Eric Newcomer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