The Six Most Valued IT Experiences You Should Acquire

Here we are talking about most advanced experiences beyond general programming, routine network admin, or helpdesk. We want you to examine these high-end experiences that big ass IT pros are in and make big bucks. Now take a look:

1. Enterprise Architect Experience (UML)

What enterprise architecture aligns is UML. UML skills and experience are expected for software engineers, application developers, software designers, and enterprise architects.

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. The UML provides a language-neutral, tool-supported, well-documented standard for modeling systems such as web applications. It enables system requirements, structure, and behavior to be succinctly captured and effectively communicated.

As explained by Duncan Jack in August 2005’s JDJ, UML is interpreted as:

• Unified: The result of unifying three leading approaches to system modeling in the 1990s
• Modeling: concerned with the simplified representation of system structure and behavior
• Language: A language, not a methodology.

The UML is not a methodology. It is a diagram-based language. This point is important.

The UML contains 6 structure diagrams and 7 behavior diagrams. The most commonly used diagrams are:
- Use case diagram (behavior)
- Activity diagram (behavior)
- Class diagram (structure)
- Sequence diagram (behavior)

2. Web Services Experience

Web services are self-contained, modular applications that are able to wrok together without relying on custom-coded connections, because they are built on open standards. Web services share a common protocol so they can communicate with each other despite the fact that they speak different languages.

Since web services have become mature technology in the past years, the experience for designing and developing web services based systems is highly required. Check this article to learn more about web services experience:

What Skills Do You Need to Jumpstart Web Services Projects

Jump onto Web Services and Give Your IT Career a Boost

3. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Experience

You cannot ignore SOA if you keep yourself updated in IT. Although everyone is talking about SOA, there are in fact few SOA projects going on, therefore not many techies actually got hands-on experience on SOA.

However it is time now to grab some knowledge on SOA in order to stay ahead of the crowd. Here’s just brief instruction of SOA. You can search tons of info on the web for this topic.

A service-oriented architectue (SOA) is an application framework that takes everyday business applications and breaks them down into individual business functions and process, called services. An SOA let you build, deploy, and integrate these services independent of applications and the computing platforms on which they run.

4. Enterprise Service Bus Experience

While everyone knows how hot SOA is, the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is for sure the next hot spot. It is a big advantage for you to talk about your knowledge, or even better, – hands-on experience on ESB during an interview. If your goal is to get a high-end enterprise architect position, it’s time now to obtain some skills on ESB. Here is just a brief description of ESB:

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a standards-based integration platform that combines messaging, web services, data transformation, and intelligent routing to reliably connect and coordinate the interaction of significant numbers of diverse applications across extended enterprises with transactional integrity.

In ESB, applications and event-driven services are tied together in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in a loosely coupled fashion. This allows them to operate independently from one another while still providing value to a broader business function.

Note: In J2EE (now called Java EE) world, Java Specification JSR 208 Java Business Integration (JBI) can be considered a Java standard for an enterprise service bus (ESB).

5. Interoperability Experience

Interoperability is a hot topic today. It is the first and the only thing that Sun and Microsoft get together to work for. A knowledge and experience in interoperability could become ever more valuable.

Interoperability enables communication, data exchange, or program exceution among various systems in a way that requires the user to have little or no awareness of the underlying operations of those systems.

Today’s interoperability is realized by XML web services. The most interoperability cases are between J2EE environment and .NET platform.

Interoperability between Java and .NET is hot. In 2005’s JavaOne Conference, Microsoft and Sun presented at two breakout sessions to showcase technology that Sun and Microsoft are delivering to help customers easily interoperate between their Java and Microsoft® .NET-based systems. Both Sun and Microsoft look forward to a sustained relationship in building interoperable systems on standards-based XML web services technology.

Microsoft provided the following resources for Java/.NET interoperability:

Microsoft .NET Resources for Java Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/java/

This is your one-stop shop for Java and .NET interoperability, community, and general information about the .NET Framework for Java developers. On this developer center you can learn how to interoperate between Java and the .NET Framework using techniques such as Web services and 3rd party bridging solutions.

Microsoft .NET and Java/J2EE Interoperability
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/java/interop/default.aspx

.NET Framework Training for Java Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/java/migrate/workshop/default.aspx

Learn how to build Microsoft .NET-based applications with the .NET Framework Training for Java Developers by using your existing Java knowledge as a frame of reference. For instance, you’re probably aware of how to use RMI, but how does this compare with .NET Remoting? How does JSP compare with building Web-based applications using ASP.NET? This workshop provides hours of recorded Web casts and even hands-on labs which can be completed for free, from your desk, and at your own pace.

Java to .NET Framework Migration Workshop
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/java/migrate/workshop/default.aspx

Additional Interop Resources
- Microsoft and Interoperability
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/interop/default.mspx
- Microsoft Interoperability Webcasts
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/interopseries.mspx
- Microsoft Connected Systems Business Kit
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/overview/benefits/cstrial.mspx

If you do not see what you’re looking for, you may email to Java-MS@microsoft.com for additional information.

6. Data Integration Experience

The data integration experience is most likely required for systems architects, database professionals, and IT consultants.

Data Integration is the process of accumulating and combining data set from disparate sources at various locations. This data can then be used for business intelligence, CRM, data mining, or other applications that involve the analysis of data in order to make key decisions.

Data integration incorporates a series of processes – the sequence of applications that extract data from various sources, bring them to a data staging area, and then programmatically prepare the data for migration into to data warehouse and the actual loading of the data into the data warehouse and data marts.

Data integration usually involves operations such as data conversion, cleansing, formatting and aggregation. After the data is extracted a number of transformations may be applied in preparation for data consolidation and subsequently loaded into data warehouses, data marts or dimensional data structures used for decision support systems or business intelligence systems.

Key benefits of data integration:

- Availability of data
- Enhanced data quality
- Better manageability
- Improved decision making
- Higher return on investment (ROI)