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News In Review
July 6, 1998

Best Practices For Building A Middleware Architecture

  • Keep a vision in mind of where corporate systems need to go, but choose an architecture that allows changes over time

  • Build systems incrementally. Focus on the next four to six months. Find small pieces you can build and deliver in a short time, and try things as you go.

  • Don't pick all the tools at once. Select enough to get started, and add as you go.

  • Accept a certain amount of instability. If you wait until a technology is completely stable, the project will take forever or the technology will be obsolete by the time you use it.

  • Encapsulate as much as you can. If different system elements, such as network interfaces and object models, are encapsulated, it's easier to replace them when needs change and technology evolves.

  • Take a tiered approach. Use different layers to logically isolate application elements and create modularity.

  • Focus on four key areas of scalability: number of users, amount of data, types and breadth of functions, and complexity of the workload.

    Data: InformationWeek

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