FlowArchBook

Think about the ways in which the software development process resembles the flow of water running downhill. Ideas are the tiny drops of potential value that gather into features and architectures which then feed backlogs. From there, developers create code and configuration—thus adding value—which  then merges with other flows. Work done in the combined flow gains more and more value until it is presented to those that convert all that value into desired outcomes: profit, or perhaps mission success. OK, it's a bit of a corny analogy, but it represents my mental model of the challenges that developers face while creating any significant enterprise or commercial software system. First, the challenge is to convert potential energy (a worthy idea or demonstrated need) into kinetic energy (the increasing value of the solution to the end user) via a metaphorical force of gravity (the desire for the aforementioned profit or mission success). The other thing I picture is that water runnin...

I suppose any blog that claims to target the subject of flow should first define what it means by "flow". There is no argument that the word "flow" is heavily overloaded in the world of technology and related practices and disciplines. It is even more overloaded when you lump in fields such as architecture, healthcare, and—not surprisingly—plumbing. So, when talking about event-driven architectures, and especially event-driven integration, what do I mean by "flow"? First, I provided a very high level overview in a thread on Twitter a few months ago: What is flow, and why is it the future of event-driven integration? I thought I'd just give a brief overview of my book which ships in mid-December. Pre-orders can be made on Amazon at https://t.co/ugMUdlQJ03 /1 — James Urquhart (@jamesurquhart) November 12, 2020 Click on the tweet to see the whole thread. In a blog we can explore the definition in a bit more detail. Defining Flow My book, Flow Architectu...

Welcome. This is the beginning of my new blog about the future of event-driven integration, and the advances happening today to make that happen. The concept is described in detail in my book, Flow Architectures: The Future of Streaming and Event-Driven Integration , published with O'Reilly Media. If you have come here having read the book, thank you and I hope you find the blog equally informative. If you have yet to read the book, I encourage you to pick up a copy. Who am I? My name is James Urquhart, and I have had a 30 year career focused on distributed systems in the enterprise. I've had product and engineering leadership positions at Sun Microsystems, Cassatt, Cisco, Enstratius, Dell, SOASTA, AWS, and Pivotal. I am currently a Principle Technologist for VMware Tanzu, working with customer leaders to understand strategies that leverage the power of the Tanzu platform. I am primarily focused on developer experience today. I've also had a fairly successful stint as a blo...