Re: [xml-dev] James Clark: XML versus the Web

[Kurt Cagle <kurt.cagle@gmail.com>]

The one critical difference between Enterprise Applications and the vast majority of applications out there is that at the end of the day, there always has to be a fall guy if something goes wrong. Of course, nobody wants to be that fall guy, so they do everything they can to reduce their overall risk to being caught in the scope - which usually means being as conservative as possible, staying away from "innovative" solutions that are high profile enough that they're easy targets, adding in layer after layer of security that serves little purpose beyond insuring that if a breach occurs, the enterprise developer can always blame the COTS manufacturer. It also usually means that most enterprise applications produce ten times as much documentation as they do working code, designing everything in advance and sticking to this even if exploration reveals that alternative approaches are preferable, because of course by that time "it's in the spec".

Okay, so maybe I've become a wee bit cynical, but the enterprise application development lifecycle has killed more projects than most people are comfortable admitting. It's also why, when I hear about very process-oriented companies saying they've adopted Agile methodologies, I tend to be very skeptical.

Kurt Cagle
XML Architect
Lockheed / US National Archives ERA Project

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@rbii.com> wrote:

>> Not my quote, but I would disagree with the 90%... a lot of the
>> 'enterprisey' XML is where things get complex... I agree with Rick there.
>>
>
> Actually I'm pretty sure that's my quote ;)

Ouch! A second-generation misquote!

I sometimes wonder if people make things needlessly complex in enterprises app by accident or design... it seems people keep adding and layering complexity until something breaks... usually in a misguided attempt to *guarantee* interchanges, reliability, etc. etc.

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