Musings on the Human Condition

There aren't a lot of books on enterprise architecture , never mind good books. The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture  by Godinez et al (IBM Press, 2010) fills a big void . I recommend the book for an excellent overview of enterprise architecture (EA) and reference architecture (RA), followed by a detailed discussion on Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) and an EIA RA. The authors define architecture as well as EA. They provide an overview of EA as well as RA, noting that there are various elements of an architecture including business architecture, application architecture, security architecture, and, of course, information architecture (IA) . After the introductory chapters, the book launches into a detailed discussion on IA, EIA, and a RA for EIA. EIA is explored in terms of multiple views (conceptual, logical) and models (component, operational). As the authors explain, the key that explains the "enterprise" in an EA is the manner in which an E...

Okay, so it's a bit risky to refer to this giant of contemporary computer science as a horse. But, as the saying goes, this is straight from the horse's mouth . Trust me, it doesn't get any more authoritative than this! Roy Fielding is co-author of the HTTP specification and the ubiquitous Apache Web Server. He created the Representational State Transfer (REST) paradigm as an architectural style for the Web. Since then REST has received much well-deserved attention. His doctoral thesis (FREE PDF!) is a seminal work that contains an excellent discussion on the following. Software architectures in general, well worth reading for the survey and rigor contained herein, especially given the lack of consensus on what entails an architecture definition How network-based application architectures (e.g. the Web) are unique, an impressive discourse on the nature and function of the Internet Why Fielding proposed the REST architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems. F...