On 15/06/07, Rob Eamon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > --- In [email protected], "Steve Jones" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > +1 John. > > > > Pretty much anything completely canonical is doomed to failure. > > Have you been involved in anything that tried a "completely > canonical" approach?
If by involved you mean being brought in to clean up the mess after some purist consultant architects and got involved then I've been there on two notable occasions. > > I think there is value in at least pursuing a canonical definition > (something that is implementation/application independent) to some > level. Thinking about processes and messages in this manner can lead > to good things. I agree that going all out, however, is ill-advised. Thinking about interactions and the minimal reference set (i.e. the very least you need to know to communicate) is the thing that I've seen work over and over again. > > > I would say that some of the concepts in Microsoft Motion could be > > described as canonical in that they are consistent across multiple > > businesses within a given sector, and SAP works because an Invoice > > is an Invoice and general ledger is general ledger, but trying to > > formalise these all the way across businesses is not smart and in > > paticular not if you try and make implementation irrelevant. > > Is adopting the model of one your apps as the canonical model a good > thing to do? Perhaps. I suppose it depends on the model and the > pervasiveness of the application, both within and outside the > enterprise. I imagine too that the model of the major application > (R/3 or whatever) within an org is usually the default canonical > model. Its the default model for a given area, but not for the business (which is what I was trying to get at). So yes if you use SAP in Finance then in Finance it is SAPs model, but the SAP customer model will not be used in Sales if they use Salesforce.com or Siebel. Front office models tend to be very different to back-office models in general. Steve > > -Rob > >
