Application Development Trends' News


College-based program targets security holes at the source

The road to a professional career usually begins in college; now, a software vendor believes that same route can make for more secure software.

Startup puts Web services security in developers' hands

Our favorite security guru, Gary McGraw, has said it so often that it's almost a cliche: If you want secure systems, you've got to build security into the applications that run on them. A Rocklin, Calif.-based startup called Kenai Systems is now applying that maxim to Web services with what the company's founders believe are category-creating tools for developers.

Sybase expands developer network with Microsoft partnership

This week, Sybase disclosed that it has joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, integrating its DataWindow .NET solution into the Visual Studio .NET 2003 integrated development environment (IDE).

BEA’s WebLogic 9.0 goes beta

BEA Systems offered a sneak peek at the upcoming version of its WebLogic Server for reporters and analysts this past week. Now in beta, version 9.0, code-named Diablo, continues to expand on the San Jose, Calif.-based company's strategy of simplifying development of applications in a service-oriented architectures.

Oracle to buy PeopleSoft; what's in it for the customer?

The battle for PeopleSoft is over and Oracle has won. Now the question becomes: How will Oracle's pending $10.3 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft affect both companies' customers?

At Oracle OpenWorld: Ellison presents vision of data hub

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has an "information-age answer" to the myriad problems associated with the growing fragmentation of data among disparate enterprise applications. Speaking to a crowd of attendees at this past week's massive Oracle OpenWorld conference, Ellison called the "data hub" the "single most important application" needed to unite islands of information into a "single global instance," and provide organizations with real-time access to "360-degree views of their businesses."

IBM's PC deal seen as strategic withdrawal

IBM's decision this past week to sell a majority stake in its personal computer business to Lenovo Group, a vendor based in China, for $1.75 billion in cash, stock, and debt assumption, is probably as much about getting into new markets as it is about getting out of the PC business.

Linux on the rise as messaging platform

If its manufacturers can guarantee uninterrupted service, Linux could gain traction in the enterprise as a messaging platform within the next two years, according to a recent survey.

Open-source practices moving into enterprise development

Businesses seen adopting the techniques and development practices of the open source community. Corporate IT and R&D organizations face many of the same distributed development challenges already overcome by the open source community, says Colin Bodell, senior vice president of product development at VA Software.

HP security chief sees cyber attacks growing more complex, malignant, persistent and pervasive

Speaking last week in San Francisco, Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer of HP Services, said his company was offering the new security suite because cyber attacks "are becoming more complex, more malignant, more persistent, and more pervasive."

Oracle OpenWorld focusing on Grid

Oracle Corporation kicks off its OpenWorld San Francisco business and technology conference on Sunday. The focus of the five-day event (Dec. 5-9) will be Oracle's ongoing grid computing strategy, launched earlier this year with the release of the Oracle 10g product line.

Gluecode serves up an open-source 'cuppa Joe'

The open-source stack got a little higher this past week with the launch of a new Java platform for rapid application deployment. Called JOE, and developed by El Segundo, Calif.-based Gluecode, the new offering is built on core open-source technologies from the Apache Software Foundation, including the Pluto portal framework, the Geronimo J2EE application server, the Derby database (formerly Cloudscape), and the Agila business process management (BPM) engine.

'Waste Management' leads to self-healing

If computers are so smart, why can't they fix themselves? Every IT pro has asked that question at least once. Cadir Lee began obsessing about it back in 1997. Before "self healing" became an industry buzz phrase, Lee and his partner, Scott Dale, were pioneering the category, which has evolved into what we think of today as "support automation."

Vendors release open-source code for WS-Reliability implementation

Three IT industry heavyweights, Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, and NEC Corp., are releasing Reliable Messaging for Grid Services (RM4GS), an open-source implementation of the Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) standard.

DHL parent untangles 'spaghetti infrastructure'

Warnings abound about spaghetti code, especially in legacy COBOL programs, but Michael Herr, senior director of IT at Germany’s Deutsche Post, says watch out for "spaghetti infrastructure."

Sun saddles up 'Mustang' for early access

Aiming to get more developers outside the company involved in the process of refining the Java platform, Sun Microsystems last week posted an early-release of version 6.0 of its Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), code-named "Mustang."

Bayesian networks made easy

Zach Cox is a software engineer at Charles River Analytics, Inc. Cambridge, Mass.-based development shop that for the past 20 years has built intelligence and decision support applications for military, government and commercial business use. Most recently it developed software NASA scientists used for planning treks for the Mars Rover. Cox is the chief developer of BNET Builder, an IDE designed to make it easy to build Bayesian networks for making predictions and diagnoses based on available information.

Telecommuters seen as weakest link in network security

As enterprise trends go, few are as likely to keep the network security guys up at night as the growth of telecommuting. According to a study release this fall by the International Telework Association & Council, the number of employees who performed any kind of work from home grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2004.

ObjectWeb boasts open-source alternative to IBM and BEA

ObjectWeb, the open-source infrastructure consortium, announced this week that it has added eXo Platform SARL to its roster. The privately held French company provides support and services for the eXo Platform, an open-source enterprise portal, which will now be hosted by ObjectWeb.

Sun launches Solaris 10

Sun Microsystems launched the much-anticipated new version of its Solaris operating system this week, and announced an overhauled pricing model designed to compete with Linux.