But We're Small

Summary

OSIDs help level the playing field such that small efforts can interoperate in the larger enterprise games.

Not Just About the Enterprise

Much of the OSID message has been framed around complex large-scale systems. That's because it's easier to see the problems there and there's the appearance that more design rigor is warranted.

Most of the OSID work to date has been small slices performed by people without much time on their hands. The very idea that no matter how simple or complex an OSID Provider is, it appears exactly the same to an OSID Consumer. While the behaviors may differ, the contract is the contract that OSID Consumers must use. 

This means that a small amount of effort plays in the OSID game just as well as a large amount of effort.

OSIDs help level the playing field. In the OSID world, all OSID Providers and OSID Consumers implementing and consuming the same contract are equals whether it was a 6 month project or a weekend wonder. 

Agile Enterprise: One Piece at a Time

An incremental development approach to OSID Providers does not need to continually expand and complicate its implementation to incorporate new behaviors and integrate with external systems. OSIDs can be used to divide a complex problem into smaller pieces that can be developed in parallel and federated together. The concept of layering is an essential integration technique that can also be used to factor out business-specific needs, organize code, or orchestrate other services such as authorization or logging.

An OSID approach works best when applied to small problems. Then they can be combined to address larger problems.