Fri, 23 Aug 96 18:40:18 -0600
Sender: thelliez@lanl.gov
Message-Id: <321E4F71.6EDA@lanl.gov>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 18:40:17 -0600
From: Thierry Thelliez <tgt@lanl.gov>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
To: 100031.3311@compuserve.com
Cc: jeff.sutherland@individual.com
Subject: Patterns and Business Objects

Martin,

I am interested by the current development of Business Objects and I read your position paper at:

fowler.html

Near the end of your paper you wrote:

"A colleague of mine remembers a case in a large corporation when they tried to come up with a standard definition of account. The business had 13 incompatible definitions, and could not resolve them."

Well, here at LANL which is also a large institution, we have the same kind of problems. At one point I was thinking of proposing a Business Object like approach. But to make people agreeing on the needs is more than a challenge. For example, although they are not talking in terms of Objects, they cannot agree on the definition of a building. Some will measure distances from inside side to inside side of walls. Some others will include the walls themselves. This resulted in different implementations of non-interoperable systems.

I am interested to know more about why such efforts are 'doomed' and how Business Objects can still help in this domain.

Your idea of patterns is seducing but I was wondering how you can practically use it. I could imagine how to use and reuse software components (implementing Business Objects) in the development of an IS. I could also imagine that during the Analysis phase of a reengineering effort, we could recognize some patterns across different domains/applications. I have more difficulties understanding how Analysis Patterns could help in reconciling opposite business views.

In the above examples, should the account or the building actual definition/implementation be Business Objects or should a Business Object be an abstract account or abstract building, letting the actual implementation details to sub-objects ?

Do you have some examples of successful implementations ? Is your book going to cover that ? When will it be available ?

Thank you Thierry

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Thierry Thelliez Los Alamos National Laboratory . .
Email: tgt@lanl.gov CIC-15 . .
Voice: (505) 665 8631 MS P954 . . Fax: (505) 665 0525
Los Alamos NM 87545 . .
URL: http://www.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/phone/113845 USA
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