Application Development Trends' News


The next step in Grid computing

Many of the large system vendors like to describe grid computing as a kind of Lego-style building block model for the data center that allows organizations to mix and match servers, storage, applications, and I/O. That’s an analogy that works for TopSpin Communications, says the company’s marketing VP, Stu Aaron. “Think of TopSpin as the flat green piece that you build your Lego cities on top of,” he says.

Akamai offers on-demand J2EE business applications

For businesses that want J2EE Web applications without going through the development lifecycle, Akamai Technologies this week announced the availability of on-demand Web applications.

IBM offers new integrated tools for J2EE development teams

As promised, a week after releasing a new version of WebSphere, IBM announced a new integrated toolset that draws heavily on its Rational technology.

Web Services: Companies move beyond tire-kicking

It's time to stop thinking of Web services as emerging technologies, say industry watchers at the Yankee Group.

Book club opens new chapter with conversion to Windows

There are definite pluses, including ROI savings, and productivity and performance gains, in moving legacy Cobol mainframe apps to Microsoft Windows servers, says Leo Theberge, CIO at a Canadian book club.

Florida courts look to Semantic Web for disparate data on desperados

Systems that can retrieve snapshots from a photo database and display them on a notebook PC screen may seem almost trivial to an IT manager setting priorities for application development. But to Judge Charles Francis, chief judge, second judicial court in Florida, it is serious business when it comes to criminal law.

Methodology guru applies agile principles to project management

Lightweight approaches to developing software have been around for years, coalescing in early 2001 under the term "agile" with the publication of the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development," and influencing virtually every phase of the software development life cycle. The primary focus of agile development has been, not surprisingly, developers and their use of an evolving set of principles and practices. But what about project managers? Is there a way to apply agile practices to their part in the process?

iSpheres hopes EPL becomes the SQL of event processing

Seeking to provide programmers with the open-standard, copyright-free, event-processing equivalent of SQL, iSpheres announced last week that it has developed the Event Processing Language (EPL).

Inputs are dangerous

If there's one lesson to be learned from this month's set of Microsoft security patches, it's that letting data into your system is rife with danger.

Systinet plugs into Eclipse

Finding that the majority of coders using its Java server are working with Eclipse, Systinet is coming out with a set of tools specifically designed for the popular open-source IDE.

Vendor group publishes new Web services management spec

A group of technology vendors that includes AMD, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, last week published a new Web services specification designed to simplify network administration across a range of devices. Dubbed Web Services Management (WS-M), the spec describes how to use Web services as a remote management access protocol.

Sun's Kodak moment: Patent suit settled out of court

Sun Microsystems has agreed to pay Eastman Kodak $92 million to settle an intellectual property dispute between the two companies, Sun disclosed last week. The announcement came just days after a federal jury found that Sun had infringed on three of Kodak's object-oriented software patents when it created Java.

SAP: New NetWeaver technology solves Java enterprise reliability issues

Positioning its NetWeaver platform for enterprise Java applications, SAP plans to offer a "virtual machine container" in 2005.

French project manager puts in a word for legacy translation

Totally rewriting legacy logic for Web-enabled applications is risky business, says Gorge Altanirano, project manager for Antargaz, a French supplier of bottled gas for rural home owners and farmers in France.

An agile approach to rocket science

Who says you can't use agile software development methodologies for large, complex projects with high assurance requirements? Certainly not the members of Lockheed Martin's flight software development team, who employ agile principles in combination with traditional, plan-driven processes to develop guidance software for the Atlas V rocket.

IBM announces new 'self-healing' WebSphere

The first major release of IBM WebSphere in two years offers self-healing capabilities to provide failover for business transactions conducted via the Internet.

Start-up offers appliance for SarbOx compliance

Seeing an opportunity to help companies deal with Sarbanes-Oxley, nLayers is offering an IT network appliance that helps with compliance. The San Jose, Calif.-based start-up's first product, nLayers InSight, is a passive -- as in non-invasive -- plug-in appliance that provides IT departments with an optimization tool that looks at the infrastructure and finds ways to streamline business processes.

Former BEA execs launch 'The Dell of open source'

Three former BEA Systems executives have launched a company they hope will become the Dell of open-source software.

Sun unleashes Tiger

Sun Microsystems last week released the long-awaited overhaul of the Java 2 Standard Edition. Sun is calling J2SE 5.0, code name "Project Tiger," the most significant upgrade of the Java platform and programming language in nearly a decade.

Live by the patent, die by the patent

Sun has proposed some pretty silly patents lately. I wonder if they still think they're a good idea after last week?