Steve Benfield

My hype meter has been revved up lately, and what has pegged it is Web services. Who is hyping up Web services? Hmm...Microsoft, Sun, IBM, HP, BEA, SilverStream, Ariba, BowStreet, webMethods...my aunt Judy. I'm expecting to see this e-mail soon: "Quit your job and make $100,000 a year writing Web services in this groundbreaking business opportunity." Oh...that one might be true . Okay, so what's behind all this hype? Is all this real? My take: absolutely real - or at least it will be very soon. This is my fourth "sea change" in software development. I can recognize a good thing when I see it. In the '80s, the PC computing revolution took off. Snicker, snicker, PCs will never be serious. This revolution networked individual PCs but didn't change how corporate IT was ... (more)

Web Services The Power to Change the World?

So, people keep asking me, "Steve, how come you are such a wild and crazy guy?" OK, sorry, a late 70s flashback there. No, they ask me, "Steve, what's your take on Web Services?" To that, I have a standard opening: There is nothing special about Web Services. Web Services will change the world. The reason I use this opening set of remarks is because before I did, I'd get one of the follo... (more)

JSF: The Ultimate in Flexibility? Or Complexity?

I have a love/hate relationship with J2EE. I love the idea of standards that we can all use in our development to improve interoperability, ease integration issues, create a pool of skilled developers, etc. I hate the idea that I have to wait years for the standards to evolve and become usable. And I hate having specs that seem to work well in theory but have no practical implementation ... (more)

Development Tools for All

Read JDJ's 2004 Predictions by i-Technology Leaders Feature Story Read The End of Middleware by Jonathan Schwartz Read Offshore Outsourcing by Jack Martin My dad is a DBA. However, he doesn't design large databases, he doesn't write extremely elaborate multiselect SQLs (I don't think he's ever read a Joe Celko book), and he certainly doesn't care about the latest, greatest news in the wo... (more)

Product Review: SilverStream 2.0

To put it bluntly, SilverStream 2.0 sets a new standard for large-scale Web development and deployment. We first looked at the product in June 1997 when they were the newest entrant in the application server market. It lacked many enterprise features such as scalability, fault tolerance and CORBA support. In addition, it only offered advantages in the area of Java client development and ... (more)