Gordon Simpson

This is the first in a series of articles from the Office of the CTO at BEA Systems. As my main area of expertise and interest is application architecture, my role within the CTO's office allows me to explore how BEA's customers and products interact around applications - architecture, development, and integration.. Over 10 years ago I was "promoted" to the title of application architect and the word "architect" got me thinking. What does an application architect do? Remember, the title wasn't as in vogue as it currently is. I came up with the following definitions - they made sense at the time and still seem to today. This article is a general introduction and not a master class. I'm going to focus on when application architecture is useful and what it gives us. The specifics of "how to" and "goodness" will be very interesting, too, but we'll have to cover that at ... (more)