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The Importance of Frameworks
Oracle's Ted Farrell discusses frameworks, standards, J2EE, and giving developers the power of choice
by the Editors of FTPOnline

May 18, 2005

Ted Farrell, Oracle's chief architect of the application development tools division, spoke to FTPOnline about the importance of frameworks, standards, and the power of J2EE. He will deliver a keynote address at the Enterprise Architect Summit, May 23 in Key Biscayne, Florida.

FTPOnline: What are the key takeaways from your upcoming presentation at the Enterprise Architect Summit? Why did you decide to focus on frameworks?

Ted Farrell: There's been a lot of talk about service-oriented architecture, event-driven architecture, and Web services—people are looking at how to build their applications, and there are a lot of things to consider—not just on the management side, but on the user-interface side. When you get down to building an application, you have to rely on the platform. Frameworks focus on the technical issues, and users can focus on the business side.

FTPOnline: How do you view the integration of Java with service-oriented architectures?

Farrell: Web services is good for interoperability and loose coupling. You can have more manageability and interoperability without worrying about the implementation. When you're picking a platform, J2EE has more scalability and flexibility of architecture and high performance, which offers a supreme advantage.

Web services offers loose communication, and it enables interoperability with .Net and legacy systems. But when you're picking an architecture platform, J2EE offers the most advantages.

FTPOnline: What are some of the key criteria that architects should consider when selecting a framework for their enterprise architecture?

Farrell: A lot of earlier frameworks, like PowerBuilder, Forte, or Visual Basic, offered basically the same thing—they made it easy to build enterprise applications. What's different now is the widespread use of standards. Those were good technologies, but users wound up buying into not just the tool but also a development style. Now with standards so prevalent, users aren't locked in. You can use the pieces you want to use. Others don't have to use the same pieces, but everything works together seamlessly. Architects and developers can work off the standards rather than the tool.