In-Depth
The unfolding state of development
UML, XML, Linux, antitrust and e-commerce
-- these and other elements that came to define application development
in 1999 were all in place in late 1998. But certainly there was a whole
lot of shaking going on among these elements during the year, and the
industry that emerges to face a new millennium is dramatically different
than just a year ago. Much of what transpired in '99 was nearly phenomenal.
Today, the application server is poised
to become the middleware engine of choice, taking an esteemed position
next to the established database server and usurping the role of the
transaction processor. The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) spec has
arisen to provide a basic definition of what an application server
actually is. No doubt that definition will shift in the months to
come.
The language at the heart of the J2EE spec is one of the big technology
drivers of the day. Not yet born in 1990, and still accounting for only
a fraction of all systems, the Java language in 2000 seems to be on a
path to dominate enterprise development in years to come. It has unleashed
a new batch of object and component technology that seems destined for
broader implementation. Less mature is the eXtensible Markup Language
(XML) -- but its pedigree as a child of the World Wide Web Consortium
is such that it stands a fair chance of becoming a standard for data transfer
and meta system descriptions in years to come.
No topic was more of a lightening rod this year than Linux. The upstart
OS put a significant dent in NT server growth -- growth that was a hallmark
of late-'90s enterprise environments. International Data Corp. (IDC),
the Framingham, Mass.-based research firm, estimates Linux sales will
grow at twice the rate of all other server OSes combined each year until
2003. "Linux-as-a-way-of-life" has now become a beacon for a mass of programmers
who had a long list of complaints concerning Microsoft's Windows server
systems.
All in all, moves to open standards of some kind continue to call the
tune in modern IT. But, while some are reluctant to admit it, it is the
de facto Windows standard that serves as the platform for most development
work today.
And the Microsoft Visual Studio suite has come to dominate a low-end
development segment that was once much more diversely populated. That
could change. As with everything else that has to do with Microsoft, the
future of Windows and Visual Studio was thrown into some dispute as the
Redmond, Wash.-based software giant went down to the canvas
in the first round of its antitrust trial in Washington, D.C.
But the abiding fact of life for application development managers on
the verge of 2000 is that the game is getting tougher and the bets are
getting bigger. Especially, the risk and expense of fielding e-commerce
systems is a growing concern. IDC has estimated that more than $203 billion
will be spent on corporate Internet activity by 2002. IDC further projects
the amount of commerce conducted over the World Wide Web to top $1 trillion
by 2003.
How costly this can be for individual companies is increasingly documented.
Auction house Sotheby's hired 100 people and spent $25 million on an e-commerce
site that, according to the Wall Street Journal, is months behind schedule.
Competing house Christie's International pulled the plug on its online
auction effort, and the $15 million price tag was no small factor in that
decision. Catalog merchant Lands' End admits that a good portion of a
$40 million to $50 million increase in fiscal 2001 capital spending is
for investing in the company's information technology infrastructure,
an infrastructure it hopes to switch over to an e-commerce model.
Of course it is not just e-commerce spending that keeps application
development managers up at night. So-called off-the-shelf ERP software,
which should form a stable back end for front-line Web apps, has been
at issue in reported trip-ups (or outright failures) at Hershey (at a
cost of about $112 million), Allied Waste Industries ($130 million) and
Waste Management ($45 million).
But it is e-commerce failures that are the most visible. Witness summer
1999 outages that caused eBay's market value to drop $4 billion in a single
day.
This is where modeling, object-oriented software, standard servers and
cross-platform tools are supposed to help. Experts differ as to how soon
or how much help is on the way. Knowing the future of development tools
hinges on gauging who is closest to the mark.
The future of development tools
A decade ago, many vendors were vying for the lead in selling tools
for building client/ server applications. Centura, then known as Gupta,
and Powersoft took the early lead before Microsoft's Visual Basic took
over and left everyone else in the dust. Few top tools vendors survived
to the end of the decade. Powersoft was acquired by Sybase, Forté
by Sun, while others were acquired by IBM and Microsoft. Most standalone
tool makers, such as Inprise Corp. (formerly Borland International), Scotts
Valley, Calif., are in a fight for survival.
Clearly the baldest fact of development today is that attention to development
tools has diminished. In the early '90s, the stream of new graphical tools
on the market set about to simplify programming. As two-tier client/server
(largely PC to database) computing gave way to more complex three-tier
models, the mid-tier logic layer gained importance. The so-called middleware
that a tool leaves in place has become more important, for now, than the
look and feel of the tool itself.
At the same time, the 4GLs associated with some of these tools lost
favor to a fabulous new language known for its coffee cup logo -- Java.
Java won for business, not just technology reasons, said Linda Northrup,
director, product line system program, Software Engineering Institute
(SEI), Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
"Java was in Fortune. Java hit the business structure. And it is a pretty
good language, too," said Northrup.
Though he concedes that Java "is not a complete silver bullet," Sun
co-founder and Chief Scientist Bill Joy told a gathering at the recent
Software Development Conference in Washington that "it could be the language
that I have been looking for 10-plus years. I had a bad experience with
C, so in 1980 I started looking for a better way. Then C++ came out in
1986, but people didn't get too excited about it."
Today, he said, "Java provides measurable improvement." Joy maintains
that performance issues were resolved in Version 2 and that "our goal
now is for Java to have 10 times the performance of C++ circa 1995 by
2005."
The apparent decline of 4GLs may just represent a change in nomenclature,
said Jerry Cohen, president and founder of Information Builders Inc. (IBI),
New York City. "I'll tell you something," Cohen said in a recent interview
with an ADT reporter. "I would call HTML a 4GL language.
"It's non-compiled. It's scripted. You understand it immediately," he
continued. "I think there are more programmers in 4GLs than ever. JavaScript
is sort of a 4GL too. 4GLs have morphed. It's not a popular term, [it]
has gone into disuse. But in reality, there's a lot going on."
Nevertheless, "the trend is away from [using standalone tools for development],"
said John Swainson, general manager of the application integration middleware
division at IBM which, together with Sun and Oracle, has led the Java
charge. "The survivors have to form close relationships with application
server vendors. Application servers need strong tool support," noted Swainson.
For example, at the same time IBM incorporates its own tools into its
application servers, it has also aligned closely with Rational Software
Corp. to boost the WebSphere family with sophisticated life-cycle engineering
support.
"Where yesterday's focus was on native implementations, the focus now
is on tight integration with the runtime environment," said Swainson.
"The net effect is that the application development business has changed
from a bunch of standalone tool vendors to more and more tools targeting
application servers," he said. "Good tooling allows people to build, but
they also need a solution to deploy systems quickly."
"We haven't seen a cutback yet in the use of development tools," maintained
Herman Li, vice president for engineering in the Internet applications
division at Sybase Inc., Emeryville, Calif. "That's not contradictory
with the use of more packaged applications. Corporate shops are still
buying application development tools for customization. I agree that eventually
the use of tools will go down in corporate shops, but at the same time,
ISVs will be
using more."