From: tomas pospisek Date: 2007-03-28T00:59:44+09:00 Subject: Re: On Enterprise Ruby On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Alex Young wrote: > Tomas Pospisek's Mailing Lists wrote: >> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Alex Young wrote: >> >>> Alexey Verkhovsky wrote: >>>> I want to ask one more question: why is the E-word anathema in this >>>> community? Yes, people choose fancy words for self-description. Yes, >>>> these >>>> words can become associated with bad things. And yes, staying away from >>>> the >>>> whole thing is a possible lifestyle choice. Changing the game is another >>>> equally valid choice, however. So, who or what are we, as a community, >>>> sending those "$&#* off!" signals to? >>> >>> The problem with the term "enterprise" is that it doesn't seem to have a >>> clear, consistent definition as applied to software (or, indeed, to >>> anything else), which, in a software-centric community, makes it pretty >>> worthless as a description. >> >> Um well, it's about as clear the expression "software that doesn't suck", >> which is intuitively understandable by anybody doing software I guess. > > Maybe to you. Not to me. I've seen "enterprise" used with any/all of the > following connotations, among others: > > - Integrating across system boundaries (your definition) > - Encompassing all business processes internally > - Used in a business environment > - Hot-deployable from a single central source across a network > - Having live failover capabilities > - Having good static analysis tools > - [3,4,5] 9's uptime > > All of these are completely different, and refer to wildly disparate aspects > of development, deployment and use. > > This is my point, in a roundabout sort of way - while it's very easy to pick > on any one of these and say "because Ruby doesn't meet this particular > requirement out of the box, it's not worth looking at any further," that's to > ignore the successes that people are having with Ruby in otherwise > traditional environments, as alluded to by the OP. > > >> Starting from the above definition and from my experience, enterprise means >> integrating accross system boundaries, and integrating means SOAP and XML >> (I am not arguing here that it can't be done differently). And SOAP and XML >> is where Ruby is not shining. Thus as a colorary "Ruby is not enterprise >> ready" as you say. > > Is that definition widely accepted? Is that what the term "enterprise" means > in the expression "enterprise Ruby stack?" That's a honest question - it's > not how I read it, but I'd like to hear your point of view. If you ask different people, they will tell you different things on why software sucks or not. Same with enterprise sw. You can never know for certain, but you can be pretty certain if it covers most bullet points named in this thread. *t, turning the irony potentiometer slightly down again ;-) -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Tomas Pospisek http://sourcepole.com - Linux & Open Source Solutions ------------------------------------------------------------------------