Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

Nonfunctional Requirements: Good, Fast, and Cheap

Remember the old joke about good, fast, and cheap, that you can pick only two out of the three? Well, with any luck we might be able to get you all three. Good is pretty relative (as well as unspecific), so I won't go into a lot of detail here. The same applies for fast. So let's talk about cheap and a few other typical requirements.

If you're an end user and you're paying a relatively small price for this book instead of buying a full-featured Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) system like Mercator, we understand each other. If you find the word cheap a bit harsh, think of it this way: You can't cost-justify purchasing a full-featured package to convert a few files on an infrequent basis. ...