Columns
Rites of spring
- By Barry Zellen
- April 1, 2001
As spring returns, there is an awakening and a renewal, a celebration of life returning. This issue of
ADT looks at the flowering of new technologies ranging from data warehousing to EJBs.
Our cover story, Rich Seeley's "Data warehousing lets its hair down," examines changes in the landscape of data warehousing, which has experienced a spring flood of dynamic data generated by the blooming of e-business. Seeley observes that dynamic sources of new market information, like clickstream data, have increased both the challenge and the necessity of data warehousing.
In "The ascent of EJBs," Mark Moser introduces us to EJBs and their growth, from seeds deposited by OO programming through the seedlings of the distributed objects they germinate. The result has been the harvesting of a tool that minimizes the amount of coding needed and provides enterprise services and portability, while requiring a little extra weeding when it comes to configuration and deployment.
Barrie Sosinksy and Kay Tanielu, in their "Embedded operating systems rule the world," look at the bloom of embedded OSs, whose pervasive and sophisticated technologies dominate the OS market. They observe that 94% of the world microprocessor market is commanded by embedded OSs, vs. just 6% for PCs. Most OS vendors also recognize the fertile soil offered by the embedded OS market, and Sosinksy and Tanielu examine some of the initiatives to establish roots therein.
Lana Gates, in her "Order from chaos: Configuration management tools and the development life cycle," examines the importance of keeping current with what increasingly feels like seasonal changes to operating systems, applications and hardware platforms. Her review of configuration management products provides readers with a greater appreciation of the importance of staying in tune with these seasons as they change, so there won't be any surprises.
In our annual celebration of spring, ADT is pleased to announce the results of the 2001 Innovator Awards. For more details on the winning projects, please see our special Innovator Awards 2001 section.
Finally, we at ADT are sad to inform our readers of the unexpected loss of our colleague, columnist and friend, Charles (Chuck) Trepper. Chuck passed away suddenly on January 30, 2001. He was a well known IT author, columnist and lecturer, and a vital part of the ADT family for several years. All of us at ADT will miss Chuck's continuing presence in the magazine, but we will always remember and appreciate his many contributions.
Donations in Chuck's memory may be made to Har Zion Congregation New Building Fund, 6140 East Thunderbird Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85254.