Are These Buses Going Somewhere?

06 May 2008

I've just listening to the Identity Bus discussion of five men. It's just going in cycles. It reminds me of all the discussions regarding system integration difficulties that end up in the concept of almighty web services and Enterprise Service Bus concepts. I cannot help myself, but I'm naturally suspicious of all the panacea-like solutions.

All the "buses" reminds me of a solution that I've created to fix my spout, until it will be completely replaced in few weeks. I wanted to connect two rectangular segments at an unusual angle. After a bit of hammering I've got this:

All the "buses" are just that. A duct tape. The best product for temporary fixes ever made. But you cannot really build an infrastructure on duct tape, can you?. How you would make a water supply system for a big city using a duct tape? How long can that last? Can you duct tape an electricity distribution system?

My question is if all these buses go somewhere. What is the systemic solution that we want to achieve? What is our vision? Where we want to go? As the Cheshire Cat observed, if we do not know where we want to go it does not matter which road we take.