Eric Newcomer

I recently started a new job as an integration architect at Credit Suisse in New York, within the CTO Department. I am formerly CTO at IONA Technologies and TP Architect at Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of HP).

I started my career in 1978 in Chicago, working on criminal justice applications for the State of Illinois. You know the opening scene of the "Blues Brothers" at Joliet Prison? I was there around the same time, on the way to and from interviewing and training guards to use our new online TP prisoner tracking system. After that I moved back east to design and develop the online order entry/inventory management system for worldwide subsidiaries of Salamon Ski.

After that I joined Digital Equipment Corporation. In those days (1984) it was hard to imagine a more secure job or better working environment. I often say I received my computer science education there. I had nearly 16 great years there, working with some of the best software engineers in the industry, including TP pioneers such as Jim Gray and Phil Bernstein, with whom I wrote "Principles of Transaction Processing."

During my first year at IONA (I started in November, 1999) I got the company involved with Web services and as an early contributor to SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI I started writing "Understanding Web Services" for Addison Wesley. The book won two awards, including a prestigious Jolt Award and the Web Services Journal Reader's Choice award (which was a popular vote award), and became one of the top selling Web services books.

That led to the opportunity to work on a follow-up book, "Understanding SOA with Web Services," for that I got some great help from Greg Lomow, a great technologist and senior consultant in the SOA field. This particular book is coming in very handy at my new job, and has sold well.

During the past couple of years Phil and I worked hard to "Principles of Transaction Processing" and bring it up to date to reflect all the changes in the TP industry during the past 12 years.

I hope you enjoy the books I've worked on, and if you have read one or more of them please consider posting your comments on Amazon. Thanks.