Several years ago a few smart people (yes, Bill and myself included) developed a contrived SOA reference implementation as part of our roles as Enterprise Architects in a group charged with Strategy, Architecture and Innovation within the Information Technology Group. We needed something more flexible (and entertaining) than the traditional stock trader or banking scenario, so Baloney on Barter (BOB) was born.  Though BOB is several years old (ancient in technology terms), we continue to use many of the concepts and lessons learned today in our consulting roles not from a technology perspective rather as an approach to establishing an architecture goal, executing the forward engineering to prove the concept and supporting the concepts with a complete set of artifacts for all levels of staff. In other words, the process of Enterprise Architecture with focus on applications and technology.

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