Eric Newcomer先生致中国读者信

Hello and welcome!  Thank you very much for your interest in my blog.  I intend to write regularly about interesting topics related to services, service orientation, and SOA.

I met so many people when I visited Beijing in July for a book signing ceremony, including my excellent translator, Collin Hsu, who is also translating this blog.  It was a very happy experience for me.  Many people asked very good questions about Web services and SOA, and I understand that these topics are of great interest.  Please continue to ask questions and give comments! 

I have been working for 28 years in the software industry.  While attending Antioch College in Ohio from 1974-1978 I studied FORTRAN, COBOL, computer architecture, taught COBOL, and took an internship as a programmer.  After graduation I worked for a small software division of the State of Illinois in Chicago, developing online transaction processing applications for criminal justice organizations (Joliet Prison, featured in the Blues Brothers movie, was one of our customers).

After working for the State of Illinois I moved back to the East Coast to take a job with a software startup that failed to start up.  By this time we were married and starting a family so I needed a more secure job.  I joined Digital Equipment Corporation, which at the time was the second largest computer company behind IBM and Massachusetts’ largest employer.  I worked at Digital for about 16 years, mostly in database and transaction processing systems engineering.  My responsibilities included system architecture and standardization, and I wrote a book called “Principles of Transaction Processing” with Phil Bernstein.  In 1998 Digital was acquired by Compaq Computer, which was then acquired by HP.   

I joined IONA Technologies in 1999 as transaction processing architect.  I helped standardize OTS V2 and helped write a specification called “Additional Structuring Mechanisms for the OTS.” This specification provided the conceptual foundation for Web services transactions specifications, which I also helped write.  I currently co-chair the Web services transactions technical committee at OASIS, combining my interests in Web services with my background in transaction processing.

Soon after joining IONA I approached Microsoft on behalf of IONA to propose publicly supporting the SOAP specification, which we did before IBM did.  We helped submit SOAP, WSDL, and other key Web services specifications to W3C and OASIS.  We contributed to the charter of the XML Protocols Working Group at W3C and I helped write the requirements for SOAP 1.2.  Around this time I was invited to write a book on Web services, which is called “Understanding Web Services” and was published in 2002. This book won three awards and still sells well.

After that the trend toward SOA started to grow and Greg Lomow helped me write the new book, “Understanding SOA with Web Services.”  Because IONA is the leading CORBA vendor, we had good background information on SOA.  The goal of the book is to explain SOA and describe how Web services match requirements for an SOA platform, and identify gaps.  The two books describe all basic and extended Web services specifications.  The SOA book explains how to use the Web services specifications for an SOA.

Web services and SOA represent a great opportunity for improving the IT systems on which the world’s economy depends. Although the IT industry represents a relatively small percentage of any nation’s economy (5-7% or so) its impact is relatively large, since business and industry rely so heavily on computers for operational support.  Anything that improves efficiency and productivity for IT has a tremendous implication.  This is why Web services and SOA are so interesting and important.  I hope we can monitor the progress of this change together.

My current activities include WS-Transactions, Service Component Architecture, and Eclipse SOA Tools project.

Best Wishes

Eric

 

[专家介绍]

Eric Newcomer先生是SOA方面享有声望的专家，他现任IONA公司的首席技术官，负责为IONA公司在有关标准采纳、架构及产品设计等方面确定技术路线与方向。Eric于1999年11月加入IONA，时任事务架构师（transactionarchitect），后来成为工程与Web服务集成产品副总裁。Eric有26年的计算机从业经验，其中有15年是在DEC/Compaq公司度过的。Eric Newcomer先生是《Understanding SOA with Web Services》一书的作者。

作为《Understanding Web Services》（Addison-Wesley 2002年出版）的作者和《Principles of Transaction Processing》（Morgan Kaufman 1997年出版）的合著者，Eric还参与了《The Future of Software》中“The Keys to the Highway”一章的编写；除此以外，他还撰写了许多白皮书和文章。Eric是X/Open（即现在的Open Group）的Structured Transaction Definition Language规范（发布于1994年）的合著者与编辑。他曾是IETF Transaction Internet Protocol工作组和X/Open Distributed Transaction Processing委员会（XA规范就是该委员会制订的）的成员，并担任过OMG OTS修订任务组（Revision TaskForces，RTF）的主席；Eric目前是OMG XML Valuetype规范（用于将XML映射到CORBA）开发组的主席。Eric是W3C XML Protocols工作组的发起人之一，他是该工作组的SOAP 1.2需求文档的编辑；Eric曾为W3C Web服务架构规范（Web Services Architecture Specification）担任了两年的编辑；目前他是OASIS WS-CAF（Web Services Composite Application Framework）任务组的主席和WS-CAF规范族的编辑。