On a cold October night in 1871, a tired Chicago put itself to bed. In anticipation of even colder temperatures throughout the night, a certain Mrs. OıLeary left a lantern burning in her barn to keep her cow warm. Such practice was not uncommon. However, according to local lore (and fueled by anti-Irish sentiment prevalent at the time) OıLearyıs cow supposedly kicked the lantern off its hook and started a blaze that raged for 29 hours, destroying most of the cityıs businesses and homes.
Just as surfers flock to a certain spot upon rumor of great waves, architects from around the world converged on the barren Chicago, drawn by the opportunity to rebuild a great city. Using new techniques, materials, and ideas (ideas that clashed strongly with the status quo), these architects rebuilt a Chicago that was to become a showcase of new architecture for the rest of the world. Thus is the encapsulated history of the Chicago School of Architecture.
While the Chicago fire gives the illusion of a slate wiped clean, it isnıt entirely true. History and human requirements forced these "innovators" to lower their sights and respect the quotidian structural needs of the population. For starters, they had to give their buildings walls, roofs, and some source of light for the interior. They had to keep the flow of traffic smooth into and out of the building while maintaining some form of security. And they had to design the structures to support growth, should the current inhabitants outgrow the structure and need to enlarge or expand it. The needs were fundamentally the same as theyıd always been, but the architects were given the chance to assemble the required components in new ways.
Sound familiar? This is where we are now with enterprise IT infrastructures. The rise of the Web is opening up corporate systems to new configurations that work more efficiently than ever before. The human needs are the same, but there are new ways to manifest the results. As the advent of steel girders enabled architects to create the first true skyscrapers with walls of glass, the Web allows IT architects to build systems across entire nations without fear of collapse.
The Web adds a tremendous amount of new elements to systems. Most DBMS vendors have discovered the need to provide an extensible architecture across all their tools to support three- or n-tier architectures. Oracle has its Network Computing Architecture, Sybase its Distributed Component Architecture, and Informix its Dynamic Scalable Architecture. IBM has several architectures but no catchy name for them ı at least not yet.
Because these vendors are competitors, youıll see subtle (and not so subtle) suggestions that one architecture is "better" and "more effective" than the others. Although there are some differences, these vendors shuffle the same deck of cards, and innovation is thereby innately limited. Just as you canıt have a house without walls and a roof, you canıt have a system without a user interface, processing logic, and data. These three basic elements hark back to the mainframe days.
If you respect these three given limitations, you still have opportunity for innovation. When many architects were building cookie-cutter developments in the suburbs, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house to sit directly over the top of a waterfall, nestled deep in the woods. (Itıs the Kaufmann House, also called Falling Water. See www.arch.su.edu.au/~vanoo_p/FallingWater.html.) He didnıt make absurd structural changes in order to be different, though: He didnıt give the house four kitchens and one bedroom, he didnıt build a basement with no door, and he didnıt put the garage in a separate building a half-mile away. He respected the requirements of those who would be living in his structure, but he still found ways to innovate.
I hope that system architects will be able to follow Wrightıs example and not succumb to the temptation to create outrageous, mushroom-shaped systems that look cool but donıt really work. With the current emphasis on reusable code and objects, we have reverted to prefab architecture. Sometimes it works, but other times products become sloppy and thrown together without an eye for the bigger picture. Itıs as if we are living in a massive mobile home community, and I question how well it will weather the next great storm.
As any architect worth his or her salt knows, the needs of your users must be respected. Follow a design that makes sense and has a shelf life of more than six months. You may move on to brighter horizons, but you will be leaving behind an infrastructure that others must rely on for years. Chances are, no clumsy cow will torch your system ı unless you have truly unconventional hiring practices. So thereıs a time to be hip, and thereıs a time to be intelligent. If youıre really on the mark, youıll find ways to be both.