Intuit’s Jan Bosch to explore software-development trends in SATURN 2011 keynote

Jan Bosch, vice president of engineering process and head of central mobile technologies at Intuit, Inc., will speak at SATURN 2011 in a keynote address at 9:00 am on Wednesday, May 18. The title of Bosch’s talk will be “Architecture in the Age of Compositionality.”

Bosch has two decades of experience in the software engineering industry as an engineer, professor, consultant, and executive and is the author of Design and Use of Software Architectures: Adopting and Evolving a Product Line Approach. In his talk, Bosch will discuss the trends toward composition of systems from open-source, commercial, and proprietary components; emphasis on building only functionality that is competitively differentiating; and short development cycles and frequent or continuous deployment.

Here is the complete abstract for Bosch’s SATURN 2011 keynote address.

Architecture support for testing: an update

A few weeks ago I posted a blog entry about our new effort in Architecture-Based Testing.  The project’s goal is to help find answers to the two questions shown below:

SATURN 2011 Theme Leader to Present SEI Webinar: Emerging Technologies for Software-Reliant Systems

(The archived version of this webinar can now be viewed here.)

On Thursday, February 24 from 1:30 to 2:30 PM EST, Grace Lewis of the SEI will present a free SEI webinar, titled “Emerging Technologies for Software-Reliant Systems.”

Register.

Lewis is one of seven theme leaders for SATURN 2011, which will be held on May 16-20 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California. She recently wrote a blog post about SOA and cloud computing, the theme that she is leading for SATURN 2011. This webinar and others are our way of introducing readers to the themes that will be covered at SATURN 2011. Registration for SATURN is now open.

About the Webinar

Software-reliant systems of systems (SoS) now tend to be highly distributed software systems, formed from constituent software systems that are operated and managed by different organizations.

Dave Thomas to deliver keynote address at SATURN 2011

Dave Thomas, CEO of Bedarra Research Labs and past CEO and president of Object Technology, Inc. (OTI), will speak at SATURN 2011 in a keynote address at 9:00 am on Thursday, May 19. The title of Thomas’s talk will be “The Intimate Relationship Between Architecture and Code: Architecture Experiences of a Playing Coach.”

In his talk, Thomas will explore why, with so many architects, we still have “so little true architecture, so much technical debt, and such large intractable legacies.” Thomas will assert that good software is “a marriage of architecture and code reflecting the team that designed and built it” and argue that architecture must be refined along with code by architects with “code on their hands.”

Here is the complete abstract for Thomas’s SATURN 2011 keynote address.

Detecting Similarities in Binaries: Important Tool for Malware Detection

As software becomes an ever-increasing part of our daily lives, organizations find themselves relying on software that originates from unknown and untrusted sources. The vast majority of such software is available only as executables, known as “binaries.” Many binaries—such as malware or different versions and builds of a software package—are simply minor variants of old programs (or in some cases exact copies) that have been run through a different compiler.

This blog post by Sagar Chaki of the SEI at the new SEI blog explains how the ability to detect similarities among binaries is an important tool in malware detection and a growing area of research.

Joe Yoder to Speak at SATURN 2011

Joe Yoder, co-author of Big Ball of Mud, will speak at SATURN 2011 in a plenary session at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, May 18. The title of Yoder’s talk will be “Big Ball of Mud: Is This the Best that Agile Can Do?“

In his talk, Yoder will assert that the Big Ball of Mud pattern–a “haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape and bailing wire, spaghetti code jungle” is the “de facto standard software architecture.” He will explore why this architecture is so popular, what forces drive good programmers to build ugly systems, and how we can we make such systems better. Here is the complete abstract for Yoder’s SATURN 2011 talk.

SATURN 2011 Theme: SOA and Cloud Computing (Grace Lewis)

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing to me are interesting topics from an architecture perspective.

SOA has the misfortune of having a name that has the architecture word in it. This was exploited by multiple vendors who would sell “a SOA” as a stack of infrastructure products, leading to a common misconception that SOA would provide the complete architecture for a system.

Architecture and SOA Governance

Grace Lewis, senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute, is leader for the SOA and Cloud Computing theme at SATURN 2011, which will be held May 16-20 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California.

We often say that architecture should be prescriptive and not descriptive. However, enforcing architecture is not an easy task, which is why people are starting to talk about architecture governance as a way to be prescriptive about architecture.

On a related note, even though service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style for designing and developing distributed systems, it is interesting that SOA governance often exists in organizations separate from architecture governance or is the only type of specialized IT governance.

I believe there is a two-way relationship between architecture and SOA governance that can be exploited for mutual benefit:

• SOA governance as a way to enforce SOA architectural principles and conformance of software implementation to software architecture
• Software architecture as an enabler of  SOA governance

Registration is Now Open for SATURN 2011

Reserve your place at SATURN 2011, the annual conference designed for practitioners who are responsible for producing robust software architectures and for those who view software architecture as a critical element in the achievement of their business or organizational missions.

The SATURN 2011 Conference, presented by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute in collaboration with IEEE Software magazine, celebrates its seventh year by exploring “Seven Things You Need to Know About the Next Seven Years in Architecture.”  The program includes

• Three internationally celebrated keynote speakers
• Engaging talks by several IEEE speakers
• Tutorials and technical sessions from world-class practitioners
• Discussions on the latest research and trends in software architecture
• Courses in service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software architecture principles and practices
• Opportunities to expand your professional network and interact with leaders in the architecture field

Register by April 15, 2011 to take advantage of early bird savings up to $250. To register and review rates, visit the SATURN 2011 registration page.

We hope to see you in California!