Hard to find hardware now in stock:

This years HP Technology Forum and Expo (HPTF&E) was a great success, but key to its success for me, was the turn out from the NonStop community. Everywhere I went, the “I love NonStop” badges were highly visible and it was particularly encouraging to me to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. By now it’s a matter of record that HP used this event to take off the wraps on NonStop on Blades and to demo it on their stand.

The move to blades is just another step down the path of embracing open and industry standards. Also getting considerable attention was the announcement of the upcoming availability (early 2009) of a deep port of SASH – and that I briefly referenced as something to anticipate – in a TandemWorld column back in February 2008. Again, further evidence of NonStop’s continuing support of open and industry standards. These are very important elements being brought to NonStop that will ensure its ongoing success.

But I wasn’t only looking through back issues of the TandemWorld newsletter, I was also digging around (electronically) into old issues of the ITUG Connection magazine where I stumbled onto a couple of related issues, all on the subject of SOA and Web services - a subject I continue to follow even now that I am at GoldenGate.

Back in the March / April 2002 issue, Neil Coleman, of ACI (formerly Insession),wrote a piece that he called “Web Services - Broadening Interoperability” where he said “Web Services allow application components to interoperate using standard Web protocols, without distinction regarding the native operating environment of such components. In this context, an application component should be viewed as an independently deployable unit, its internal architecture being dependent only upon its native environment.”

He then made a very interesting observation, “Certainly the above definition does not preclude offering software as a service; however let's not confuse functionality and charging model … Pathway serverclasses are the implementation of the component, and the message buffers passed between the Pathway servers and the requesters are formatted according to the DDL structures used to reflect the serverclass interface. Externalizing the Pathway application, specifically the serverclass interface, according to Web Service standards means that other, heterogeneous application components can easily integrate with the services implemented by the Pathway application.”

Brad then pointed out “A key strength of SOAP is its interoperability which allows users to choose from a broad range of client environments (for example, JAVA), and still expect the same degree of accessibility to the Web Services.”

Two years later, in the July / August 2004 issue, Mike Clemens, then of VISA DPS, co-wrote an article “From Transaction Processing Monitors to Application Servers – The Drive to Improved Total Cost of Ownership” he reported on how “at VISA DPS, the decision was made to continue with Pathway and to develop new applications in C. Essentially, for VISA DPS, Pathway has now evolved to become a NonStop server "container" for its C language applications.” Mike then added, “In going down this path, VISA DPS greatly simplified the transition and made it very easy for Pathway users to migrate to open access protocols, such as IP, HTTP, and XML/SOAP.”

I really had to remind myself that I was reading Connection magazine articles four and even six years which, in our industry, is a lifetime ago. But it’s curious to me, with all the talk about the growth in adoption of SOA and Web services, that so many of us may have missed how much of this open architecture was pioneered within the NonStop community.

I recently posted a blog entry “Behind the Pit Wall”, http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2008/07/behind-pit-wall.html where I talked about this topic, and of HP NonStop’s deep port of the SAHS stack, and what it means for NonStop customers.  I concluded with the questions “Could we really be pursuing something completely at odds with what the rest of IT is pursuing, only to leave us looking foolish? I just don't think so! What are we waiting for – with proven technology and applications running for almost a decade, what more are we looking for? But re-reading these articles I realize that many in the NonStop community have already begun to exploit the tremendous potential for integrating NonStop within the technology framework that supports their business.

“Do I stress you out …
I don't want to dissect everything today
I don't mean to pick you apart you see”

It is not my intention to get everyone stressed or to become anxious about the speed with which they are adopting this critical architecture. And I certainly don’t want to come off looking like I am going after any one particular user or even vendor. However, all of us want to see the report card on our use of NonStop to include the phrase “plays nice with others”, but without SOA and Web services, anchoring such integration across our heterogeneous deployments, I cannot see such a report card being produced.