Jeff Barr, a Web services evangelist at Amazon. com, says as technologies converge—including the alphabet soup that is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), XML and SOA (service-oriented architecture)—software architects need to change their ways of operating.
"The corporate software architect of the future may have a function more akin to a plumber or a bricklayer than to a developer," said Barr in Seattle. "To keep his dignity intact, let's call him an assembler of components."
What Barr is getting at is the early stages of a shift in how enterprise software could be developed. For instance, Barr is helping Amazon.com turn small pieces of code into Web services governing e-commerce transactions that can be reused across the company.
