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We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

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Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#3

Post by zer00eyz »

I...

I am dumbfounded.

With the current state of the market why in the name of all that is holy would you depend on one vendor to get to another?

I dont need to be at the whim of one vendor to get to the next one. What happens when the vendor in-between goes out of business or wants to present their own service or...

I have no words for how bad this idea is.

Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#4

Post by CharlesW »

zer00eyz wrote: post #3

I... I am dumbfounded. With the current state of the market why in the name of all that is holy would you depend on one vendor to get to another? I dont need to be at the whim of one vendor to get to the next one. What happens when the vendor in-between goes out of business or wants to present their own service or... I have no words for how bad this idea is.

It's the, "Intuitively, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to" that kills me.

Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#5

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

weego wrote: post #2

This is full of opaque phrases that I guess make sense to the author. I highly doubt theres a solution to anything in there.

Weirdly it’s basically one long ad for an implementation.

But I agree with you.

Many years ago I worked with an ex-IBM “strategist” who wrote and talked in this way. Supposedly something of a visionary; hired as an evangelist. Everyone was very impressed by him in meetings and customer consultancy.

But I am not sure if he ever said a single thing of substance.

Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#7

Post by Animats »

It's a clickbait ad for something called "Nerve".

The original idea for "electronic data interchange"[1] was to have a standard format for inter-company invoices, purchase orders, bills of lading, customs clearance, etc. So you only need N implementations, not N^2. This got going in the 1970s. So the formats are ancient. This is a flight ticket availability request in the international EDIFACT format.

    UNA:+.? '
    UNB+IATB:1+6XPPC:ZZ+LHPPC:ZZ+940101:0950+1'
    UNH+1+PAORES:93:1:IA'
    MSG+1:45'
    IFT+3+XYZCOMPANY AVAILABILITY'
    ERC+A7V:1:AMD'
    IFT+3+NO MORE FLIGHTS'
    ODI'
    TVL+240493:1000::1220+FRA+JFK+DL+400+C'
    PDI++C:3+Y::3+F::1'
    APD+74C:0:::6++++++6X'
    TVL+240493:1740::2030+JFK+MIA+DL+081+C'
    PDI++C:4'
    APD+EM2:0:1630::6+++++++DA'
    UNT+13+1'
    UNZ+1+1'
This dates from when data communications were really expensive per byte. It's also from when people were thinking in terms of forms expressed in machine-readable data, not an API which actually did something. There are about five different standards bodies for this sort of thing. There's a mini-industry which converts this sort of thing to and from other formats.

Anyone involved in modern systems for this sort of thing?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_data_interchange

Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#8

Post by teaearlgraycold »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #5
weego wrote: post #2

This is full of opaque phrases that I guess make sense to the author. I highly doubt theres a solution to anything in there.

Weirdly it’s basically one long ad for an implementation. But I agree with you. Many years ago I worked with an ex-IBM “strategist” who wrote and talked in this way. Supposedly something of a visionary; hired as an evangelist. Everyone was very impressed by him in meetings and customer consultancy. But I am not sure if he ever said a single thing of substance.

A grifter trained to lead the blind.

Re: We've been thinking about software integration wrong for the past 50 years

#10

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

CharlesW wrote: post #4
zer00eyz wrote: post #3

I... I am dumbfounded. With the current state of the market why in the name of all that is holy would you depend on one vendor to get to another? I dont need to be at the whim of one vendor to get to the next one. What happens when the vendor in-between goes out of business or wants to present their own service or... I have no words for how bad this idea is.

It's the, "Intuitively, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to" that kills me.

Fret not, Charles, you are not alone.

I too am upset that Big EDIC has been thwarting this intuition for the better part of fifty years.

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