- Technical Architectures for E-Business (Part 1)
- Availability
- Performance
- Security
- Transaction Integrity
- Scalability
- Openness/Interoperability
- Conclusion
Openness/Interoperability
Of course, for real opennesslin the traditional OSI sense of the term openness, rather than the Microsoft-defined meaning of the termlJava on one of the 'nixes (Linux or UNIX) is the platform of choice, while the most open Web server is of course Apache, which has the added benefit of being Open Source. Even within a Microsoft environment, though, it's possible to increase openness (interoperability) by using standards such as XML for passing data between software layers or using ODBC/JDBC to access the database (so that different databases can be used at the back end if needed).
It's important that the openness and interoperability of the database engine itself is not forgottenlfor example, Microsoft SQL Server will only run on a relatively small number of platforms compared to Oracle or Sybase, which run on all the main UNIXes as well as Microsoft platforms.