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The following are articles written by Propylon Chief Technical Officer, Sean McGrath, for IT World.

E-business in the Enterprise

2007

• The rise and fall of the 'enterprise' class distinction Jun 19
• Climbing The Cognitive Wall: Human barriers to progress in IT Jun 13
• The Grand Unifying Theory of Enterprise Computing: 2.0 Jun 05
• Give a link. Take a link. May 29
• Moore's Law and batteries May 22
• A hardware/software inflection point May 15
• A little knowledge is a dangerous thing May 08
• More praise for design constraints May 02
• Going forward, going backward, changing April 24
• The web and the word processor April 19
• I'll push and you pull. The mashup approach to application integration April 16
• Re-purposing: the new king of content? April 15
• Identity management and virtual worlds March 28
• XML and the document format mind bender March 21
• A simple litmus test for where to spend your application research time March 06
• "Home truths" about computing March 06
• It's not what you know, but who you know March 01
• In praise of parasites February 28
• The next big programming language ... February 13
• The Whac-A-Mole approach to information management February 06
• Technological (non)predictions for 2007 January 30
• Master Foo and the naming ceremony January 23
• Chaos and order in information systems January 16
• The age of uber-tooling in software development January 10
• Resolving the online/offline service conundrum using virtualization January 01

2006

• Asset stripping meets the web dividend December 30
• More than words can say December 19
• AJAX and the hidden cost of ease of use December 12
• Two radically different approaches to enterprise application software December 05
• A rush of codd to the hand November 30
• Six word stories for geeks November 21
• Solution spheres and application cubes November 14
• Attack of the killer digicam November 07
• Interoperability as a state of mind October 31
• The inevitability of cruft October 24
• A Webby Wedding October 17
• To print or not to print, that is the question October 10
• Does work actually flow? September 26
• Stay tuned. We will be right back after these. September 19
• Outsourcing the middleware layer September 12
• Menu Option Judo September 05
• If 80 gigs is enough, then... August 29
• Converting from square pegs to round holes August 22
• The (non) wisdom of crowds August 15
• Fast pipe. Always on. Get out of the way. August 08
• Restaurants, roller coasters and randomly failing web applications August 01
• Master Foo on Web Mashups July 25
• Machiavellian Machines July 18
• WIKIs - a tipping point for the Web? July 11
• Pain/Gain Thresholds in Software Engineering July 04
• High quality paper publishing considered harmful June 27
• The Next Best Thing to Knowing Something... June 20
• A megabyte, by any other name, would sound as sweet June 13
• Identity is dead. Get over it. June 06
• The Asymmetric Web May 30
• Men are from Mars May 23
• If computers can do it, why can't we? May 16
• Programming a Picasso May 09
• Master Foo's Taxation Theory of Microformats May 02
• Multi-core Processors: transputers reborn April 25
• Software is like... April 18
• The end of the beginning, middle and end April 11
• Re-thinking the online spreadsheet April 04
• Blue is the New Green - IT as a Fashion Industry March 28
• Explain Using Averages, But Engineer Using Limits March 21
• How long will it take to make that piece of string? March 14
• Hysteresis, History and empty metadata fields March 07
• From analog to digital and back to analog February 28
• Invisible Spaghetti February 21
• The library IS the programming language February 14
• Living on the edge of Plan A February 07
• Where are all the illustrations? February 01
• A URL producer/consumer contract January 24
• Laptop Service Providers January 17
• Taking the 'I' out of Identity January 10
• Separating the cart from the horse January 03

2005

• Illusions of chaos, illusions of calm December 27
• Web Rings and the problem of finding people on the Web December 20
• Resistance is futile. You will become a file server. December 13
• A Collective Noun for Options December 6
• ODF - The Future of Literate Programming? November 29
• In the Beginning was the Naming Convention November 22
• Master Foo Defines Enterprise Data November 15
• Beyond Business Logic November 8
• As pretty as a WIFI-Enabled Airport November 1
• The psychology of atoms and bits October 25
• An atomic sense of time October 18
• Twenty first century applets October 11
• The same data in the same place October 4
• From middleware to metroware September 27
• Oyez! Oyez! RSS! September 20
• Silent Running September 13
• A database, by any other name September 6
• The joy of taking stuff apart August 30
• Documentation - reporting and authoring are two different activities August 23
• Invisible Spaghetti August 16
• The Big E Phenomenon August 9
• Frying pan too wide, arrow keys too small August 2
• Smart stupidity July 26
• Data in motion -- combating backup obsolescence July 19
• A stratigraphy of Precambrian Web space July 12
• The conversion culture of computing July 7
• Universal utterance machines June 28
• File Save As ... XML June 21
• The gray scale of interoperability and IT standards June 14
• The dark glue of the Web June 7
• Complexity, chemistry, commuting and computing May 31
• Tales of 'in' and 'on' in database management May 24
• Where does content stop and presentation start? May 17
• Books/chapters and directories/files - dichotomies considered harmful May 10
• Mediators and mediatees - Enterprise integration as an industrial Relations problem May 03
• Naked programming on naked street April 25
• Filing system taxonomy blues April 20
• Use the tests, Luke! April 11
• Tired of warming up computers April 5
• Bandwidth - is this as good as it gets? March 29
• Songs, presentations and analyst briefings March 21
• APIs, outsourcing and Open Source March 15
• Gmail, Technorati, WinFS - cogitating reticulation March 8
• SOA = Some Other Architecture? March 1
• Honey, I shrunk the computer February 22
• Master Foo explains XML to Aliens February 15
• Intuitive physics in the world of bits February 8
• Wall, Escher and Berners Lee: An eternal golden braid February 1
• The changing face of CPUs January 25
• From Drive C to Drive H January 18
• Fractionation - boiling down analog assets into digital derivatives January 11
• E-mail addressing - from numbers to names and back again January 4

2004

• Writing software - diaries or novels? December 28
• Fast forward to forward compatibility December 21
• Tunneling through application mountains December 14
• The end of digital downloads? December 7
• Inefficiency revisited November 30
• Take one sequoia, thinly sliced November 23
• Variation on a theme by Cyril Northcote Parkinson November 16
• E-mail - where are all the hyperlinks? November 9
• Protecting legacy applications with virtual operating systems November 2
• Aggregating the aggregated - controlling weblog infoglut October 26
• Five steps forward, four steps back October 19
• From herding cattle to trapping mice. The changing face of user interface programming. October 12
• The Jazz approach to E-business integration October 5
• The 'why' and the 'how' of business processes September 28
• Envelopes, postcards and e-mail privacy September 21
• The second coming of M-Commerce September 14
• What is a brittle interface? September 7
• Deleterious guesswork in application integration August 31
• "Breakthrough syndrome" in IT projects August 24
• Nano-technology and the onward march of digitization August 17
• Will a paperback ever lose its paper? August 10
• Web services, firewalls and steganography August3
• Notes on an annual vacation from cyberspace and the pain of re-entry July 20
• Quantum computing: A two-edged sword for security July 20
• Publish and subscribe - an imminent overnight success after twenty years July 13
• Raid on Tumbolia: A rescue mission for business data July 6
• Two HTTP verbs diverged in a wood... June 29
• The color of words June 22
• Data storage and data transmission - a tale of two worlds June 15
• E-mail - the end of a metaphor? June 8
• Growing e-business applications June 1
• When modelling business processes, upside down is the right way up May 25
• The impersonal computer revolution May 18
• The demise of Hara-Kiri computing May 11
• Would the real source of metadata please stand up? May 4
• The mysteries of flexible software April 27
• E-trading in an e-pit April 20
• A conversation with a Bertrand Russell chatterbot April 13
• Close integrations of the third kind April 6
• The fallacy of business objects March 30
• Data corruption and data correction in an XML world March 23
• Tippy technology and the 'winner takes all' effect March 16
• Rapid application development and the art of throwing things away March 9
• Digital calculations and the importance of units of measurement March 2
• Duck modelling in commercial IT systems February 24
• Long running applications and the client/server (non) distinction February 17
• Never mind the bandwidth, feel the latency February 10
• Bottlenecks in information processing February 3
• Digital voice - an e-business application of MP3? January 27
• Digital dysphoria January 19
• Asset naming and asset ownership January 13
• Data, mayonnaise and logistics January 6

2003

• On the Internet, nobody knows you are a process December 30
• The Point and Click Preservation Society December 23
• Inevitable technology illusions December 16
• XHTML - a recommendation and a warning (but mostly a warning) December 9
• A unifying theory of enterprises, applications and everything December 1
• The fine art of blame allocation November 25
• Invoices through the ages - XML tagging from prehistoric man to the present day November 18
• The impotence of numbers November 11
• QWERTY meets ABCDEF November 4
• In praise of IT multi-lingualism October 28
• Web sites, databases and other illusions October 21
• Complimentary currencies in the future of the software business October 14
• Enabling the social dimension of effective e-business October 7
• Hooked on tools September 30
• First the pricing model, then the technology September 23
• Putting the 'soft' into software September 16
• Moving mountains with tweezers September 9
• Testing, testing, one to three, testing September 2
• The integration adapter game August 26
• Putters, programs and prairie dogs August 19
• Von Neumann's curse August 5
• The economics of application installation July 29
• Identity in the real world July 15
• Manuals, conversations and RSS July 8
• Dreaming up an enterprise application architecture July 1
• The end of database-centric design? June 24
• Sometimes, a word is worth a thousand pictures June 17
• Loosely coupled may not be a term of endearment June 10
• The end-to-end design principle and the real tragedy of spam June 3
• The technology turkey awards May 27
• E-pictures in e-business May 20
• It's Science Jim, but not as we know it May 13
• Why are slide presentations boring? May 6
• Web services: IT churn or IT revolution? April 29
• Symmetrical and asymmetrical system design April 22
• Blogging and Lurking April 15
• The wireless mesh-men cometh April 8
• Printers, coffee machines and razor blades April 1
• A study in XML culture and evolution March 25
• RDF and other monkey wrenches March 18
• Code is data, and data is code March 11
• The application configuration conundrum March 4
• What does it mean for one enterprise application to 'talk' to another? February 26
• Run-time design and implementation will eventually be the norm February 18
• Open source is great but we really need open data February 11
• Tightly integrated? Just say no! February 4
• Realities of electronic information management January 28
• EAI, web services and high school grammar classes January 21
• Hand me my cell phone, I need to take a photograph January 14
• Spreadsheets finally yield their buried treasure January 6

2002

• Recombinant growth - a golden opportunity for web services December 24
• Chance encounters of the electronic kind December 17
• Desktop Unix reaching a tipping point? December 10
• The fall, re-branding and subsequent rise of push publishing December 3
• Why scalability hurts so much November 26
• The missing piece in the wireless Web November 19
• The inevitability of electronic hubs November 12
• Instant Messaging bots, the risk and opportunity October 29
• What business are you in? October 22
• The identity problem in E-business October 15
• Talking the talk of E-business October 8

XML in Practice

• XML Recedes into the Plumbing September 26
• Come Back Database View Technology; All is Forgiven September 19
• XLink: A Hyperspace Oddity September 12
• The Rise and Fall of HTTP September 5
• Brands, Web Services, and Other Emotions August 29
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Manuals August 22
• How to Cheat with XML Schemas August 15
• How to Model a Bishop August 8
• A Statement is Not a Conversation August 1
• Separating Content from Presentation: Easier Said Than Done July 25
• Documenting XML Applications with RDDL July 18
• Mixed Content Myopia July 11
• Ampersand Attrition in XML and HTML July 4
• The Opposite of Hierarchy June 27
• Binary Data Formats? Just Say NO! June 20
• Lies, Damned Lies and XML Markup June 13
• The Real Difference Between Structured and Unstructured Data June 6
• Validation is a Process, Not an Action May 30
• Chicken Soup for your Markup Problems May 16
• SOAP, Reification, and the Universal Namespace May 2
• Fractals, Self Similarity, and the Whimsical Boundaries of XML Documents April 26
• APIs Considered Harmful April 18
• XML Namespaces April 11
• The Real Cost of XML Tags April 4
• XML and Emergent Simplicity March 28
• St. Patrick to be Named Patron Saint of Software Developers March 21
• XML is Just a Special Case March 14
• XML and the Rise and Rise of Dynamic Typing March 7
• A Roller Coaster Ride for the Mind March 1
• Lord of the Schemas, Part 1: Fellowship of the Schema February 21
• The Key to XML Modeling: Knowing When to Stop February 14
• XML and UML February 7
• XML, Web Services, and the REST Architecture February 2
• XPak: A Solution to All Your EAI Problems January 31
• The Only Hard Problem in XML January 24
• XML is Just a Tree...Not! January 17

2001

• XML and the Humble Paragraph Tag December 20
• Attributes Vs Elements December 13
• Displaying XML in Web Browsers: Theory vs. Practice November 29
• DTDs are dead, Long Live DTDs November 15
• XML is Too Slow...Not! November 10
• Markup is a State of Mind October 18
• Relaxing into 2002 October 1
• XML Databases and Related Comfort Food August 11
• Unicode: Confessions of a Latinate June 12
• Type is a Four Letter Word May 23
• Serendipity in the Noosphere May 9
• XML: The Syntax and the Spirit April 10