Archives


Software With a Dose of Skepticism

Software subscription offers benefits over traditional licensing models, but software decision makers worry about their data living on someone else’s servers. Part two of a two-part series.

Visual Modeling’s New Look

Visual models can reduce the effort and cost of the entire application lifecycle when the size and complexity of the app justifies using them.

EDITORIAL: Born-again technologies

We didn’t plan it this way, but this month’s issue is mainly about technologies making a fresh start. After a period of opposition or benign neglect, instant messaging is gaining acceptance in enterprises; agile programming is winning new adherents--following years when enterprises focused on control-intensive initiatives; and visual modeling is getting a second look because the newest tools deliver benefits unmatched by earlier tools, such as automatically producing much of the code for an app.

Review: CodeRush

Want to supercharge your Visual Studio .NET development? My pick of utilities these days is Developer Express' CodeRush.

On the demise of .NET, and other poppycock

Some people would have you believe that the entire .NET edifice is about to collapse, revealed as nothing more than an exercise in aggressive marketing. Don't you believe them.

Review: StrikeIron OnDemand Web Services for Microsoft Excel

There's a lot of information available out there via Web services these days. Now - how do you make that information available to business users? StrikeIron has the best answer to that question that I've seen so far.

Where the heck is our institutional memory?

We've had more than fifty years now to learn about the best ways to develop software. So why is it that we have to keep learning the same lessons over and over and over again?

News bits

Let's start the week with a few short items to clear out my mail bag. This time around I've got the latest word from PreEmptive Solutions, Salesforce.com, and SYWARE.

Leetspeek has jumped the shark

When Microsoft undertakes to explain kids to parents, it's safe to assume that the kids are snickering in the chat rooms.

Microsoft does agile - sort of

With the coming release of Visual Studio Team System, Microsoft is promising an agile variant of their Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology. With a beta version of the documentation out, it's time for some first impressions.

Review: Wise Package Studio

What happens to your software after you're done building it? In a large organization, Wise Package Studio may be helping keep it under control.