Michael A. Sick

The Department of Defense (DoD) Discovery Metadata Specification (DDMS) describes the DOD's preferred approach for decorating data assets with metadata. By providing a common convention for metadata, the DoD is building a common system for asset discovery, search, description, co... (more)

It can be difficult for developers, architects, and managers to keep up with new software packages and releases. This can be especially true with fast moving technologies like Web services. This article provides an overview of the main technologies that comprise the Java Web Serv... (more)

The Department of Defense (DoD) Discovery Metadata Specification (DDMS) describes the DOD's preferred approach for decorating data assets with metadata. By providing a common convention for metadata, the DoD is building a common system for asset discovery, search, description, co... (more)

I recently completed my first WebSphere Portal v5 install/implementation for a moderately sized healthcare company. Typically, when I consider new assignments and new technologies, I perform the "Dice Check". The Dice Check consists of some quick and dirty research using dice.com... (more)

Service discovery and identification is a critical piece of the overall Web services puzzle. Existing service architectures, such as CORBA, JINI, and ebXML, have all devoted significant effort towards making service discovery available and comprehensive. If Web services is to bec... (more)

This month WSJ focuses on P2P architectures and grid computing, two topics that are gaining momentum in our industry. Over the past year or so I've read many excellent articles and books on these topics. However, getting a handle on what P2P and the grid are can be a challenge as... (more)

Martin Fowler, of Extreme Programming fame, states: "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." While true for every programmer in the business, this maxim also applies to code generators and translators. In t... (more)

Though often spoken of as a technology of tomorrow, it's important to understand that Web services are already proving to be a key component of some of the products and projects of today. This month's article examines how Web services and .NET are becoming critical components of... (more)

Web services is often spoken of as a future technology, yet it's important to understand that Web services is already proving to be a key component of the products and projects of today. In this article I examine how Web services has become an enabling piece of Epic Data's Conne... (more)

Have you ever looked at a child's toy and thought, "I wish they had that when I was growing up?" I had that familiar feeling while reading Web Services: Building Blocks for Distributed Systems by Graham Glass. Having pored over various specifications, articles, and newsgroup arch... (more)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what words do you use when the picture is in the wrong format? Not exactly a Zen koan, but a valid question whose answer is JIMI, the Java Image Management Interface from Activated Intelligence. JIMI is a toolkit for reading, writing, viewi... (more)