When SearchWebServices last talked to Jerry Cuomo, CTO for IBM WebSphere, in May he talked about the emergence of REST and Web-based SOA. Since then he has become a champion for Project Zero, an incubator for a REST-based framework for Web SOA that is now in beta and moving toward an as yet unnamed product release in 2008. While it is not an open source project, IBM is making it transparent for customers and developers, so they can watch Big Blue design and build new Web tools. In his blog on the Project Zero site, which provides a window into the project, Cuomo explains that the environment includes a scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP with application programming interfaces optimized for producing REST-style services, integration mash-ups and rich Web interfaces. In this interview he discusses what he's been blogging about and how the Project Zero approach may change the way developers and architects view at service-oriented architecture (SOA).
What exactly is Project Zero?
Jerry Cuomo: One of the things we feel we need in our portfolio is a technology that's optimized for time, optimized for agility. Whereas our other platforms, and I think the enterprise software industry at large, [are] optimized for enduring value. You build the assets very carefully because you want them to last and live forever. But there's a place for the agile application where living forever might be nice but if I don't have this done by Tuesday it doesn't matter. I need to optimize for time. So Project Zero is a site where we're developing an agile platform called the Zero platform.
