The explosion of the concept of “web services” has generated a debate over what “web services” actually are. An article by Raj Mishra tries to limit the concept of “web service” to a strict ten-point list, insisting that a web service have a WSDL and uses SOAP. While this is a perfectly fine sentiment (even [...]

Now that your application is running at peak performance and you’ve decided that it’s time to scale, let’s talk about the right setup. The modern age has brought us lots of new ways to take a growing site and scale it. From Amazon Web Services to cloud computing and grid computing, to Mosso and Akamai, [...]

In 2007 I wrote a blogging program from scratch. I was really proud of it, too. It was all my own invention, with a little help that I got from a Facebook developer I knew, and I worked really hard on it. Spent the whole summer writing it so I’d be able to launch it [...]

Before we actually get started hacking on our code, let’s make sure we’ve got the right questions asked and answered. We’re going to need some resources, the help of others in our organization, and probably some understanding of the current system structure before we’re successful in our goal.

The ability to turn a website into a large web service is a skill that’s deeply important amongst web application developers, but yet I’ve found it to be somewhat lacking. How is it that this fundamental skill is so often overlooked? Part of it has to do with the fact that many developers work on [...]