![Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel
-17-
also understand how it can be applied to achieve manifold benefits across the field
of IT design and system development.
Before I get started, it is important to note that the concept of IT-architectural
style appears to be a logical and natural evolution in the field of IT architecture—it
is in the air. My early start elaborating, developing, and practicing IT-architectural
style has been encouraged by increasing evidence from respected sources that I
am on the right track. In recent years I have seen the term architectural style
mentioned repeatedly in the IT context, albeit briefly and at a contemplative level.
One notable reference here is the "Introduction" to the Rational Unified Process
(Kruchten 1998), which I can recommend for its concise introduction to IT
architecture in general. In his book, Mr. Kruchten briefly mentions the relevance of
architectural style as a viable IT-architectural concept. I agree, of course, that an
IT-architectural style increases both the uniformity and understandability of
designs. Kruchten and I are also in vehement agreement that an IT-architectural
style achieves this, for example, by optimally combining patterns, tools,
descriptions, and frameworks to better support IT architects. It is now time to take
a more in-depth look at IT-architectural style both in theory and at work.
A Long History of Success
At a first glance, it is difficult to recognize the use of architectural styles in some
industries. This is because no industry uses architectural style exactly as another
industry. Each has its own terminology, its own unique, customary way of doing
things. This means that architectural style appears in various shapes and forms,
making it sometimes difficult to see parallels between industries. However, these
parallels—the use of some form of identifiable architectural style—do exist. We will
look at a few of these parallels in the rest of this section to better understand what
architectural style is and how it can significantly improve the way we work in the
IT industry.
Architectural styles have been around for thousands of years. For example, Greek
architects spent hundreds of years perfecting an architectural style: the Ionic
temple architecture. Civil architects consider the Parthenon in Athens to be the
epitome of the Ionic temple—meaning that it is the exemplary instance of an
architectural style. Over the years, hundreds of architects built hundreds of
temples according to this style, each making his or her own contribution to its
perfection over time. Each of these contributions was to the clear advantage of the
next generation of architects as well as the benefactors of each individual temple.
In modern terms, we would call this a win-win situation.
Ionic temple architecture is not an isolated example. Gothic[1]
architecture was
perfected in the same manner over hundreds of years. Each Gothic cathedral, for
example, is an instance of the Gothic architectural style. The architect of each
cathedral based his or her complex design on the proven achievements of other
professional architects who had used the Gothic style to build other cathedrals. In
turn, many of these architects made contributions to the Gothic style to the benefit
of the next generation. The architectural style evolved, step by step, through
generations of highly skilled designers. No single designer, no matter how skilled,
could have achieved this feat alone. If you ever have the chance to travel in
Europe, it is fascinating to visit and observe the churches and cathedrals bearing
clear evidence of the evolution of several distinct architectural styles. For example,
early Gothic churches consisted of basic pointed arches with thick walls, small](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/58455-250416104219-04beae5a/85/Convergent-Architecture-Building-Model-Driven-J2EE-Systems-with-UML-1st-Edition-Richard-Hubert-22-320.jpg)
![Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel
-19-
language. Correspondingly, the organization of structures with respect to one
another forms the grammar of the language: The rose window of a Gothic
cathedral is always round and is placed above the portal. These words and the
grammar are then used to express complete styles—Gothic, Romanesque, Ionic—
just as styles of writing, theater, and poetry exist in literature.[2]
The style is the
next higher level of design expression.
In an IT-architectural style, this translates to, for example, the use of accurate
terms for component structures and their relationships to express something the
architect considers to be of higher value. In the Convergent Architecture, such
structures are its convergent[3]
organizations, processes, and resources (OPRs) and
their relationships. Processes and resources are managed by an organization; a
process consumes and produces resources, and so on. Together, and only together,
these characteristics lead to the high-level property of convergence in a system
based on the Convergent (style) Architecture.
Clearly, there is still much progress to be made concerning the language of IT
architecture. Today the common language used by IT designers is very weak. Even
though they often use the same words, they are not communicating well. All too
often, we experience IT design situations in which people have to explain the
terms they use from ground zero. Such meetings can go on forever while making
little progress, and everyone has to explain their basic words and grammar to each
other every time a new group convenes. Viewpoints then change from one meeting
to the other, so the whole frustrating process starts again. It is not just the rare or
special term being discussed, but very fundamental concepts such as basic
component designs or role definitions. It is as if each designer had entered the
meeting having defined his or her own private time system. First, the whole group
must discuss and agree on the time system before a simple time plan can be made.
Inevitably, each individual will define terms differently. It is no wonder that IT
projects are so expensive and high-risk.
The agreement on a language, on a particular style, is often more important than
the language itself. No architectural style claims to be the only way to build
something, nor does it claim to have found some absolute truth. An architectural
style is always a proposition. It is putting a stake in the ground. It is saying that
people can build something successfully if they agree to work this way. In other
words, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and there will always be several
ways to define an architecture. However, this did not keep civil architects from
agreeing on architectural styles, whether Gothic, Romanesque, or Renaissance,
and then using and refining these styles for hundreds of years. They understood
that the major benefits are attained as soon as an organization agrees on an
architectural style, not beforehand. By the same token, what large IT organizations
need is less philosophical discussion regarding absolute truths and more
agreement on an architectural style.
Thus, to improve the present situation immediately, designers can start by
agreeing on a common basis; they can begin at the level of an existing
architectural style. This provides a common reference frame in which words and
other critical design features are defined accurately. Designers then begin
communicating at an effective level and can work from there. In addition, using an
architectural style as the basis for definitions means that the developers do not
have to convince the whole world that their definition is the correct one.
Establishing a worldwide standard, that is, a worldwide definition, for the many](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/58455-250416104219-04beae5a/85/Convergent-Architecture-Building-Model-Driven-J2EE-Systems-with-UML-1st-Edition-Richard-Hubert-24-320.jpg)
Convergent Architecture Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML 1st Edition Richard Hubert
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- 5. Convergent Architecture Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML 1st Edition Richard Hubert Digital Instant Download Author(s): Richard Hubert ISBN(s): 9780471105602, 0471105600 Edition: 1st File Details: PDF, 5.61 MB Year: 2001 Language: english
- 6. Convergent Architecture Table of Contents -1- Convergent Architecture—Building Model-Driven J2EE Systems with UML Convergent Architecture: Building Model Driven J2EE Systems with UML by Richard Hubert John Wiley & Sons © 2002 Companion Web Site Printer friendly format Table of Contents Convergent Architecture—Building Model-Driven J2EE Systems with UML Foreword Introduction Chapter 1 - IT-Architectural Style—Professional engineering disciplines use architectural styles Chapter 2 - The Convergent Architecture Roadmap—Defining and managing the big picture Chapter 3 - The Convergent Architecture Metamodel—The vision and principles of the architecture Chapter 4 - The Convergent Component Metamodel—Components as the vehicle of architecture Chapter 5 - The IT-Organization Model—The business of building IT systems Chapter 6 - The Development Process Model Chapter 7 - The Architectural IDE—Automating the architecture Chapter 8 - Tutorial Example: Applying the Convergent Architecture Bibliography Index List of Figures List of Tables T E A M F L Y Team-Fly®
- 7. Convergent Architecture Press Information -2- Convergent Architecture—Building Model-Driven J2EE Systems with UML Richard Hubert Wiley Computer Publishing John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Publisher: Robert Ipsen Editor: Robert Elliott Assistant Editor: Emilie Herman Managing Editor: John Atkins Associate New Media Editor: Brian Snapp Text Design & Composition: MacAllister Publishing Services, LLC Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. In all instances where John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is aware of a claim, the product names appear in initial capital or ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Readers, however, should contact the appropriate companies for more complete information regarding trademarks and registration. Copyright © 2002 by Richard Hubert. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, E-Mail: <[email protected]>. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hubert, Richard Convertent architecture: building model-driven J2EE systems with UML / Richard Hubert. p. cm.
- 8. Convergent Architecture Press Information -3- "Wiley Computer Publishing." Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 0-471-10560-0 1. Computer architecture.2. System design.3. Information technology.I. Title. QA76.9.A73 A82 2001 658.4'038'011--dc21 2001046537 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Advance Praise for Convergent Architecture: Building Model-Driven J2EE Systems with UML "Software engineering is a well established discipline by now. However, the role and importance of a proper underlying architecture is very often not yet recognized by the software community. This book-with its positioning of architectural styles in general and the Convergent Architecture specifically- provides another major step towards the ultimate goal of architecture-driven software engineering. This is critical for companies that wish to meet the specific challenges of today's e-business world-flexibility and adaptability, time-to-market, and quality of software solutions. The author not only describes the fundamental principles of Convergent Architecture and the integration of system design with business and project design, but also covers the methodology, organizational structure, and support necessary to effectively translate the conceptual framework into action." Jürgen Henn Principal and Practice Leader, e-business Architecture Consulting IBM Business Innovation Services "Bridges generally work reliably. Large software systems generally don't. The essential difference is in design complexity, and in our inability to tame it. Ironically the management of this complexity has precedents in the architecture of buildings, and in this book Richard Hubert identifies the concept of Architectural Styles as the missing ingredient in large software initiatives. Architectural Styles and the Convergent Architecture are about systematic reuse and progressive refinement of collective software design wisdom. Anyone involved in complex software projects should read this book cover to cover." Barry Morris Chief Executive, Total Business Integration "Engineers dream of a tool-supported design process for transforming high-level models of system requirements into robust systems. In software engineering there are many partial answers, but a comprehensive approach has been lacking until now. This book gives a lucid account of a full life-cycle approach to designing large-scale, Internet-oriented business systems where Model Driven Architecture, combined with a mature architectural style, is the key. Readers-whether managers, designers, or programmers-will profit from this and incorporate architecture- centric design in their own practice." Dr. David Basin Professor for Software Engineering University of Freiburg, Germany To Stephanie
- 9. Convergent Architecture Press Information -4- OMG Press Books in Print (For complete information about current and upcoming titles, go to www.wiley.com/compbooks/omg/) Building Business Objects by Peter Eeles and Oliver Sims, ISBN: 0- 471-19176-0. Business Component Factory: A Comprehensive Overview of Component-Based Development for the Enterprise by Peter Herzum and Oliver Sims, ISBN: 0-471-32760-3. Business Modeling with UML: Business Patterns at Work by Hans- Erik Eriksson and Magnus Penker, ISBN: 0-471-29551-5. CORBA 3 Fundamentals and Programming, 2nd Edition by Jon Siegel, ISBN: 0-471-29518-3. CORBA Design Patterns by Thomas J. Mowbray and Raphael C. Malveau, ISBN: 0-471-15882-8. Enterprise Application Integration with CORBA: Component and Web-Based Solutions by Ron Zahavi, ISBN: 0-471-32720-4. Enterprise Java with UML by CT Arrington, ISBN: 0-471-38680-4 Enterprise Security with EJB and CORBA by Bret Hartman, Donald J. Flinn and Konstantin Beznosov, ISBN: 0-471-15076-2. The Essential CORBA: Systems Integration Using Distributed Objects by Thomas J. Mowbray and Ron Zahavi, ISBN: 0-471- 10611-9. Instant CORBA by Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey and Jeri Edwards, ISBN: 0-471-18333-4. Integrating CORBA and COM Applications by Michael Rosen and David Curtis, ISBN: 0-471-19827-7. Java Programming with CORBA, Third Edition by Gerald Brose, Andreas Vogel and Keith Duddy, ISBN: 0-471-24765-0. The Object Technology Casebook: Lessons from Award-Winning Business Applications by Paul Harmon and William Morrisey, ISBN: 0-471-14717-6. The Object Technology Revolution by Michael Guttman and Jason Matthews, ISBN: 0-471-60679-0. Programming with Enterprise JavaBeans, JTS and OTS: Building Distributed Transactions with Java and C++ by Andreas Vogel and Madhavan Rangarao, ISBN: 0-471-31972-4. Programming with Java IDL by Geoffrey Lewis, Steven Barber and Ellen Siegel, ISBN: 0-471-24797-9. Quick CORBA 3 by Jon Siegel, ISBN: 0-471-38935-8. UML Toolkit by Hans-Erik Eriksson and Magnus Penker, ISBN: 0- 471-19161-2. About the OMG The Object Management Group (OMG) was chartered to create and foster a component-based software marketplace through the standardization and promotion of object-oriented software. To achieve this goal, the OMG specifies open standards for every aspect of distributed object computing from analysis and design, through infrastructure, to application objects and components. The well-established Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standardizes a platform- and programming-language-independent distributed object computing environment. It is based on OMG/ISO Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL) and the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP). Now recognized
- 10. Convergent Architecture Press Information -5- as a mature technology, CORBA is represented on the marketplace by well over 70 Object Request Brokers (ORBs) plus hundreds of other products. Although most of these ORBs are tuned for general use, others are specialized for real-time or embedded applications, or built into transaction processing systems where they provide scalability, high throughput, and reliability. Of the thousands of live, mission-critical CORBA applications in use today around the world, over 300 are documented on the OMG's success-story Web pages at www.corba.org. CORBA 3, the OMG's latest release, adds a Component Model, quality-of-service control, a messaging invocation model, and tightened integration with the Internet, Enterprise Java Beans, and the Java programming language. Widely anticipated by the industry, CORBA 3 keeps this established architecture in the forefront of distributed computing, as will a new OMG specification integrating CORBA with XML. Wellknown for its ability to integrate legacy systems into your network, along with the wide variety of heterogeneous hardware and software on the market today, CORBA enters the new millennium prepared to integrate the technologies on the horizon. Augmenting this core infrastructure are the CORBA services, which standardize naming and directory services, event handling, transaction processing, security, and other functions. Building on this firm foundation, OMG Domain Facilities standardize common objects throughout the supply and service chains in industries such as Telecommunications, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Transportation, Finance/Insurance, Electronic Commerce, Life Science, and Utilities. The OMG standards extend beyond programming. OMG Specifications for analysis and design include the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the repository standard Meta-Object Facility (MOF), and XML-based Metadata Interchange (XMI). The UML is a result of fusing the concepts of the world's most prominent methodologists. Adopted as an OMG specification in 1997, it represents a collection of best engineering practices that have proven successful in the modeling of large and complex systems and is a well-defined, widely accepted response to these business needs. The MOF is OMG's standard for metamodeling and meta data repositories. Fully integrated with UML, it uses the UML notation to describe repository metamodels. Extending this work, the XMI standard enables the exchange of objects defined using UML and the MOF. XMI can generate XML Data Type Definitions for any service specification that includes a normative, MOF-based metamodel. In summary, the OMG provides the computing industry with an open, vendor- neutral, proven process for establishing and promoting standards. OMG makes all of its specifications available without charge from its Web site, www.omg.org. With over a decade of standard-making and consensus-building experience, OMG now counts about 800 companies as members. Delegates from these companies convene at week-long meetings held five times each year at varying sites around the world, to advance OMG technologies. The OMG welcomes guests to their meetings; for an invitation, send your email request to <[email protected]>. Membership in the OMG is open to end users, government organizations, academia, and technology vendors. For more information on the OMG, contact OMG headquarters by phone at 1-508-820-4300, by fax at 1-508-820-4303, by email at <[email protected]>, or on the Web at www.omg.org. 2001 OMG Press Advisory Board
- 11. Convergent Architecture Press Information -6- Karen D. Boucher Executive Vice President The Standish Group Carol C. Burt President and Chief Executive Officer 2AB, Inc. Sridhar Iyengar Unisys Fellow Unisys Corporation Cris Kobryn Chief Technologist Telelogic Nilo Mitra, Ph.D. Principal System Engineer Ericsson Jon Siegel, Ph.D. Director, Technology Transfer Object Management Group, Inc. Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Object Management Group, Inc. Sheldon C. Sutton Principal Information Systems Engineer The MITRE Corporation Acknowledgments I would like to thank and at the same time congratulate the many convergent engineers and information technology (IT) consultants who have helped evolve, test, and refine the concepts of the Convergent Architecture throughout numerous projects. This includes, of course, the consultants and developers at Interactive Objects Software GmbH, who continue to serve as sparring partners and codevelopers of the Convergent Architecture. The contents of this book bear clear witness to the value of our long-term team effort. Although this book builds on the accomplished works of many experts, particular recognition goes to my friend and mentor, Dr. David A. Taylor, who not only helped the IT industry explain object technology to the masses but also back in 1995, with his book on convergent engineering, helped us discern the critical path of IT architecture through the next decades of the Internet age. Without David's contribution, the "Convergent" in Convergent Architecture would not exist. Last but not least, I would like to thank my reviewers, in particular Dr. Jan Vester from Simulacrum GmbH and Axel Uhl from iO GmbH, whose relentless constructive feedback and attention to detail helped improve this book in many aspects. RICHARD HUBERT is an accomplished software architect who has own numerous international awards for large-scale software systems and architectural tools. As founding director of Interactive Objects Software GmbH (iO), he leads a large team of professional architects who apply Convergent Architecture across diverse industry segments. In 2000, iO introduced its Architectural IDE for MDA, ArcStyler. The author is also an active contributor to the OMG's MDA standardization effort.
- 12. Convergent Architecture Foreword -7- Foreword Imagine if every office building was designed and engineered from scratch. I mean truly from scratch, with each architect working from first principles to solve the problems of fabricating raw materials, achieving structural integrity, providing protection from the elements, putting out fires, moving people among the floors, and delivering air, light, power, and water to the occupants. It would be a disaster. The costs would be astronomical; each building would be an isolated tower of one- off systems, and maintenance would be an engineering nightmare. Worse, catastrophic failures would be so routine that they wouldn't even make the morning paper. Does this sound familiar? It should; it's a fair portrayal of how business software is designed and constructed today. The results are no better than we have a right to expect. Someday, application development will outgrow its painful adolescence and gain the kind of maturity that building architecture now enjoys. As with modern office buildings, business applications will be assembled out of proven components that offer standard solutions to recurring problems. Each will be a unique construction, but—like buildings—they will share compatible subsystems, be easily maintained, and deliver reliable service. This book is a seminal contribution to that goal. It offers, both through its content and by the example it sets, the possibility of coherent architectures for business software. The particular architecture it describes, the Convergent Architecture, may well be the most comprehensive, detailed framework ever proposed for large- scale business applications. Although many parts of the architecture are new, it incorporates the best of current practices, such as Model Driven Architecture (MDA), Responsibility Driven Design (RDD), and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The inspiration for this architecture is a discipline called convergent engineering—a discipline my colleagues and I developed a decade ago to facilitate the design of scalable, maintainable business systems. The founding premise of convergent engineering is that the design of a business and its supporting software should be one and the same. For each key element of the business, there is a corresponding software object that acts on its behalf. These objects come in many forms, but they fall into three broad categories: organizations, processes, and resources. Rules govern how these three kinds of objects can be combined and how they interact. For example, processes consume and generate resources, and can take place only in the context of an owning organization. These rules bring useful order to the difficult task of re-engineering a business, and they do so in a way that directly specifies the software to support that business. Richard Hubert learned convergent engineering in May 1996, when he took my week-long certification course at the Convergent Engineering Institute (CEI). Within a year, Richard had gone on to receive his master's certificate, entitling him to certify others, and had opened the second international branch of CEI in Freiburg, Germany. He and his staff of consultants at Interactive Objects Software (iO) were soon using convergent engineering in large-scale development projects throughout Germany, combining it with other techniques to expand it into a more comprehensive architectural style.
- 13. Convergent Architecture Foreword -8- Frustrated by the lack of adequate tools, Richard and his team began developing software to better capture the results of their design efforts and to automate the generation of code. The end result was the release of iO's award-winning ArcStyler product, a suite of tools that models a business in terms of organizations, processes, and resources, and then drives that model into an executable system that can be deployed on any of the major Java application servers. Remarkably, the business model remains visible throughout the development lifecycle. If a process is improved or an organization restructured, the necessary changes are made to the corresponding business objects using high-level design tools, not by altering the low-level code. The tool is a compelling demonstration of Convergent Architecture, and it gives the architecture a solid grounding in the hard realities of software development. The architecture described in this book is a significant contribution to the software industry on two distinct levels. At the most evident level, it provides a detailed prescription for application development, one that can be adopted as is or adapted as desired. At a deeper level, it illustrates the kind of effort that will be necessary to impel the industry out of its prolonged adolescence and into a mature engineering discipline. For the first time, we have a coherent, compelling vision for application architecture combined with precise instructions for implementing that vision, including all the necessary tools to go from concept to code. It is a combination that is certain to raise the bar for the application-development community. —David Taylor, Author, Business Engineering with Object Technology
- 14. Convergent Architecture Introduction -9- Introduction But what's the point of having everything measured by poles? Why not build everything higgedy piggedy, like a house? First, because it's cheaper this way. All the arches of the arcade are identical, so we can re-use the falsework arches. The fewer different sizes and shapes of stone we need, the fewer templates I have to make. And so on. Second, it simplifies every aspect of what we're doing, from the original laying-out — everything is based on a pole square-to painting the walls — it's easier to estimate how much whitewash we'll need. And when things are simple, fewer mistakes are made. The most expensive part of building is the mistakes. Third, when everything is based on a pole measure, the church just looks right. Proportion is the heart of beauty. Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth Would any serious engineer design a jet airplane with a helicopter propeller on top of it? Common sense would tell any decision maker that such an aircraft would hardly be able to take off. And the approaches and methods used in mature engineering disciplines, such as aeronautics, simply prohibit such a development. Yet, irrespective of your position in the information technology (IT) industry, you will almost definitely have come across a software system or an IT organization that very much looks like a jet airplane with a helicopter propeller on top of it. Even though as members of the IT industry we are aware of the problems of poor design, inefficient organizations, and ad-hoc solutions, most of us have been asked to buy, design, or participate in the development of such a thing. What is it that distinguishes mature engineering disciplines from our industry? The answer is architectural style—the main topic of this book. Have you ever wondered why system development is still so complex despite the rich array of products, techniques, and tools available today? Certainly, modern development aids such as design methodologies, patterns, computer-aided systems engineering (CASE) tools, Web application servers, and packaged solutions—just to name a few examples—can serve as useful parts of an IT strategy. However, just having these diverse parts is not enough. To be effective, all these pieces must be positioned within the context of an IT architecture. Few would dispute this statement, but repeatedly achieving good IT architecture in diverse situations has long been an elusive task. This is mostly because trying to nail down the key aspects of IT architecture leads to some other fundamental questions: ƒ What role does IT architecture play in our overall IT strategy, and what does this look like? ƒ How can we repeatedly achieve the advantages of solid IT architecture across multiple teams and even across globally distributed organizations?
- 15. Convergent Architecture Introduction -10- ƒ How can our existing IT organization evolve to new levels of architectural quality in realistic increments? ƒ Can we define and implement an architectural big picture that realistically simplifies all our diverse IT constellations from a single project to a global IT landscape? These are some of the questions answered by this book, which defines IT architectural style and demonstrates its advantages using a mature architectural style called the Convergent Architecture. The qualities of good IT architecture have always been difficult to define and even more difficult to reproduce consistently in practice. In fact, many of the qualities of good IT architecture have been so elusive as to remain undefined and unnamed on the whole. This book is about capturing these qualities and making them systematically attainable in practice. First and foremost, this book explains and applies IT architectural style. It defines IT architectural style and gives a vague and amorphous set of key architectural qualities both a name and a number of tangible features. Then the major portion of the book proceeds to show how these features are applied in the Convergent Architecture. The Convergent Architecture not only clearly demonstrates how architectural qualities are captured in IT architectural style, but also proves that they can be consistently applied, taught, and effectively automated using available technologies. It explains how the Convergent Architecture resolves many of today's complex IT-related problems at the source instead of just dealing with their symptoms. By addressing the sources of error and complexity, it revolutionizes the effectiveness of IT teams and, more significantly, of whole IT organizations—with the returns increasing in proportion to the size of the organization. In short, this book demonstrates how to achieve a new level of quality in IT systems. And this quality now has a name: Convergent Architecture. Second, this book can be seen as the applied sequel to Dr. David A. Taylor's book entitled, Convergent Engineering: Business Engineering with Object Technology (Wiley 1995). The Convergent Architecture was born out of applying the concepts of Convergent Engineering in diverse corporate environments. One of its principal goals is to transport the vision of Convergent Engineering into the field of applied architecture. In doing this, it shows, for example, how to apply the Rational Unified Process and the concepts of the OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA) to achieve Convergent Engineering using state-of-the-art tools and technology. Third, this book is for practitioners. It is written not only for IT strategists and chief architects, but also for project managers and developers in the field. Although beginning with the important conceptual underpinnings of IT architectural style, it quickly moves into the nuts-and-bolts usage of Convergent Architecture. The concepts, techniques, and tools employed in this book have been tried and tested in practice. They are the result of hands-on experience in diverse environments. Based on this experience, the Convergent Architecture has defined how to optimize the application of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the Rational Unified Process (RUP), and J2EE/EJB to achieve new levels of architectural integrity. It demonstrates how all these parts work together in an integrated tool environment, the architectural IDE. In this sense, the Convergent Architecture is an architectural style for MDA as currently envisioned by the OMG. As long-time members of the OMG, we are actively participating in the MDA initiative in order to ensure
- 16. Convergent Architecture Introduction -11- alignment of the Convergent Architecture and to help drive progress in this very promising area of standardization. Lastly, this book presents an IT architectural style to the public. It puts a stake in the ground by defining something concrete that can be used, discussed, and improved on by many parties over time. We are convinced that the Convergent Architecture constitutes a reasonable and logical step in the ongoing evolution of the Information Age. In other words, we do not think that it is a question of whether many of the concepts demonstrated in this book become widely used in the software industry; rather, it is just a question of when and under what name or designation. We also believe that after reading the first few chapters of this book, strategic decision makers will feel at home with our approach to continuous long-term improvement. One of the primary goals of the Convergent Architecture is to help strategic IT managers at the corporate level to instill a sense of overall direction and purpose into their IT strategy. It should help them remove numerous sources of complexity and stress across their entire organization and help them put an end to the frustrating cycles of reactive symptom control. By introducing the era of corporate architectural style, the Convergent Architecture will help IT managers open new doors to otherwise unachievable returns at all levels of a business. How This Book Is Organized This book proceeds with increasing levels of detail. It begins with the design and justification of IT architectural style in general and moves on to explain each part of the Convergent Architecture in a logical manner. The coverage of the Convergent Architecture begins with an outline, or roadmap, and then drills down into the specific features of the roadmap. Each subsequent chapter then describes the design and justification of one of these features. It also explains how to apply this feature beginning at the level of individual projects on up to the level of corporate IT organization. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of architectural style in general and its potential in the IT field. Analogies and examples are used from other industries to explain the significant advantages attainable through an IT architectural style. It also defines IT architectural style and its design—its structure, models, principles, and relationships—and the application of a style in reality-scale situations. Chapter 2 provides an overview and roadmap of the Convergent Architecture as an IT architectural style. It describes how the concepts and design from Chapter 1 are applied in the Convergent Architecture. It also presents the anatomy and the big picture of the Convergent Architecture, introducing each stylistic feature and its advantages in real-world projects. Each feature is then detailed in the remaining chapters of the book. Chapter 3 justifies and defines the Convergent Architecture metamodel. This top- level feature of the Convergent Architecture composes the long-term vision and fundamental design principles of the architectural style. Chapter 4 presents the Convergent Component metamodel as a prime vehicle of the architecture. This is the first of three design models that visibly transport the T E A M F L Y Team-Fly®
- 17. Convergent Architecture Introduction -12- principles from Chapter 3 into real-world modeling styles, techniques, tools, and automated infrastructure mappings. It defines the application of MDA and an architectural tool suite (the architectural IDE) in the context of an architectural style. Chapter 5 outlines the IT organization model and its application of the RUP. This model constitutes a concrete reference frame for the business of building IT systems in the context of an architectural style. It defines the organization, workers, roles, tools, and interactions of all stakeholders in the Convergent Architecture. Chapter 6 presents the Development-Process model, which complements the IT organization model. This detailed development process constitutes an applied instance of the RUP and its architectural tool support in the context of the architectural style. Chapter 7 illustrates the integrated architectural tool suite and how it supports the architectural style as defined in Chapters 1 through 6—how it supports the component, organization, and process models of the Convergent Architecture. The tool suite, known as an architectural IDE, is described in detail. The chapter exhibits how the concepts of MDA and the Convergent Architecture are applied using an available architectural IDE (ArcStyler) that embeds and drives best-of- breed component tools such as Rational Rose, JBuilder, and diverse J2EE/EJB application servers in the context of the architectural style. Chapter 8 is a tutorial that applies the concepts of the Convergent Architecture in an end-to-end example using the architectural IDE. It exhibits each step of the model-driven development process from the initial business design through to the generation, deployment, and testing of J2EE/EJB components, including their Web services and Web front-ends. It shows how MDA is supported by the architectural IDE to develop and manage all four tiers of the J2EE blueprints (J2EE Blueprints 2001) in the context of a comprehensive architectural style. In addition, a bonus chapter in Microsoft Word format can be found on our companion Web site (www.ConvergentArchitecture.com), which constitutes a reference manual and user's guide containing the design and usage details of the MDA modeling styles and the J2EE/EJB technology mappings that were introduced in Chapter 4 and applied throughout the book. It also shows how these features are explicitly supported by the architectural IDE. This detailed reference material is available on the Web so that it may be easily maintained, thus providing the reader with an up-to-date version at all times. However, the material in this chapter can only be properly understood and applied when read in conjunction with this book because the chapter makes extensive reference to the architectural concepts, terms, processes and tools covered in Chapters 1 through 8. Who Should Read This Book A variety of readers will be interested in the subject matter covered in this book, each from a different perspective. The following reading sequence is recommended for each respective audience:
- 18. Convergent Architecture Introduction -13- ƒ CEOs/CIOs and business consultants will find the message regarding IT-architectural style and Convergent Architecture in Chapters 1 through 3 of particular relevance. For the next level of detail, they should proceed to the introductions in Chapter 5, "The IT Organization Model," and Chapter 6, "The Development-Process Model." ƒ Chief architects, IT consultants, project managers, lead developers, and those interested in the OMG Model-Driven Architecture Initiative are the prime audience for the entire book. ƒ J2EE/EJB developers and Web service developers may want to first read the tutorial example (Chapter 8) to get a hands-on feeling for the development process and environment, and then move to the chapters explaining the development process (Chapter 6), the architectural IDE (Chapter 7), and the details on the Modeling Style and Technology Projections (the bonus Web site chapter). At some point, Chapter 2 should be read in order to better understand the big picture and roadmap of the architectural style. Tools You Will Need The examples in the first seven chapters of this book, as well as the hands-on tutorial in Chapter 8, use the following tools to demonstrate the model-driven approach and the integrated architectural environment: ƒ A J2EE/EJB application server. Borland Application Server, BAS 4.5 or higher, available from www.Borland.com, or the WebLogic Server 6.1 or higher, available from www.BEA.com. ƒ Java IDE. JBuilder or JBuilder Enterprise version 5 or higher, which includes the BAS application server, available from www.Borland.com. ƒ UML Modeling Tool. Rose 2001 or 2001 A Modeler Edition or higher, available from www.Rational.com. ƒ Architectural IDE. The latest release of the ArcStyler Architectural IDE for MDA, available from www.ArcStyler.com. The Convergent Architecture Web Site Of course, it is impossible to put everything concerning the Convergent Architecture into a concise book outlining the entire architectural style. Extensive material pertaining to the Convergent Architecture is available in addition to this book. Also, the Convergent Architecture continues to evolve, so new material and updates will emerge. Thus, a Web site has been created to accompany this book with new and complementary material in a readily accessible forum at www.ConvergentArchitecture.com. The basic contents of the site are as follows: ƒ Tutorial and sample material applying the Convergent Architecture including its MDA/RUP features and tools
- 19. Convergent Architecture Introduction -14- ƒ References, case studies, presentations, papers, and demonstrations ƒ Extended specifications and user guidelines ƒ Reusable assets ranging from open-source, reusable projectware to extension modules for the architectural IDE ƒ Updates to the architectural IDE and related product information ƒ Contacts, community, and event information From Here The concepts, techniques, and tools presented in this book have been applied in numerous IT environments, both large and small, to achieve significantly higher levels of IT effectiveness. The purpose is to enable corporate architects, CIOs, project managers, and individual project team members to immediately leverage MDA in the context of a holistic architectural approach by applying a well-defined IT architectural style. We hope that the definitions and examples in the initial chapters convince you of the far-reaching advantages of IT architectural style as we define it. Above all, we hope to convey the advantages of a tried and tested IT architectural style, the Convergent Architecture, as a lasting remedy to significant problems experienced by almost every IT organization today. The bottom line is that the Convergent Architecture was developed by practicing IT architects to help any IT endeavor achieve higher goals. It is about making the sum of our efforts much greater than the individual parts. It is about defining how we approach business design, project design, and system design at all levels of an organization in a cumulatively synergistic manner. It is about putting diverse pieces together in a holistic big picture to provide IT organizations with a long- term vision and lasting improvements. It is about achieving a consistent cycle of simplification and optimization across the entire landscape of IT development and throughout its long-term evolution. And it's about the positive energies that we all share when we do things with style.
- 20. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -15- Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Style— Professional engineering disciplines use architectural styles Overview In many industries, engineers repeatedly improve on large, complex systems and achieve impressive levels of productivity and quality. What enables industrial architects and airplane and automobile engineers to deliver solid improvements year after year? Why is the software industry still a far cry away from such engineering maturity? A key answer to both these questions is architectural style. This chapter introduces architectural style as a crucial element of mature engineering disciplines and suggests how it may be applied to obtain the same levels of maturity in the information technology (IT) industry. First, this chapter looks at how architectural style has been used for centuries to ensure the success of major engineering efforts. History reveals architectural style as the most important means of efficient, high-level communication among developers. Without it, we would not have many of the masterworks of architecture and engineering that we now take for granted. After the short historical outline, I define modern IT-architectural style and explain how it may be applied to improve software development significantly across the board. This chapter focuses on the definition of architectural style, its elements, and its principles in the context of software engineering. These concepts form the design foundation for the Convergent Architecture, an IT-architectural style. You should read this chapter if you want to understand the concepts of IT-architectural style above and beyond their specific application in the Convergent Architecture. Above all, this chapter is important if you want to create your own IT-architectural style or contribute to the further development of the Convergent Architecture. Discovering the Source of High Returns In the mid- and late 1990s, I was involved as chief architect in several large projects. The requirements in these projects were all quite similar and are common to almost every large institution: An established IT organization with a complex, heterogeneous landscape of mission-critical systems needed to modernize and Internet-enable its corporate IT infrastructure. My mission in each case was to establish architecture-driven design in the existing IT organization and to return the internal IT team to the point of self-sufficiency using modern architecture, tools, and technologies. I did not want to leave the team with a short-term solution; to the contrary, the biggest problem was the existing ad hoc landscape of short-term solutions. In each project I was continually confronted with one central problem: How to effectively instill architectural concepts into the entire organization? How to get everybody working constructively and in concert toward the common goal? How to make this a permanent process of optimization, in every discussion, at every level, without requiring an experienced architect to be omnipresent in each instance? In other words, how to establish IT architecture as
- 21. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -16- a culture, a school of thought across the entire organization, and not just as another short-term solution? These are not easy questions to answer as any lead developer or project manager can confirm, although they are by no means unusual. Consultants are paid to deal with just these types of problems. However, there was something else bothering me. I had a feeling that we—the IT field at large—were still missing out on some approach, some technique, something, whatever it was, that other industries use in such situations. It just appeared to me that other industries have reached a level of architectural competence and expression that we had not yet reached. I could not put my finger on it, but the feeling grew with each day. Maybe this nagging feeling came from my background first as a chemical engineer and then as an IT architect. In any case, I wanted to figure it out and to see if I could apply it to solve my problem. My search intensified. I was reading everything about project management, process methodologies, and IT design that I could get my hands on. As early as 1994, this search took me to Austin, Texas, to hear Jim Coplein (1995), a father of the pattern movement, speak about IT design patterns. Indeed, patterns were helpful, as they still are, but neither patterns nor any other available IT knowledge allayed my suspicion that we were still missing something, that there was more to this than meets the eye. Thus, I broadened my search to include more and more cross-industry sources on product design, civil architecture, and project management. I am not sure exactly when, but with time, the answer began to evolve, and one day, a form began to appear in the fog. However, I do know when I became certain that I had the answer and, at the same time, that I also knew its name: architectural style. I had picked up a book in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997 in a bookstore specializing in civil architecture. The book was a compilation of German manuscripts that had been translated into English. The original texts had been written by a group of architects in a period from 1828 to 1847 at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. The book was titled, In What Style Should We Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style (Herrmann 1992). While I was reading about these disputes, everything started to fall into place. These architects were debating contemporary architectural style, but it was clear from the discussion that the Greeks had started this debate thousands of years ago. It turns out that this thing called architectural style is a powerful design and communication tool that the entire IT field has been missing out on. It was clear to me that we had not yet reached the level of design communication already in use many years ago in other industries. Finally, I had found an effective and lasting way to solve my problem. I had seen proof that it works, and I even knew its name. I knew where I needed to go. Now I determined to get there. That was 1997. Since then, a lot has happened. Over time, I used my observations on architectural style to define a form tailored for use in the IT field, which I call IT-architectural style. My colleagues and I also developed a particular IT- architectural style, the Convergent Architecture, which has evolved and has been refined through intensive use over the years. The Convergent Architecture is a concrete application of IT-architectural style that makes up the lion's share of this book. First, however, I would like to share with you some of the observations and analogies that helped me not only comprehend architectural style in general, but
- 22. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -17- also understand how it can be applied to achieve manifold benefits across the field of IT design and system development. Before I get started, it is important to note that the concept of IT-architectural style appears to be a logical and natural evolution in the field of IT architecture—it is in the air. My early start elaborating, developing, and practicing IT-architectural style has been encouraged by increasing evidence from respected sources that I am on the right track. In recent years I have seen the term architectural style mentioned repeatedly in the IT context, albeit briefly and at a contemplative level. One notable reference here is the "Introduction" to the Rational Unified Process (Kruchten 1998), which I can recommend for its concise introduction to IT architecture in general. In his book, Mr. Kruchten briefly mentions the relevance of architectural style as a viable IT-architectural concept. I agree, of course, that an IT-architectural style increases both the uniformity and understandability of designs. Kruchten and I are also in vehement agreement that an IT-architectural style achieves this, for example, by optimally combining patterns, tools, descriptions, and frameworks to better support IT architects. It is now time to take a more in-depth look at IT-architectural style both in theory and at work. A Long History of Success At a first glance, it is difficult to recognize the use of architectural styles in some industries. This is because no industry uses architectural style exactly as another industry. Each has its own terminology, its own unique, customary way of doing things. This means that architectural style appears in various shapes and forms, making it sometimes difficult to see parallels between industries. However, these parallels—the use of some form of identifiable architectural style—do exist. We will look at a few of these parallels in the rest of this section to better understand what architectural style is and how it can significantly improve the way we work in the IT industry. Architectural styles have been around for thousands of years. For example, Greek architects spent hundreds of years perfecting an architectural style: the Ionic temple architecture. Civil architects consider the Parthenon in Athens to be the epitome of the Ionic temple—meaning that it is the exemplary instance of an architectural style. Over the years, hundreds of architects built hundreds of temples according to this style, each making his or her own contribution to its perfection over time. Each of these contributions was to the clear advantage of the next generation of architects as well as the benefactors of each individual temple. In modern terms, we would call this a win-win situation. Ionic temple architecture is not an isolated example. Gothic[1] architecture was perfected in the same manner over hundreds of years. Each Gothic cathedral, for example, is an instance of the Gothic architectural style. The architect of each cathedral based his or her complex design on the proven achievements of other professional architects who had used the Gothic style to build other cathedrals. In turn, many of these architects made contributions to the Gothic style to the benefit of the next generation. The architectural style evolved, step by step, through generations of highly skilled designers. No single designer, no matter how skilled, could have achieved this feat alone. If you ever have the chance to travel in Europe, it is fascinating to visit and observe the churches and cathedrals bearing clear evidence of the evolution of several distinct architectural styles. For example, early Gothic churches consisted of basic pointed arches with thick walls, small
- 23. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -18- windows, and low ceilings. They were pretty dark and dreary. This was so because the architects of that period did not yet know how to effectively combine high ceilings and large windows. Hundreds of years and hundreds of churches later, the same style had evolved to manifest magnificent vaulted ceilings, large windows, and thin walls supported by flying buttresses on the outside. Notre Dame de Paris, the Koelner Dom in Cologne, Germany, and the Strasbourg Munster in France are prime examples of highly evolved Gothic architecture. Engineers still marvel at these masterworks. None of this would have happened without the cooperative culture of architects contributing to incrementally improve the architectural style. Each instance of the style, each Gothic structure, consists of contributions accumulated and refined over hundreds of years, all adding up to significant engineering progress. From a more modern perspective, the similar use of architectural style can be observed in every mature engineering discipline, from boat design to city planning, from airplane design to automobile production. Prime examples of architectural style in the automobile industry are the roadster, the pickup truck, or the Formula One racing car. In the aerospace industry, we can easily distinguish jets, helicopters, or even Zeppelins as clear representatives of architectural style analogous to the Gothic architecture just described. A Higher Level of Communication Not only does the architectural style define how things look—cathedrals, cars, airplanes, and so on—it also often defines other critical design properties such as aerodynamic features, tolerances, and capacities. In addition, it defines how these properties may be achieved dependably with particular materials, tools, and forms (or patterns). Whether it needs to define these aspects, and how it precisely defines them, depends on the particular field. Moreover, where easily distinguishable styles turn up depends on the field. In the automotive industry, for example, we recognize several distinct styles of motor design (Otto, Diesel, or Wankel), each manifesting an intense focus on the intricate performance and thermodynamic properties of internal combustion engines (compression ratios, combustion chambers, fuel mixtures). The consistent evolution of motor performance over the past decades, with little change in their external form, emphasizes that styles also convey hard-to-see design optimizations, not just the definition of external form. An architectural style expresses the language and design culture that helps stake- holders at all levels to communicate at a higher, more effective level. All mature schools of art, engineering, and science have their own special languages that have evolved over years to help experts express themselves more accurately. If you listen to a group of surgeons conversing during an operation, you probably would not understand much, but they are communicating in a highly effective manner. They are versed in the language of their trade. Such languages are more highly developed, meaning more expressive or more formalized, in some fields than in others. Civil architects have most actively addressed their special language, as indicated by such titles as "The Classical Language of Architecture," "Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order," or "A Pattern Language" (Alexander 1977), where the grammar and vocabulary of various architectural styles are discussed. For example, terms accurately describing structures such as arches (archivolt, architrave) and columns (Ionic, Doric, Corinthian) are the words of an architectural
- 24. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -19- language. Correspondingly, the organization of structures with respect to one another forms the grammar of the language: The rose window of a Gothic cathedral is always round and is placed above the portal. These words and the grammar are then used to express complete styles—Gothic, Romanesque, Ionic— just as styles of writing, theater, and poetry exist in literature.[2] The style is the next higher level of design expression. In an IT-architectural style, this translates to, for example, the use of accurate terms for component structures and their relationships to express something the architect considers to be of higher value. In the Convergent Architecture, such structures are its convergent[3] organizations, processes, and resources (OPRs) and their relationships. Processes and resources are managed by an organization; a process consumes and produces resources, and so on. Together, and only together, these characteristics lead to the high-level property of convergence in a system based on the Convergent (style) Architecture. Clearly, there is still much progress to be made concerning the language of IT architecture. Today the common language used by IT designers is very weak. Even though they often use the same words, they are not communicating well. All too often, we experience IT design situations in which people have to explain the terms they use from ground zero. Such meetings can go on forever while making little progress, and everyone has to explain their basic words and grammar to each other every time a new group convenes. Viewpoints then change from one meeting to the other, so the whole frustrating process starts again. It is not just the rare or special term being discussed, but very fundamental concepts such as basic component designs or role definitions. It is as if each designer had entered the meeting having defined his or her own private time system. First, the whole group must discuss and agree on the time system before a simple time plan can be made. Inevitably, each individual will define terms differently. It is no wonder that IT projects are so expensive and high-risk. The agreement on a language, on a particular style, is often more important than the language itself. No architectural style claims to be the only way to build something, nor does it claim to have found some absolute truth. An architectural style is always a proposition. It is putting a stake in the ground. It is saying that people can build something successfully if they agree to work this way. In other words, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and there will always be several ways to define an architecture. However, this did not keep civil architects from agreeing on architectural styles, whether Gothic, Romanesque, or Renaissance, and then using and refining these styles for hundreds of years. They understood that the major benefits are attained as soon as an organization agrees on an architectural style, not beforehand. By the same token, what large IT organizations need is less philosophical discussion regarding absolute truths and more agreement on an architectural style. Thus, to improve the present situation immediately, designers can start by agreeing on a common basis; they can begin at the level of an existing architectural style. This provides a common reference frame in which words and other critical design features are defined accurately. Designers then begin communicating at an effective level and can work from there. In addition, using an architectural style as the basis for definitions means that the developers do not have to convince the whole world that their definition is the correct one. Establishing a worldwide standard, that is, a worldwide definition, for the many
- 25. Convergent Architecture Chapter 1: IT-Architectural Styel -20- aspects of architecture is not something that most designers have time to do. Besides, it may be an impossible task anyway. This is one reason architectural styles exist in most fields. The architectural style lets large communities of designers work more effectively without having to wait for the whole world to agree on something. In other words, the style complements worldwide standards with stylewide standards. It defines the common dictionary of a specific architectural language. The language can be used across time, persons, and projects to communicate better. Needless to say, the design patterns movement and standardization work on component models, such as J2EE/EJB, have been a very significant step in the right direction. However, someone still has to define exactly what forms of the patterns or components are being used and how they will work together to add relevant advantages. As you will see, an IT-architectural style does exactly this by incorporating tools, techniques, patterns, and component standards as part of its language. It then goes on to refine the language in additional important areas. These additions enable, for example, a more accurate expression of such things as architectural principles, development life cycles, tool integration, or the relationships among project, business, and system design. Once an organization has agreed on an architectural style as its language of IT architecture, it can move beyond improved communication in the development organization to improved communication between all levels of the business. For example, the Convergent Architecture formalizes the expression of business-IT convergence by defining convergent organizations, processes, and resources as parts of its language. These elements form a sort of architectural grammar that has both business and technical significance. This means that business specialists can use these elements to communicate with technical specialists, and vice versa. Misunderstandings and culture clashes are avoided from the outset. For example, when a designer and a business strategist discuss a billing process, both of them know exactly what is meant by a billing process. Once this level has been achieved, the next level is possible. This is where the IT system graduates from being a tool for implementing business strategies to an effective business optimization tool. In 1995, Dr. David A. Taylor explained how this works in his book entitled, Convergent Engineering. The Convergent Architecture is the IT-architectural style that then transports these concepts into applied system design. Introducing an IT- architectural style therefore is one of the best investments an organization can make toward business optimization in the Information Age. More than a Macro Pattern Why don't we just call the IT-architectural style a macro pattern or meta pattern? The simple answer to this question is: for the same reason we do not call a component a macro-object. The best reason to introduce a new word is to denote important differences. The word component was defined in the IT field to distinguish it from an object or a macro-object. Although components leverage object technology, they add significant design aspects such as composition and deployment on top. To use the word object to refer to both objects and components would simply confuse two important concepts. By the same token, an IT-architectural style is more than a pattern. It uses and consolidates specific patterns, but not all patterns. In addition, it comprises other development aspects such as component standards, modeling languages, business design concepts, and technology mappings. It even includes its own streamlined development process. Thus, just as components accompany and complement object technology, IT- architectural styles leverage and complement patterns.
- 26. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 27. warmth wherein you catch your breath with wonder, so charged is it with the mystery of the coming spring. Walking, on such a day, is of the essence of delight. Some measure of bodily exercise is needed to keep one warm, and this forth-faring on a holiday, free from the necessity of labor, which begins almost with the dawn of consciousness after sleep and ends only as the night of sleep closes down upon one, is a form of pleasure which life does not often match. The spell of it bore me company through the factory region, and where there opened to my view mile after mile of lumber-yards, with unsightly piles of seasoning timber stretching away to where the vessels lie in the canals which are fed from the river, and there rise the gaunt bulks of towering elevators, and the tall chimneys that everywhere send forth their ceaseless volumes of black smoke. All this was eloquent of work, and wages, and the means of decent living, and it therefore had a beauty which will not be denied to it by one who knows something of the misery of the unemployed. Even the grotesque ugliness of the long lines of buildings, as I entered the closely built-up sections of the town, could not rob me of the comforting sense of shelter and much legitimate business among the well-paid working poor. But, before crossing thence to the South Side, there remains a belt through which even the stanchest optimism on its way to church on a bright Sunday morning could scarcely pass without misgivings. A varying foreign population, chiefly from southern and eastern Europe, thickens here to a point of incredible crowding, and sweat- shops abound, and cheap bakeries, and there is a marked increase in the number of pawn-shops and saloons. The crowds in the streets had been in Sunday dress thus far for the most part, and were evidently on the way to mass or just returning. Many children were among them, uniformly well-booted and dressed, and here and there appeared the white veil and crowning flowers of a first communion.
- 28. There was no sharp transition to a region which knows no Sunday, for everywhere were the outward symbols of the day in closed shops, and streets free from the noise of traffic, and the presence of holiday garments; and yet more obvious on every hand became now the evidences of a poverty which finds no day of rest. The unemployed, in the uniform of rags, were loafing on the streets—the long, relentless waiting which is an honest workman’s torment until he finds employment, or loses hope and self-respect, when it becomes his sure destruction. Children who have scant knowledge of clean water or clean clothes were playing in the unclean streets, or emerging from the “family entrances” of saloons with pitchers or tin- pails of beer, destined for rooms swarming with workers whose labor never ceases, except for a few hours each night, unless there comes the calamity of no work at even a bare-living rate. It was the age-old picture of the lot of the very poor, which alters not with the varying fortune of the State. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,” one epoch of society merges into another, and the lives of men are lived on other planes; but there is a constant quantity in it all at the point where the pressure upon the limits of subsistence is the strongest, and the weakest, driven to the wall, live from hand to mouth in squalid wretchedness. How familiar to our day has the picture come to be of children who breathe moral death with every breath they draw, and grow up to certain crime and shamelessness from out the haggard struggle for daily bread in sordid attics where disease is born in reeking filth and in warrens of beastly incest! Familiarity with it breeds no contempt, but rather a wondering recognition of the touch of better nature which reveals itself—the shouts of true delight from children hard at play; their rapt absorption in the game, an ecstasy in which all the hidden beauty of their faces is disclosed; the loving tending of a plant that grows in the fetid air of a working-chamber; and, more than all, the unfailing miracle of ministry, wherein the poor, out of cramping penury, relieve the grimmer needs of yet poorer brethren.
- 29. Once through the belt, and over a narrow river which flows black with the noisome sewage of the city, and past the region of unceasing railway traffic, and through the chilling gloom of streets which are like sunless caverns between sheer walls of stone, almost a single step in an eastward walk brought to sudden view the revelation of new order. A long, wide avenue, bathed in winter sunlight, lay radiant from polished windows and the garnished pavements of all its length. Glimpses were had of an inland sea which reflected, as from clearest crystal, the infinite serenity of unclouded skies. Down the far extent of the thoroughfare, blending into indistinguishable unity in distant, gleaming haze, were homes where, in quiet and comfort, some in high refinement and some in barbaric splendor, live the strong of their generation, working out life’s fateful ends. It was down this avenue that I passed on the way to church. An outward calm, as of perfect peace, possessed it. There was no hint of hunger there, nor of the cruel need which eats into the living souls of men until it devours them or leaves them maimed and stunted of their rightful growth. Plethora here took the place of want. Then quickly came the sense of excess, with its end in sad satiety, and hard upon the sight of lavish luxury followed the impression of a world of men seeking at any cost to hedge themselves with unstinted plenty from all sight and knowledge of their kindred who know but little relief from pangs of plague and famine. Among the first to enter it, I walked up the steps of a large stone church and into an inviting vestibule. Several young men were grouped in conversation between the inner doors, and the one who first marked my entrance stepped out at once to meet me. A little painfully regardful of his dress, he yet was frank and cordial, and the ease with which he greeted me could not have become him better had he spent his life in leading workingmen up the aisles of rich churches.
- 30. “I have a seat well up on this side, where you can hear perfectly,” he suggested, looking me full in the eyes, as we stood for a moment at the door. “May I show you to that?” “I should like to sit here if I may,” I said, and I pointed to the corner of the first seat from the wall. “I am sorry,” he answered, “but that seat is reserved for an old gentleman who has occupied it for years, and who always prefers to sit there. Would you mind taking the seat just in front of it?” “Certainly not,” I said. “That will suit me quite as well,” and I sat myself down in the place in question. Not half a dozen persons were in the building, and its restful quiet was unbroken even by the prelude from the organ. Two ladies in deep mourning entered now, in the company of the church treasurer. It appeared, from their conversation, that they had met him by appointment; and, although they were speaking in low tones, yet they stood so near me that I could not help overhearing what they said. The point in discussion among them related to a pew, and the treasurer politely pointed out a small one not far from where I sat, which was at their service for two hundred dollars a year, and also two sittings farther to the front, which they might have on the same terms. There was much considering of the pros and cons of this alternative, and, incidentally, the treasurer indicated the range of prices in the pews, from two hundred dollars near the door to sixteen hundred where seats were most in demand. In growing numbers the congregation was assembling, and above the gentle breathing of the organ, which began to spread in soothing waves of prayerful music through the church, rose the soft rustle of rich dress, and the air, glowing with deep colors from stained glass, took on a subtle perfume. When the pews were dense with worshippers, scarcely a vacant seat remaining, and my closest watchfulness had failed to note the presence of a single other person of my class, there broke faintly on
- 31. the waiting company the clear, uplifting sweetness of a rare contralto voice. Vague and lightly stirring at the first, as when some deeply buried feeling, recalled to life, gives utterance to new being in “the language of a cry,” it rose to ever fuller power, unfaltering and pure in every tone, until it smote with the touch of truth each silent chord of life and waked them all to perfect harmony, wherein they sing the mystic unity of things, where the senses mix and whence they radiate, and where, ... in the midmost heart of grief Our passions clasp a secret joy. I was not present, however, merely as a worshipper, but also as a member of my chosen order. I tried to see with their eyes, and then to think their thoughts and feel their emotions. When I held myself honestly to this task, with the aid of what I had learned directly from the men and caught of their ways of thinking, it was another revulsion of feeling which set in. I thought of my nine dollars a week, and of the meagre pittance which resulted from utmost care in saving, even when my own support was the only claim upon me, and how far beyond my reach was all possibility of a seat in the pews which were held for barter. The image of Mrs. Schulz rose up to me, worn, and wan, and almost ill, yet always cheerful, and I remembered the patient, unflinching courage with which she faced the obligations of her life, and the heart-breaking economies by which she must meet many of its duties. On that very day, the two older children had gone at different hours to church, because there was but one pair of shoes and stockings between them, and Mrs. Schulz herself went out to mass, through the tingling cold of the early morning, in clothing which would have been light for summer. While here, on every hand, was dress whose cost, as indicating not warmth and comfort but mere conformity to changing fashion, represented, in scores of cases, more of annual individual expenditure than the whole net income of many a workman’s family.
- 32. And even more poignant to a mind made sensitive by this train of thought was the impression which weighed upon it of a company well-fed to a degree of comfort beyond the sense of sympathy with hunger that rarely learns the meaning of enough. The mere suggestion of a breakfast of rich food in wide variety, and served often at great cost in almost wasteful plenty, to be followed soon after the hour of worship by another meal yet more varied, and abundant, and rich, seemed the very pitch of heartless mockery, in the full presence almost of hundreds of men and women to whom bare day’s bread is an agony of anxious seeking, and of multitudes of little children to whom, not nourishing food alone but even food enough to stay the pangs of hunger, is a luxury. These familiar feelings, roused, as always, by the common contrasts of life, which one follows in close study through the bewildering complexities of casual relations, were dominant, from the new point of view, as the outcome of patent facts. Superficial and undiscriminating, and yet most real and living, is the thought of the actual workman, as his mind responds to the obvious leading of the things he sees. I was glad at this point that Albert was not with me. A few minutes later I deeply regretted his absence. The minister had begun his sermon. I scarcely heard the opening sentences, so oppressed was my mind with the workman’s sense of the ruthless Philistinism of this phase of modern Christianity. It was the preacher’s tone which first attracted me. There was quiet in it and a great reserve, and he spoke as a pastor who holds earnest conversation with his flock. I was all attention in a moment, and I saw that I listened to a man who knew his fellow-men, and whose words made strong appeal to their intelligence. It was as though he spoke from a heart well-nigh broken with personal grief, but chastened to new love and truth, and tenderness, by the sorrow which it had borne. He was speaking of the needs of men, and through his thoughts there breathed a knowledge of the Weltschmerz of to-day, and deep sympathy with it. There was no weak ignoring of the difficulties of
- 33. honest doubt, and no false claims for the basis of belief; and, when he spoke of the awful suffering of our time, his words were true to the high dignity of man through the infinite consequences of free choice in his life upon the earth. His appeal was no emotional blending of the false and true, wherewith to blind men’s eyes to the eternal verities, and to cause to rest lightly upon comfortable consciences the sense of personal responsibility for one’s fellows, but rather the sure claim of clear conviction which comes from out the facts of daily life seen in the light of their true meaning. The effect upon his hearers was unmistakable. I was unaware of it for a time, so engrossed was I in the speaker’s words, and in the strongly human personality of the man, but by degrees I awoke to the fact that all about me were listeners as eagerly intent as I. The sense of hardened, pampered, Philistinism gave way before the overwhelming consciousness of a sympathetic unity of thought and feeling. Indifferent to the vital needs of the world and to the pressing problems of its life? No emotion could have been farther from these men and women, the intensity of whose interest could be felt in almost an agony of breathless attention to the sober truthfulness of the minister. The very stillness was charged with mute appeal for guidance from hearts wrung with the hurt of the world and pleading for some useful outlet to the tide of generous feeling. It was as though distress had ceased to be for them the visible sufferings of the poor, and had grown, through the deepening sense of brotherhood, into an anguish of their own, which must find healing in forms of effective helpfulness. Very clearly dawned the conviction that, if one could but point out to the members of this waiting company some “way,” “something to do,” which would square well with their practical business sense of things, instant and unmeasured would be their response for the furthering of an end which would work them such glad relief! From the church my destination was the meeting of the Socialists. But not immediately, for I stopped on the way at the well-known haunt in Madison Street for the usual Sunday dinner.
- 34. By this time I had attended several of the Socialists’ meetings, and had come to know personally a number of the members of the order, and I was not surprised, upon taking a seat in the restaurant, to catch sight of three Socialists who were nodding pleasantly to me from a neighboring table. One was the broad-minded Pedler, whose good impression made in the first speech of his which I had heard was heightened by all my later knowledge of him. Another I had learned to know as a near approach to my original preconception of a revolutionary. He was a Communistic Anarchist, and just what peculiar variation of individual belief it was which led him to ally himself with the Socialists I could never make clearly out. It puzzled me not a little; for, by this time I had thoroughly in mind the fundamental fact that Socialism and Anarchy, as two schools of social doctrine, are at the very poles of hostile opposition to each other. And, if I may judge from the little that I have seen and heard between them, the vituperative heat of their controversies is equalled only by the warmth and malignancy which has marked the history of theological debate. I soon learned that Socialist and Anarchist are not interchangeable terms, to be used with light indifference in describing the general advocate of revolution against established order. Indeed, to my great surprise, I found that a policy of active, aggressive revolution among these men had almost no adherents. Certainly none among the Socialists, for they repudiated the bare suggestion of violence as being wholly inadequate and absurd, and pinned their faith instead to what they called the “natural processes of evolution.” These, to their belief, would, in any case, work out the appointed ends with men, but their operation could be stimulated by education, they said, and helped on by organized effort toward the achievement of manifest destiny in the highly centralized and perfected order which is to result from the common ownership and administration by all the people of all land and capital used in production and distribution, for the common good of all.
- 35. And even among the Anarchists the upholders of a policy of bloody revolt against social order were rare. Most of those whom I came to know were distinctly of a metaphysical turn of mind. It was easy to trace their intellectual kinship with the Physiocrats of the last century, in their implicit confidence in the universal efficacy of laissez faire. Their views, reduced to simplest terms, seemed to take the form of the epigram—that “the cure for the evils of freedom is more freedom.” The removal of all artificial restraint in the form of man- made laws would result eventually, to their thinking, in a society as natural and as wholesome as is all physical order, which is the exact resultant of the free play of natural law. It was the Socialist’s conception of a highly centralized administration which drove the Anarchist into a frenzy of vehement antagonism. And it was the Anarchist’s laissez faire ideal which roused the latent fighting-spirit of the Socialist. The Anarchist would maintain with stout conviction that centralized administration is already the core of the malady of the world, and that our need is for freedom in the absence of artificial limitations wherein natural forces can work their rightful ends. And the Socialist would retort, with rising anger, that it is from anarchy—the absence of wisely regulated system—that the world even now suffers most, and that the hope of men lies in the orderly management of their own affairs in the interests of all, and in the light of the revelations of science. They were heartily at one in their dislike for what they were fond of calling the present “bourgeois society,” and for the existing rights of private property, which they regarded as its chiefest bulwark, but they parted company at once, and with sharp recriminations, on the grounds of their dislike, and of their purposes and hopes for a regenerated state of things. Such Anarchists were of the “Individualistic” type. Not all of those I met were so philosophical, however. The Communistic one, who was nodding at me in a friendly manner from a near table, notably was not. Very much the reverse. He was for open revolution to the death, and he made no secret of it. He had little patience for the slow pace of evolution believed in by the Socialists, but he had less,
- 36. apparently, for the laissez faire conception of his brother Anarchists. At all events, I found him most commonly in the meetings of the former sect, where his revolutionary views were frowned down, but his invectives against society were tolerated in a spirit of free speech, and as being warranted by the evils of the existing state. He was a German, of tall, muscular frame, erect, square-shouldered, well-poised, as a result of long service, most bitterly against his will, in the Prussian Army, and he hated kings and potentates and all governmental authority, with a burning hatred. His was the broad- featured likeness of his race, and his stiff, fair hair was brushed back in straight lines from a well-shaped forehead, while his beard, brown and streaked with white, bristled from his lower face like the bayonets of a square in full formation. He was a mechanic by trade, and a good one, as I had happened to learn. HE HATED KINGS AND POTENTATES AND ALL GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY.
- 37. The last of the three, like the Pedler, was a Socialist, but was very unlike his two companions as a man. My acquaintance among the Socialists had not gone far before I began to observe that I was meeting men who, whatever their mental vagaries, were craftsmen of no mean order. They were machinists and skilled workmen mostly, and some were workers in sweat-shops. All of them had known the full stress of the struggle for bread, but they were decidedly not the inefficients of their class, having fought their way to positions of some advantage in the general fight. Here, however, was an exception in this third “comrade,” and I marvelled at the rarity of his type. Incompetence was stamped on every feature. His long, lank, flabby figure, with its disjointed movements, suggested no virility. The hair grew thin and blonde from his head and from his colorless face, and his large, pale-blue eyes flitted in their movements, as though there were behind them not intelligence enough to hold them in fixed attention. The man’s emotions were boundless. He had, moreover, a gift of utterance, and, when he spoke in meeting, it was sheer feeling that expressed itself in words which were marvellously void of any sane concatenation. It was a psychological phenomenon, this public speech of his. We had premonitory warnings of it, for we could see him writhing in his seat when his emotions were aroused, and starting nervously until he had gained the floor, when a half- suppressed, general groan would greet the torrent of his sentences, which flowed directly from chaotic feeling which had never reached his mind. We four left the restaurant together, and walked on to Waverley Hall. I fell in with the Pedler, and from him I was glad to learn that the Poet was to read that afternoon his long-deferred paper on the “Opening of the Exposition Grounds on Sunday.” It was a little before the appointed hour when we reached the hall, but already there was promise of an uncommon meeting. The audience was larger than usual, the benches on both sides of the central aisle being well filled nearly to the door. The Pedler and I had
- 38. some difficulty in finding seats near the front. More than ever marked was the atmosphere of keen alertness, which, from the first, had so attracted me in the gatherings of the Socialists. They might be futile, but their meetings were never dull. And, while they could not have been more orderly, they might easily have proved far less engaging than they were, had a saving sense of humor been more conspicuously a characteristic of the members. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in sinking back into my seat, whence, by turning a little to the right, I could command the hall. The afternoon sun was streaming through the two large windows in the south end. The heavy draperies, looped up to admit the light, were in perfect keeping with the carpet on the daïs and the pulpit chairs upholstered with plush, on one of which sat the Leader, behind a reading-desk. There were other paraphernalia of the Masonic lodge which habitually held its meetings there, and among the life-sized portraits on the walls was one of Washington in the full regalia of a Mason. At small wooden tables, resting on the floor at the Leader’s right, sat a few young reporters, sharpening their pencils in preparation for any points which could be turned to good account as “copy.” To the pleasure of excited interest was added the ease of some familiarity, for, besides the heads of meeting, I recognized among the gathering company the faces of habitués. In a seat across the aisle the Poet sat in earnest conversation with the Citizeness, holding fast a roll of manuscript in both hands. And at the end of the bench behind them was a young man who interested me far more than any of the Socialists whom I had met. A long black overcoat of cheap material concealed his work-worn garments to the knees, and his hands, dark with the dye of clothing, lay folded in his lap. His face showed faintly the marks of Jewish origin, and, although he was full three-and-twenty, he bore a strange resemblance to the Christ-child in Hoffmann’s picture of “Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple.” Quite oblivious to what was passing about him, he sat in his usual mood, with an expression of much serenity on his pale face, and his
- 39. great, dark, luminous eyes glowing with the ardor of his thought. I have never lost the first impression which he made upon me; it was in one of these meetings, when an idle slur had been cast upon his race and the Leader had given him an opportunity to reply. He rose modestly to his feet, and from the first my attention was riveted by the convincing quality in his rich, deep voice. Without a word of cheap rejoinder, he simply restated the issues of debate in clear, incisive sentences, which seemed to gather force from their broken English, until he had shown the entire irrelevance of the insulting charge, even had it been true. I had waited for him on that afternoon at the meeting’s end, and we began an acquaintance which to me has been of great value. It is easy to predict for such a man an eventual escape from the bondage of a sweat-shop, but, inasmuch as he has been held in slavery to that work from his earliest infant memories of a crowded den in Poland, where he was born, I feel some measure of justice in naming him “The Victim.” Promptly on the hour the Leader called the meeting to order, and introduced the Poet, whose paper presented the topic of the day’s debate. In a few moments we were all following in close attention the ready flow of the Poet’s voice as it passed with clear articulation over the well-chosen words of his introductory sentences. There was admirable precision in the statement of the case at issue, and we were bracing ourselves with pleasure for the logical sequences of detailed discussion, when, to our surprise, the Poet broke abruptly from all judicial treatment of his theme. At a single leap, he took the ground that certainly the Exposition should be accessible every day —that its opening on Sundays was not a subject for debate. Then there followed a storm of hot invective. Christianity was assailed as the giant superstition of historic civilization, still, daring, to the shame of high intelligence, to hold its fetich head aloft in the light of modern science. Its ministers were attacked as sycophantic parasites, whose only motive, in urging the closing of the Fair on Sundays, was the fear of the spread among working people of that
- 40. enlightenment which will achieve the overthrow of capitalistic society and with it the tottering structure of the Church. Most of all, his bitterness spent itself upon these “blind leaders of the blind,” as he called them, who will not themselves enter into a knowledge of a better state nor suffer others to enter it, and who grievously break the law of rest on Sundays in befooling their fellow-men, and then live through the remaining days in luxurious unproductiveness upon the labor of their dupes. What was coming next we could not guess, and it seemed a long cry to any shout of exultation from all this, but he accomplished it with facility, for his paper closed with a peroration, wherein he rose to fervid panegyric upon the increasing intellectual emancipation of workingmen. The Romish Church, he said, keeps many of them in bondage yet, but the Protestant organizations have all but lost their hold upon them; and the widening gulf between the two great classes in society has left these churches in the nakedness of their true character, as mere centres of the social life of the very rich and of the upper bourgeoisie, and as a prop to the social order from which these idle classes so richly profit, at the merciless cost of the wage-earners. Instantly this was accepted as the dominant note of the meeting. The applause which greeted it was genuine and prolonged. With light-hearted disregard of the subject appointed for debate, men began ardently to speak to this new theme: Modern Christianity a vast hypocrisy—a cloak made use of by vested interest to conceal from the common people the real nature of the grounds on which it stands. But for the masterly qualities of the Leader, who held the meeting to strict parliamentary order, it might have degenerated into a mob. Men were crowding one another in their desire to gain the floor, but not for a moment was the peaceful conduct of the gathering disturbed. With accurate knowledge of the shades of social belief there represented and of the personalities of the men, the Leader chose for recognition with discriminating justice.
- 41. At one moment an American workman was speaking, a Socialist of the general school of Social Democracy. There was self-respecting dignity about him and a calm reserve as he began. The Christian Church served as well as any institution of the capitalistic order, he said, to measure the growing cleavage between the classes in society. But, to his mind, the paper of the afternoon had emphasized unnecessarily the existence of the bourgeoisie; for, economically considered, there is no longer a middle-class to be reckoned with in vital questions. There remain simply the capitalists and the proletarians. The old middle-class, which had made its living by individual enterprise, was fast being forced (by the play of natural laws, which showed themselves in the increasing centralization of capital) out of the possibility of successful competition with aggregated wealth, and down, for the most part, to the level of those who can bring to production, not land nor capital, but merely their native qualities of physical strength, or manual skill, or mental ability—proletarians, all of them, whether manual or intellectual, and coming surely, in the slow development of evolution, to a conscious knowledge of their community of interest as against the vested “rights” of monopoly in the material instruments of production. But athwart this path of progress rose the hardened structure of the Christian Church, bringing to bear against it all her temporal power and the full force of her accumulated superstitions. But now the speaker’s calm deserted him, and, with fist uplifted in threatening gesture, and his strong, bronzed face working with the fervor of his hate, he cried out against the ministers of Christ, who preach to the wronged and downtrodden poor the duty of patience with their “divinely appointed lot,” and who try to soothe them to blind submission with promises of an endless future of ecstatic blessedness, when the rich of this world shall burn in the unquenchable fires of hell.
- 42. THE SOCIALIST MEETING. “Oh! the fiendishness of these men,” he shouted, “who hide from ignorant minds the truth, which they themselves know full well, that for no mortal man is there any heaven or hell which he does not realize in the span of his earthly history, and if he misses here the happiness to which he was rightly born, he misses it forever! And the miserable paltriness of their motive in working this cruel wrong— merely that they may exempt themselves from toil and live in comfort upon the labor of others, instead of being, where most of them belong, out in the open fields hoeing corn!”
- 43. In another moment a man of widely different cult was speaking. For some time he had been trying to gain the floor, and now the Leader recognized him. He was a Christian Socialist, chief spokesman of the little band of his persuasion, who were very regular in their attendance upon these meetings. An insignificant Englishman he was, whose h’s transposed themselves with consistent perversity, and whose general qualities of physique, and tone, and manner reminded one strongly of the type of parson with weak lungs and a large family who is incumbent in out-of-the-way English churches on the Continent. He was not wanting in pluck nor in a certain strength of conviction, but the gentleness of the dove was his without the wisdom of the serpent, and the words he spoke, in weak voice and apologetic manner, while they would have met with sympathy in a company of believers whose emotions were already stirred, served here only to inflame the antagonisms of men whose views were stoutly materialistic. The Communistic Anarchist was the first to rise when the Christian Socialist sat down, and the Leader gave to him the privilege of the floor. There was the power of primal force in the suppressed passion of the man, and joined to this the exciting struggle of a human will in keeping rage in bounds. His heavy frame heaved with paroxysms of volcanic wrath, and the sibilants of English speech, augmented by the z’s in Teutonic struggle with the sound of th, came hissing and sputtering through his teeth from a tongue which could not frame words fast enough for his impatience. I have no power to reproduce his actual sentences, and at best I can but suggest the purport of his talk, which was in full sympathy with most of what had gone before: “God a decaying myth, and the Bible a silly legend, and Jesus a good man seeing some human truth, but gone mad in the credulous ignorance of his age, and dead these two thousand years, and Christianity a hoary superstition, made use of in its last days by bourgeois civilization to stave off a little longer its own fateful day of reckoning! And here is a man, who calls himself a Socialist, who
- 44. dares to bring before us this enfeebled monster of worn-out faith, which has been the tyrant of the poor from the moment of gaining temporal power, trying to hide its oppressions under a guise of so- called charity! It has been, too, from the beginning the stubbornest foe of scientific knowledge, and even now, in the last hour of its heartless cruelties, employs its utmost craft to put off the manifest dawn of freedom to the workers.” Breaking through the forced restraint of the beginning, his feelings bore him in resistless course until, in the full sweep of his long arms, his fingers were clutching wildly at the empty air, and his blood-shot eyes were rolling in a frenzy, and his hair stood straight on end, while his voice rose to its highest pitch in fierce scorn and denunciation. The hall was still echoing to the roar, when a scattered number of us were on our feet, straining forward in our efforts to catch the Leader’s eye. The Victim was recognized, and almost immediately the meeting began to feel the calming effect of a cool, conciliatory mind. Clearness was highly characteristic of the Victim’s mental processes, and, as his ideas slowly framed themselves, in translation to English from the native language in which he thought, they took on a charming piquancy and precision, in the oddest mixtures of strange idioms and bookish phrases and the current coin of common slang. “The assigned subject for debate this afternoon,” he was saying (in a paraphrase which wholly lacks his strongly individual character), “is one which opens up questions of great economic value and importance. It is a pity, it seems to me, that the time has been consumed in a discussion of side issues, rather than of the fundamental question of the observance of Sunday as an economic institution, and the relation borne to that great issue by the present agitation over the opening of the Exposition grounds on Sundays. It is well to remember that this is a meeting of Socialists. Freedom of speech is one of our cardinal beliefs. But a freedom of speech which ignores the subject appointed for debate would make better use of
- 45. its liberty by asking for a particular afternoon to be devoted to the theme which it wishes to discuss. “Not only has the talk of to-day been wide of the mark, but it has been out of harmony with the genius of Socialism. I am proud to own myself a Scientific Socialist, and a disciple of Karl Marx. To my way of thinking, there can be no verified truth which the mind of man can accept as such aside from the established results of naturalistic science. I, therefore, attach no more value to Christianity, as an authoritative source of truth, than I do to the sacred writings of my race. Both are merely historical facts, to be dealt with precisely as are all the facts of history. This afternoon, however, they have been dealt with in a spirit of intolerance, as malignant and uncompromising as the spirit which is charged against historic Christianity. It will be well for us who profess Socialism to be on our guard, lest there grow up among us an intolerance bred of dogmatic science, which may prove in the future as destructive of free thought and of true progress as has proved in the past the bigotry of dogmatic theology.” It was now well past the ordinary time for adjourning. The Leader announced the fact, and I feared that he meant to call for a motion to adjourn without making his usual closing speech. It was his habit to sum up the discussion, and we always looked forward to that address, for the Leader had the gift of speech and a liking for it, and a knowledge, moreover, of the minds of Socialists which was by no means common. There was little of the declamatory in his habitual speaking, and he lacked the analytical skill of some of the other members, but he had a shrewd perception of the dramatic, and he could make use of it to striking purpose. He had been born and bred a workingman, and was an artisan of much ability, and he knew thoroughly the workmen’s point of view. I have watched him play upon their feelings with the skill of a native orator. He spoke now in high commendation of what The Victim had said, and deplored the fact that the afternoon had passed without discussion of the appointed theme. As a Socialist, he regretted, he
- 46. said, that the talk had taken the form of an attack upon Christianity. Such a spirit was directly counter to the tolerance of Socialism. For his own part, although he had been brought up under the influence of the Protestant religion, he found himself very little in sympathy with modern Christianity. Supernaturalism he was willing to regard as a question apart, and as being entitled to fair, dispassionate discussion, but the Christian Church, as a practical embodiment of the teachings of its founder, he felt justified in judging in the light of every-day facts, and in their light he was free to say that Christianity was a failure. “Let us take an illustration,” he went on. “A very urgent problem in our city just now is that of ‘the unemployed.’ Certain of the newspapers have made a careful investigation in the last few weeks, and the result of their inquiry shows that, within the city limits to- day, there are at least thirty thousand men out of work. There may be fifty thousand, but the first estimate is well within the truth. “It is a matter primarily of supply and demand. Among these idle men there may be many inefficients and many chronic loafers, and many who, from one cause and another, are incapable of effective work. But the nature of the present status is unaffected by these considerations. It means, in its last analysis, that the local labor market is overstocked to the extent of thirty thousand men. However willing to work, and however efficient as workmen they might be, these men, or their equivalent in number, under existing conditions, would invariably find themselves unemployed. “And how does the Christian Church among us hold itself in relation to this problem? Its members profess themselves the disciples of ‘the meek and lowly Jesus,’ whom they call ‘divine.’ He said of Himself that ‘He had not where to lay His head,’ and He was the first Socialist in His teaching of universal brotherhood. “His followers build gorgeous temples to His worship in our city, and out of the fear, apparently, that some of the shelterless waifs, whom He taught them to know as brothers and who are in the very plight their Master was, should lay their weary heads upon the cushioned
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