Alan points to FCW’s Feds work on melding architectures, which is about the challenges in aligning OMB’s five reference model Federal Enterprise Architecture – the “meta-architecture” for all the agency efforts – with the enterprise architecture work done at agency level.
Meta-architecture (slide 7). Hmmm. I like the concept ‘meta-architecture’, which incidentally came up the other day, in a slightly different context – since we’re working a lot with Meta Group, our white paper is influenced by them, and our models and concepts were called “Meta-architecture” by someone. Ah, the joy of language. Ah, the joy of layers of meaning.
4 Comments.
“Meta-architecture” is one of those Humpty-Dumpty words. You know … “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less”. As with software patterns, meta-architecture is essentially distilled from empirical use and (as far as I know) lacks a solid theoretical basis. One of the big gripes with software development is, as I’m sure you’re aware, the disparity between the development in the power of hardware vs the power of software over the last thirty years. Fred Brooks wrote about this in “The Mythical Man Month” in 1975 and reviewed the situation (unfavourably) in the 1995 20th anniversary edition. His identification of the problem is that all of the easily automatable tasks in software development (compiling, editing, source control etc) have been done, leaving the hard stuff for humans. Until some of the hard stuff get automated too, we will be limited by the complexity of writing code for not-too-smart compilers to deal with. Now, I’m a keen user of patterns in software development, but, like patterns, I don’t see “meta-architectures” as anything other than an extension of the existing paradigm.
Just my 2 bits worth …
Daen
“There are 10 types of people in the World : those that understand binary ; and those that don’t” — Anon.
I await your patterns-post with bated breath.
I’m just having a browse through your PhD thesis, especially chapter 5. I like the idea of amagerjin-ron, and while you’d get a lot of blank looks if you used the word to the shoppers in the Amager Centre, I think most Ama’rcaners would appreciate the idea.
The excerpt from H C Andersen makes me imagine what Dickens must have been thinking when he wrote the opening to “Great Expectations” : of the escaped convict, Magwitch hiding out in the ague-ridden misty Essex marshes, occasionally looming out of the fog to threaten young Pip. I can imagine similar scenes have been played out once or twice around the Amager coast over the years …
Yes, I think a meetup would be good fun.
GeoURL is a laugh, isn’t it? 🙂
Great comments, Daen. I like patterns too, as you will see very soon (this week), if you watch my blog.
Your blog is the first other blog from Amager i know of. Cool. We should meet up some day.
plz send new niformation about meta
tnx