My 2 cents on Hailstorm
This post was inspired by "Hailstorm moves to Google ?" post by Robert Scoble. Actually his post is not only announcement but reaction to the "Shipping Software" post by Mark Lukovsky himself, where Mark actually stands that Microsoft can not ship software effectively to its customers and ships it in the old-fashioned way which is not suitable for 2005 rapidly changed picture of software development.
"I would argue that Microsoft used to know how to ship software, but the world has changed... The companies that "know how to ship software" are the ones to watch. They have embraced the network, deeply understand the concept of "software as a service", and know how to deliver incredible value to their customers efficiently and quickly."
Both these posts have raised the wave on the internet about whether Microsoft really knows how to ship software and another wave on Google adoption of Microsoft key software engineers. Personally it is not interesting to me at all. What is interesting is the fact that Mark was the head of Hailstorm project (here is the Microsoft Press Release) that was never shipped. In fact I understand the feeling when you lead the big project working for the major software vendor of the market and your project is never shipped because A, B or C reasons. So "Shipping Software" post was expected sooner or later.
Hailstorm project concepts are also very interesting. I downloaded the old 2001 MSDN video - .Net Show Hailstorm episode and watched. So what is Hailstorm ? It is a large partitioned XML database and a bunch of SOAP webservices based on complicated XSD schemes which describe common datastructures such as calendar, address, wishlist, etc.. Webservices can do whatever is described in HSDL - Hailstorm service definition language. Sounds familiar ? For example, common HSDL methods are: insert, delete, update, replace, query and change-notify. Also this talk is the first place, IMHO, where Service oriented architecture aspects and advantages are described actually. And BTW, it is not quiet right that Hailstorm was never shipped. Many things were incorporated in the future products I believe and most of the ideology was taken by Indigo project. The most interesting is that some parts had been really shipped. For example Microsoft Passport.
Saturday, March 12, 2005 12:49 AM
