I agree with Jim completely. Business component reuse seems to be more myth
than reality. I can not imagine, given my project experience in several
different domains, how an off the self business component could be reused across
industries or even business within the same industry. Domain models from one
business to the next are very different, not to mention persistence
requirements. The only exception, of course, is if the component is part of
larger framework. IBM San Francisco is an example where there is reuse, but in
this case you have to purchase the whole thing including the vertical tower
specific to your domain.
How successful has MTS been in this area?
Jim Frentress wrote:
> What is the experience out there regarding the reuse of Business Components,
> particularly distributed components? My experience has been that systems
> level stuff can be componentized and reused (an example is EJB). However,
> when it comes to domain objects, reuse has largely eluded me. I have yet to
> completely or even largely reuse a Customer, Partner, Address, Phone, or
> other business object. When I refer to reuse, I really mean reuse outside of
> a business domain. No points will be awarded to solutions demonstrating
> reuse within a tight domain.
>
> I hope this isn't yet another fault in my crack-ridden capabilities. One has
> only to look at the work of groups such as Rosetta.net, XML/DTD in general,
> EDI, CrossWorlds, and ERP vendors to see that reuse is important but
> elusive. As another poster (ok Imre) said, it turns out that there is some
> "public" data and some "private" data in systems he's been involved with (he
> used it in another context but the idea holds here too). I've found the same
> to be true and apparently that's because there is no one definition (view)
> of anything. It also turns out that the truly "public" or sharable data is a
> small fraction of the "private" data. I usually refer to the difference as
> fixed and variable attributes but the problem remains.
>
> So, what are the prospects of reusable business domain components (note that
> an application is a component). The current rush to outsource entire
> applications makes this reuse even more critical, but I've seen no good
> solution to it. Every integration effort I've seen has either duplicated
> data in disparate systems or modified the underlying systems so they were no
> longer truly decoupled.
>
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--
Richard Monson-Haefel
Senior Consultant
BORN Information Services
Author of Enterprise JavaBeans
Published by O'Reilly & Associates
(Available June 1999)
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