1.3 Typical Technologies

Although we're just scratching the surface of software fortresses , we can already discuss how some common technologies might be used within the software fortress architecture. Here are just a few obvious technology mappings. I will discuss them and others in detail later:

• Data strongboxes, the repositories of fortress data, are often implemented as physical databases, especially in business application fortresses.

• Workers inside the business application fortress are often implemented as distributed components .

• Walls, the parts of the fortress that keep out the riffraff, are often implemented with physical firewalls and/or operating system security services, such as access control lists (ACLs).

• Guards, the parts of the fortress that approve requests from the outside world, are often implemented through the use of cryptography APIs of whatever underlying operating system is used as the fortress foundation.

• Drawbridges, the channels through which outside communication passes , are often implemented through message queues.

It might be tempting to think of a fortress as an operating system process, a specific computer, or a physical location. None of these notions are correct. Fortresses often consist of multiple processes running on many machines distributed over a geographically disperse area.