Loosely Couple, Loosely Couple

Loosely Couple, Loosely Couple.

Business people have been known to victimize web developers with this phrase – usually in an attempt to beat down release schedules by ‘minimizing complexity’ around connecting back end data sources and front end front-ends. This approach is usually not too happy or well-informed – but there really is something to loose coupling (and I don’t mean ‘open marriage’ either).

Say you present some content on the web, and further say you use a blog platform because it’s so convenient. And then say you easily add a form to your site using a form-specific online database like Wufoo.

What do you know, you have just loosely coupled 2 completely separate databases and interfaces (interfacii?) together to accomplish a business goal really quickly. Sure there are limitations, but, extremely rapidly, you have a place on the Internet where people can go and input information – seems like that could be useful for a start. What's more, loose coupling offers enormous flexibility for things like personalization, which is why the smart technologists at Amazon use 100 web service calls to dynamically tailor their homepage to the visitor, time of year, product releases, etc.