Razorbills

For a long time now, I have been thinking about exposing the functionality of services. I called that the “what of services". The WSDL and the complete WS* stack to me are the "how of services", how to encode the message, how to encode the payload, how to encrypt, route, authenticate, how to transfer reliably etc. But not, what does the message mean, what does the service expose etc. The concept of describing this “what” of services, based on entities encapsulated by services, is the basis for IBF (Information Bridge Framework). I believe strongly that the concept of entities, views, relationships, references and actions, together with a metadata description is important by itself and that it can be applied in many more cases.

Then the moment came that Bill asked about IBF and asked how to move forward.

I had been walking around with the idea of writing a paper on the subject for a while and now I had a real incentive to do it fast. I had been looking for a title for a while and hadn’t come up with anything, until, that same morning I thought of the memo written by Adam Bosworth in which he pushed for using XML as the format between services on the internet. This was a very influential memo and it led to, or at least hastened, the SOAP and web services effort in the company. Adam had called his memo “Sea urchins”.

From my childhood I remembered a few little riddles:

Why did the fly fly? Because the spider spied her.

Why did the owl howl? Because the woodpecker would peck her.

And this one:

Why did the razorbill raise her bill? Because the sea urchin would sea her chin.

So, I decided to build on the success of “Sea urchins” and take the next step to “Razorbills”. I wrote the memo on one evening, worked it over the next day and sent it out hoping the name, and thus the concept, would stick.

I can’t say I got many responses from within the company other than from people in my own group. One of the responses was “A razorbill is it a penguin or does it just look like one?”

Well, I knew the answer to that one: It’s not a penguin. But, it was enough trigger to do a little further investigation.

The razorbill is a bird in the family of the auk. Even though the razorbill may look much like a penguin, it is actually a different species. Never the twain shall meet unless it’s in a zoo. The razorbill lives in the northern and the penguin in the southern hemisphere. Due to the similarity in environment, they have evolved to similar birds (ecological equivalents). According to some websites the razorbill is a threatened species. Apparently, the now extinct great auk or “Le Grand Pingouin”, of the same family as the puffin and razorbill, lent its name to the penguin.

Just a few links for those interested:

Penguin Post Newsletter Puffins

Boreal Forests of the World Bird Species - Razorbill

Tordmule, Razorbill (Alca torda)

https://www.frontier-travel.co.uk/wildlife/images/razorbill.jpg

Photos of Razorbills - Ardnamurchan Charters - West Coast of Scotland

https://www.west-scotland-tourism.com/ardnamurchan-charters/razorbills/razorbillFlying.jpg

https://www.west-scotland-tourism.com/ardnamurchan-charters/razorbills/razorbillFlying2.jpg

And, as you can see, unlike penguins, razorbills can fly.

This all happened a few months ago and in the mean time I spent a little more work polishing and then even more time waiting until the Journal 4 would come out… I’m still waiting, but it should be happening pretty soon now and Razorbills will be in it.