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ITAG
Architectural Guidelines: Standards
- Applications SHOULD
use open specification and standards where appropriate.
- All protocols SHOULD
be open and documented, so that they can be used in any computing
environment.
We recommend
that development teams work with open specification and standards, or at
least vendors who support them, for the following reasons:
- Vendor
independence:
Multiple vendors can support open standards, you can spread the risk
out among them instead of on one proprietary vendor, reducing
overall risk related to dependency on and support for the
technology.
-
Platform independence:
Standards-based applications can usually be run on (or moved to) a
variety of standards compliant platforms. This also decreases the
cost of changing platforms.
-
Product release independence:
When a new product version comes out you still have access to the
previous versions of the software libraries, and even the source
code, so that you are not forced to re-factor all your old
applications.
-
Crossover of
skills:
Developers are often hired to work on specific platforms in specific
languages (e.g. Java programmers for SAP or Oracle AS) but if they
use standards-based design patterns their skills can also be applied
to other platforms so that programming resources are more flexible.
- Better
interoperability:
Open standards, by helping to define component interfaces, increases
interoperability. This leads to simpler, repeatable and quicker
integration efforts.
-
Resource availability:
There are often more people on the market with open standards skills
than those with vender-specific skills.
-
Durability: Open
standards, once agreed upon, tend to last longer the vendor based
solutions.
- Reduce
cost: Open
standards resources, references are mostly available at a reasonable
price.
Last Updated Sept 2006
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