: data, they structure or smth.  If we use this computing, we need to organize all workflow very precisely. We need to consider all possible and accidental problems and the decisions, how it can be solved.  The indisputable profit of this computing – data freshness.

How would you use Web 2.0 in commercial projects?

Web 2.0 – the new perspective. If we don’t use the new technologies, than please go afoot, forget mobile phones and dance with sticks around the fire. Unfortunately, the commercial projects, where I work, don’t use this technology.

How would have you organized this course if given a chance? Please think both from the contents and the form perspective.

First, I would do the examination for that students, they don’t want to do projects. I think, that two months – very short time to do the project. If you want to organize this in real, you need to evaluate, how much time you can reserve for this, because everyone has more or less responsabilities from other areas. Now we felt a little bit of stress and can’t do it with pleasure. I missed the summary of this course,  few information about technical SOA solutions.

What the lecturers did wrong?

More unnecessary information – about life, “farm and bees”. For working student each weekendhour is valuable like gold. I think with preparation from lecturers side, the lecture time can be reduced from 5 to 2-3 hours. In my opinion, is not necesary to picture the own aim, if you have this aim in your head, you will reach it If you need to write it on paper, that means, you can forget it!?! Than it is not your aim… I think so…:) I think the rating was unrelevant, it was not accord with course title. If the course was named “Projects management” or smth, I agree, than we can value the presentation quality, management and smth.

What the lecturers were good at?

The lecturers was the best “public relations” specialists, that I heard in my life It was interesting to listen about the real experience in projects management. I liked the alive and friendly communications. In each case, the lectures was not like all other, they was exclusive and interesting.

During our last meeting last Saturday, all of the teams were able to present their projects and put their weeks or months of hard work for public judgement. Some felt valued, some felt underrepresented, some must have thought that the public didn’t understand what their team wanted to express and did not see how hard in fact they worked. And they were right. No matter how much effort you put into a project and no matter how big, stable and sophisticated your creation is, the public only has a few minutes to learn about it and evaluate it. And it’s how you present it that matters.

I don’t claim to be a presentation guru or the mr. know-it-all. But I did have some damn good presentations in my life, I took part in a few presentation-related courses, read some theory and I used to analyze the way others present ideas and track down the common mistakes that they make.

So what I would like to present here is a list of some most relevant presentation tips that I gathered from my own experience and a variety of other sources. This is not directly SOA-related stuff, but in any business or academic environment a good presenter is priceless. And we all agreed that our presentations last Saturday were not really top notch. So here it goes (and feel free to post your tips and tricks or links in the comments).

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Google just released a web-based mashup creator and hosting environment. The editor accepts HTML, CSS, and Google-specific XML tags. These tags provide access to google feeds such as the Google Calendar and Base.
It is in limited testing at the moment, but still… can find it here: http://googlemashups.com/

Thanks to all for your insightful comments and observations.

I was not able to reach Giedrius to set a date for all the feedbacks to be posted, so I suggest 8th of June – a week from now.

Was playing with  Fuel Price advisor – well docummented.

Cheers.

So the lessons are over and the last thing is needed to do. So I post my feedback in our Wiki maybe this way I make A. Svirskas and G. Zlatkus to come and see our project documentations and our wiki In Lithuanian it is said „Niekas nepakels šuniui uodegos kaip jis pats“ or something like that