September 05, 2007, 2:04 PM — It was dusk - Master Foo's favorite time of day for contemplating the fundamental impermanence of the 1s and 0s of his CD collection. A timid knock on his door signaled the arrival of a visitor. The tired knock of someone exhausted by the travails of a hot trek up Pentimenti Mountain.
"Master Foo. My name is Mr. Klein. In my new job I have responsibility for creating an enterprise wide architecture for a company down in the valley. I seek your advice on the choice of a topology for this architecture."
"You are welcome on Pentimenti Mountain Mr. Klein.", said Master Foo pouring green tea for himself and his visitor. He placed a pad of watercolor paper on his lap and with the aid of a fine sable brush, proceeded to create intricate Sona patterns for use as wall decorations in the server room. "Please sit and tell me more about your architecture while I paint. It helps me to concentrate."
Mr Klein sat down and took a sip of his tea while gathering his thoughts. "My primary options as I see them are hub and spoke and message bus architectures. Both will work but I have been reading about SOAs and I think that..."
Master Foo raised his brush in the air to signal to Mr Klein to stop talking. "What. What is it?", he asked.
Master Foo replied: "That has essentially nothing to do with enterprise architecture Mr Klein. What you speak of is wiring not architecture."
Mr Klein slumped somewhat in his seat and stared into his green tea. "But everything I read and everyone I talk to start out by drawing pictures about how distinct parts are connected together!"
"Indeed," replied Master Foo. "The problem here is not that those drawing the pictures do not understand the true nature of enterprise architecture - although I know of some notable exceptions. No. The problem is more to do with the limitations on the available forms of expression."
Mr Klein sank further into his seat, ruing his decision to make the trip up Pentimenti Mountain without first reading the copy of "Semiotics For Beginners" that a Master Foo acolyte had urged him to read.
"Tell me Mr. Klein, what is an enterprise architecture for? What is it, in and of itself. What is its value proposition?"
"Well, lets see...", Mr Klein began. "We have all these computer systems that need to be made to work together somehow. They all need to talk so we need to hook them up somehow."
"Ok. But why do they need to talk? What value is there in getting them to talk?"
"Well. We currently manually type information from one system into another to get things done. If we hooked all the systems together we would obviate the need for that re-keying."
"Indeed you would. Assume for a moment that your systems are hooked together in that fashion, would you then have an enterprise architecture?", asked Mr Foo.
Mr Klein, sensing where the conversation was going, took a deep breath. "I presume the answer to that is 'no' Master Foo but I confess I do not know why."
"The answer is indeed 'no' Mr Klein."
Master Foo laid aside his drawing, washed his brush in a glass of water and placed it standing upright in a second glass. A droplet of water formed on the brush. Master Foo had watched the droplet form and now waited for it to fall down the stem of the brush. Staring at it intently. Awaiting its falling like some sort of cosmic permission signal to proceed.
"Interconnecting systems in that fashion can be useful in that it alleviates the need for manual intervention in inter-system communication Mr Klein. However, this is merely a wiring problem. Namely, how to effectively transfer information from A to B. Any number of network topologies can be used here but the result will simply be a more efficient inter-connection of existing systems - not an architecture for how the systems currently inter-connect or should inter-connect."
Mr. Klein gave Master Foo that universal look which says "Please, please give me an example!"
Master Foo continued. "Imagine that information about suppliers is stored in multiple computer systems. Inter-connecting these systems can address the question of how to share supplier information amongst systems but it does not address the enterprise architecture questions. These enterprise architecture questions relate to the multiplicity of supplier information repositories - not the effectiveness of their inter-connectivity. Am I making sense here Mr. Klein?"
