IBM updates System Architect

IBM's Rational Software division has updated its System Architect solution to integrate with Rational Focal Point, a solution that provides analysis and decision support capabilities to help organisations execute the right projects at the right time, reports Design News.

In the enhancements, IBM is aiming to boost the agility of companies to innovate by delivering a set of tools that help establish governance around requirements, foster collaboration among globally dispersed teams and create an enterprise architecture view of system interdependencies, according to Greg Sikes, IBM Rational's director of enterprise architecture and systems modelling.

"You don't have to look far even around your house to see what's happening," Sikes says. "It used to be that innovation came from pure mechanical advances like smaller or lighter components - now we're seeing innovation come more through software."

Open source middleware provider WSO2 is billing its Gadget Server as "a radical departure from traditional portals based on the JSR-168 Java Portlet specification," states Application Development Trends.

The portal platform is designed to give Web developers an enterprise-level tool for creating gadgets using common Web standards, and non-developers a way to mix and match those gadgets.

The Java Portlet defines the relationship between a portlet, which is a pluggable user interface component that runs in a portal server, and the container that manages it, including the APIs and rules for preferences, user data, portlet requests and responses, packaging, and security.

Due to rising demand, software architects and developers are currently hard at work bringing SOA apps and ESBs into cloud computing architectures, says TechTarget.

Unfortunately, early implementers have found some roadblocks, says Jeff Genender, IT book author and open source consultant. For instance, the difficulty of deploying component updates without rebooting is a big problem.

He notes that familiar hot swap capabilities can't be taken for granted up in the cloud; but frequent restarting may defeat the purpose of investing in the cloud at all.