Despite plenty of pre-briefings and a measured rollup to launch, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (formerly Whidbey) packed a few surprises when it was formerly announced at Microsoft's TechEd conference this week in San Diego. While the company had already suggested that operations modeling would be part of the mix, the breadth of promised integration between different application life-cycle tools was notable.
As part of its kick-off at CAWorld 2004 in Las Vegas, Computer Associates (CA) officials will describe a renewed effort to promote an application life-cycle software strategy with a wider collection of products now placed
under the AllFusion umbrella.
Steve Ballmer discussed the next release of Visual Studio 2005, which will include a
version known as "Team System." The toolset is intended to reach out beyond developers to include more workers involved with the application life cycle.
Microsoft is set to release the 2.0 version of its Web Services Enhancements for .NET. Basically, WSE is an add-on to the Visual Studio .NET dev tool and the .NET
Framework. It is designed to allow developers to write and implement advanced
Web services specifications, such as WS-Security, WS-Routing and WS-Attachments,
by adding a few lines of code to their Web services applications.
The Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organization has released the working-group draft of its Basic Security Profile for public comment.
Many of Gartner's predictions of Web services are pretty far out in time, some relating to technology we may not see until 2014. But one trend, the mapping of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) to programming languages, most notably Java, is happening now.
BEA Systems is donating the application framework in its WebLogic Workshop Java development environment to the open source community, the company disclosed last week. All future development of the newly re-branded Project Beehive will be done in the open-source community by BEA engineers and community participants.
Various J2EE toolmakers have worked in recent years to ease the task of developing to the J2EE platform. Perhaps only a few of their advances have had much effect to date on EJB design, which is for some shops a key part of J2EE.
I know they didn't plan it that way, but Microsoft's most recent Issues essay
couldn't have come out at a more unfortunate time.
When the head of the CIA in April estimated it would take five years to build new intelligence organizations, many bridled. After all, this is the age of just-in-time systems! But for IT systems, if not international intelligence networks, such a long view is not a bad thing at all. That was the word recently from Ken Orr, author of “Structured Systems Development” and “Structured Requirements Definition,” and a perpetually friendly gadfly on the systems scene.
MIT expert Michael Cusumano’s new book considers the lot of software vendors. If they don’t regularly examine how they do business, he concludes, trouble can ensue.
Unlike other books of its ilk, "Lessons in Program Management" does not set out to teach you about some complicated project management scheme. Instead, it simply tries to teach some basic concepts that apply no matter what complicated project management scheme you're trying to use.
IBM's announcement last week of plans to deliver software designed to create a centrally managed server hub for delivering enterprise apps to PCs seems to have fired up the old thick- vs. thin-client debate, at least among analysts and the tech media. Industry mavens noted that Big Blue's new thin-client Lotus Workplace offering could loosen mighty Microsoft's tight grip on the desktop.
Tibco Software Inc. unveiled a new Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) offering for both IT managers and business analysts at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Service Summit this week.
Providing a case study in the use of XML Web services for internal integration, Jacada Ltd. unveiled a new tool for "fusing" applications during the Gartner Application Integration and Web Service Summit.
Telelogic is set to announce the release of the 7.1 version of its venerable requirements management toolset.
Software AG is looking to move deeper into the legacy integration space with its XML Business Integration Portfolio, which the company debuted at the opening of the Gartner Application Integration and Web Service Summit in Los Angeles
There are lots of ways to think about good software. Is the balance seriously
off in recent years?
Silicon Valley seems to be getting a taste of the good old days. With the highly publicized Google IPO looming large, industry bellwether Cisco Systems last week announced plans to hire 1,000 workers. The San Jose Mercury News
characterized the plan as the "biggest surge in its workforce since the Internet boom."
Micro Focus, Rockville, Md., and Microsoft Corp. have agreed to a joint effort aimed at helping IT organizations migrate mainframe applications onto Windows-based systems.