Aamir Khan in Lagaan - A typical Enterprise Architect Mindset

I recommend budding IT architects to watch Bollywood movie 'Lagaan', particularly the role of Aamir Khan who was the hero.

It is a movie about common men, led by a strong-minded individual to overcome resistance and differences in opinion - and standing their ground for a cause against a powerful opposition. There is a cause for a fight, there is a fight, and there is a moral victory in the end. This is the stuff that most good-over-bad and other moral stories are made of, but the details in the script of Lagaan make it work.

Aamir Khan assembles a cricket team and respond to the challenge of the British General. The humor is certainly a strength of the movie, blended most brilliantly into a serious and inspirational narrative. Full credit to the director, screenplay, dialogues, and the performers.

Architects can learn quite lot from this character, how to fight for their ideas, using humour etc. If you are introducing SOA or App Server or Modernizing the legacy or re-engineering or whatever a worthwhile cause, take Aamir Khan's role as inspiration.

I also like Ayn Rand's Fountainhead and take inspiration.

When EA misfires....

Enterprise Architecture

Spring or Xfire

When it comes to picking a framework for SOAP Web Services, many frameworks compete. For first time developers of web services, they need to rely on internet searches, expert opinions and some of their guts in deciding an appropriate framework.

I have used Spring-WS in a project and found it very simple in straightforward. The application is running like a horse since last 3 years.

I haven't used Xfire in a real project, but heard good things about the same. There seems to be some comparison between Spring-WS and Xfire particularly in the area of contract first. I agree Spring-WS requires CF approach, however, it can also be used the other way. I think the approach used in Eclipse IDE to develop web services is more reasonable, where they have used two approach such as Top Down and Bottom Up. Any framework for Web Services should allow these both approaches. I believe there are data and service contracts in both these approaches except the sequence of these events may be different.

I do recognize the need for cleaner frameworks that make understanding, development of SOA projects easy.

I wanted some more feedback on Xfire.