Kevin Riggs' Blog

I’m reading Thomas Erl‘s SOA Principles of Service Design now. I’ve had some months now to gain a corporate context for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) but this is my formal engagement of Erl-espoused principles.

Sometimes we engage material without context; sometimes we engage it from a self-defense perspective.  I’m learning it because I want to be much better at some of my new responsibilities.  The learning process is exciting as is the opportunities I have for using this knowledge.  I like both the technical aspects of my job and the interpersonal opportunities I have.  The SOA domain isn’t new but it is germane to my job and an opportunity to grow in knowledge of principles and practical application in a challenging professional environment and that’s a great context for testing my understanding and application.

Boilerplate refers to infrequently changing but often-used things to speed the process of creating something.  I am most familiar with the term in relation to legal contracts and programming.

In legal documentation, boilerplate language would be language (phrases, paragraphes or entire sections of contracts) that doesn’t change from one document to the next.  In a Non-Disclosure Agreement, the basic language about the agreement will be the same from one NDA that a company builds to the next.  These sections that are similar can be considered boilerplate.  Specific terms of the contract are what differentiate one contract from the next.

When was the last time you spun up a new portion of your life?

When did you last start a new diet, a new exercise series, a new ministry, hobby or job? In any of those times you are adding work to your life; work with which you are probably not very familiar. Until you can make a habit of the beneficial thoughts and activities associated with your new practices whatever it is that you’ve started seem daunting.

I’ve accepted a new position with our corporate Application Services’ Center of Excellence organization as team lead for the .NET team.  In this position I will be responsible for support, projects, deliverables, documenting existing solutions as well as analyzing and designing new solutions.  I will help our team meet deadlines successfully while mentoring and helping develop programmers with a focus on corporate policies, industry standards and best practices.  The team’s goals involve delivering components and services to be leveraged to create solutions across the enterprise.  In other words, we’ll make the corporate tools others use to make the programs their customers need.

It doesn’t take much activity in the realm of Twitter to find that these acronyms (ECM, CMS & WCM see the Glossary at bottom of page) produce some strong opinions at 140 characters per post.  There are arguments to exclude programs or include SaaS solutions under the CMS umbrella.  There are polemics about some mainstream systems like Sharepoint.