Development managers continue to face challenges as they deploy their apps over ever-wider networks. Among companies seeking to help address these challenges is RouteScience. The software company uses a decision-making engine that takes factors like application priorities and expected network behavior, and correlates this with real-time network performance to tune a network for optimal performance.
Developers need lots of skills, including logical thinking, the ability to plan,
attention to detail, and so on. But did you ever stop to think about the
importance of sneakiness in the developer world?
It is probably too early to say for sure, but it appears that Web services standards are quietly changing the world of development. Web services represent a detente of sorts between two big developer camps -- IBM and Microsoft.
One of the biggest challenges facing developers of applications that run on mobile devices is the intermittent access users have to wireless networks. The situation has been dubbed "occasionally connected" computing and, improvements and promises of the industry notwithstanding, it's not likely to change any time soon. BEA Systems is working on an interesting approach to helping developers cope with this sometimes-on-sometimes-off environment.
In July, customers will gather at IBM's annual developer conference in Grapevine, Texas, where the fuller integration of Rational products into the IBM world will be a prime topic.
While many Java toolmakers are members of Eclipse, which bills itself as "a community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for tools integration," the newest member is also bringing Ada. Aonix, an international company with headquarters in San Diego and Paris, also makes Java tools, but it is porting its Ada95 tool suite to the Eclipse platform, said Jacques Brygier, the firm's vice president of marketing.
Failed projects don't talk, at least not too often. But we should listen to them when they do. People generally want to focus on the positive, but we need to educate ourselves and a trip up a rocky road can be more educational than a cruise down the autobahn. The FBI's Trilogy IT modernization program, heavily documented by now, is a case in point.
Aiming at the Java components market, Quest Software Inc. has released Quest JClass ServerViews 5.0, a set of server-side Java components for adding charts and reports to servlet, JSP and J2EE applications.
A recent security vulnerability suggests that maybe the once a month Microsoft
patch cycle wasn't such a good idea after all.
In data centers and beyond, the view of performance is usually based around servers and server activity. Now, longtime performance management player Heroix Corp. is looking to offer another set of views, one it is calling Line of Business Views.
We met up with Mike Rosen at Cutter Consortium's recent Cutter Summit by the banks of the River Charles in Cambridge, Mass. Few people know more about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) than analyst Rosen. As well, few have considered more deeply the evolving role of MDA in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategies.
Don Box, one of the inventors of the XML SOAP standard, has been standing up in front of crowds of developers for years now -- educating, entertaining and even sometimes illuminating. We asked what message he wanted to carry forward to them these days. "The message is we have a new way of thinking about software that is called 'service-orientation,'" he said.
Linux's maturing clustering and failover capabilities have quickly poised it as an attractive alternative to high-maintenance Unix systems, be they monolithic or distributed. In fact, Linux is shaking up the Unix world in a big way. But, Windows, too, is affected.
Microsoft’s failed discussions on a merger with SAP AG did not prevent the two companies from trying to knit together .NET and NetWeaver.
Sometimes it seems like developers can turn anything into a battle to the death.
Take the apparently-simple matter of coding standards, for example. Why do we
keep fighting about these things?
Logistics is a concern for the $450 billion a year Department of Defense (DoD). To become the best in class logistics, the DoD is turning to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.
Supply-chain security and environmental compliance are things to watch for in the next supply-chain wave, predicted Bruce Richardson at AMR Research's recent Supply Chain Executive Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Latest news from ADT staff reporting.
Mike Milinkovich is the first executive director of the newly independent Eclipse Foundation. A spokesman for the Eclipse board of directors said the body selected Milinkovich, who most recently was a vice president for technical services at Oracle Corp., for his executive leadership abilities in both the technical and business fields.
Microsoft says they'll wipe out spam within the next couple of years. I don't
really believe that, but with some effort it's possible to avoid seeing most
spam today.