Using components to produce solutions

The concept of a living database would seem to be a likely candidate for a basic component in a solution to help patients locate suitable cancer treatments. It is worth taking it further at this stage because this structure could become a very useful component in all kinds of e-businesses that involve putting people in touch with each other.

Biological evolution works in this same way. It is a continuous process of finding and developing new components that are then combined in different ways to create complex organisms. Few, if any, of the biological organisms we recognise today have evolved from scratch, they are all made up of components that have evolved independently in a previous evolutionary structure.

Biologists, have discovered the same biological components being used over and over again in different contexts and in different organisms. Looked at in this way, would see Mother Nature's evolutionary strategy as primarily that of developing components and then using them in different combinations for opportunistic purposes.

This takes us back to Sherlock Holmes' method of detection. He had built up a number of components he used for detection. One of these was his specialty knowledge of cigarette ash. He had this knowledge to call upon where it became opportune in helping to find a solution to the problem of who committed a crime. In a similar way, a fully developed, living database structure could be just the key component needed to turn an opportunity into a viable e-business solution.

Working in this way to create e-businesses, it isn't sufficient to have components that are just conceptual ideas. For a component to have any real value it must have been developed and perfected to the extent that it can be put to work immediately when an opportunity comes along.

In the fast moving world of e-business, this component building is happening all the time. The vast sums of investment money thrown at the early dotcoms at the turn of the century may have been a complete loss to the investors, but, what this money did was to create many little tried and tested modules that designers are able to reuse later by applying them to new situations.

Most professional programmers work this way. They never build software solutions entirely from scratch. They progressively build up libraries of modules that they can use whenever an opportunity presents itself. Most importantly, these modules have been tried and tested – even though it may have been at the expense of a client.

This is why it pays to use experienced programmers. Its not so much that they have learned to become cleverer and cleverer at programming (although this happens as well), their greatest value is that they can put together previously developed modules that can be quickly and efficiently combined and adapted to suit a new project.

Looking at the living database as a component – for me, this idea evolved out of a number of different life experiences. These experiences tell me that the concept is not complete or viable in itself as it can only be of value if used with a strategy to achieve a condition known as "critical mass".