Open Group's Architect Cert Hits 25,000

More than 25,000 people have earned certification under the Open Group's TOGAF 9 program, the group reported recently, marking a milestone for what has become a standard framework and method for enterprise architecture (EA).

Andrew Josey, director of standards for The Open Group, announced the milestone in his blog. The number of certifications, he wrote, was evidence of "a huge surge in the popularity of open standards over the last few years." He also credited the recent economic downturn.

Posted on September 9, 20130 comments

Rackspace Developer Discount: Sign of the Times

Need more evidence that it's all about developers? This week Rackspace, the San Antonio, Texas-based cloud company and initiator of the open source OpenStack project, reached out to "developers, hackers, devops people, and makers of the digital age" with a discount program aimed at codederos operating in a marketplace full of choices.

The Developer Discount program, unveiled on Tuesday, offers devs new to Rackspace a $50-per-month discount for the service at sign up. The deal lasts for six months, doesn't rollover month to month and applies to data centers in both the U.S. and the U.K. The deal doesn't apply to the company Cloud Sites Web site hosting service or the Managed Cloud hosting services.

Posted by John K. Waters on September 6, 20130 comments

NewSQL Startup Keeps Java Devs from 'Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater'

NewSQL database startup NuoDB this week released an update of its nascent distributed relational database. Code-named "Starlings," version 1.2 of the database includes support for new drivers, frameworks and SQL functions.

NewSQL is the scalable, high-performance SQL databases that is going head-to-head with NoSQL. It offers full support for SQL queries and ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) transactions, built on a key-value storage manager that persists data to the file system.

Posted by John K. Waters on August 7, 20130 comments

The Rise of the Developer: Why Programmers Are Kings

The CEOs and co-founders of some young companies focused on working with developers gathered in San Francisco recently for a roundtable discussion about the evolving role of the coders they serve. The group included GitHub Co-Founder and CEO Tom Preston-Werner, Mixpanel Co-Founder and CEO Suhail Doshi, Stripe Co-Founder and President John Collison, and New Relic Founder and CEO Lew Cirne. The event was hosted at New Relic's soon-to-be-swanky new digs in San Francisco (they made the construction guys take five during the roundtable), and it was moderated by Google Developer Advocate Don Dodge.

Posted by John K. Waters on July 29, 20134 comments

Older Versions Threaten Java Security; Experts Weigh In

Bit9 released a report last week underscoring the ongoing security risk to the enterprise posed by outdated versions of Java still up and running on company machines -- versions of the platform with vanishing support and known and easily exploitable vulnerabilities.

Bit9 sifted its own data on more than a million end points to assemble the report. It found that, among those end points with Java installed, more than 80 percent are currently running Java 6. That version reached the end of public support in April. Though Oracle customers with long-term support contracts continue to receive security updates for Java 6, most of the company's efforts to strengthen security have been focused on Java 7. The Bit9 researchers found that only 15 percent of the endpoints were running Java 7 -- and only 1 percent of those had installed Java 7 update 21 (the latest secure version at the time of the study).

Posted by John K. Waters on July 24, 20131 comments

Oracle Launches Worldwide Java Campaign Leading up to JavaOne

Oracle has unveiled a summer campaign that includes a series of programs and activities for Java developers "and aspiring developers around the world." Dubbed "Make the Future Java," the campaign comprises webinars, new (and not-so-new) technical videos, a tool kit for Java User Group (JUG) leaders, a "Make the Future Java Global Celebration" Web site, and live events taking place in 47 countries.

Posted by John K. Waters on July 10, 20131 comments

Build Attendee Reaction: Excitement for New Bing, .NET Developer Tools

Microsoft's annual Build conference drew about 6,000 attendees to San Francisco this week, and an estimated 60,000 caught the keynotes online. The Redmond software maker officially released the preview edition of Windows 8.1 at the show (complete with a resurrected Start button), unveiled new Azure cloud services focused on mobile and Web development, and pitched the Bing search engine as a development platform.

Posted by John K. Waters on June 28, 20131 comments

Eclipse Foundation Turns to Social Coding Sites

The Eclipse Foundation will soon allow the hosting of its projects on social coding sites, such as GitHub and Bitbucket. The idea, says the Foundation's executive director Mike Milinkovich, is to attract new, maturing projects to Eclipse.

"We expect that this will pique the interest of projects that, perhaps, started on GitHub, but have gotten to the point where they're interested in vendor-neutral governance, having infrastructures for following meritocratic processes, and proper intellectual property management," he told ADTmag. "That's not just what GitHub does. I think we're a perfect complement to using GitHub as a repository for your development."

Posted by John K. Waters on June 25, 20130 comments

Dev Watch 6/14: API Management Heats Up

Developer tool and platform vendors are kicking the summer off with a slew of product and partnership announcements. In particular, we've been hearing a lot from providers of tools for publishing, promoting and overseeing application programming interfaces (APIs). Here are some API management product notes that wouldn't fit into the main news feed we thought you shouldn't miss:

• Apigee unveiled a new feature for its API platform that should appeal to devs building API-powered apps: push notifications. According to the company, its backend-as-a-service (BaaS) capabilities can now be used to deliver relevant and context-aware notifications directly to customers. "Sharing information directly with a carefully targeted audience has proven to be the most effective way to connect with customers," said Ed Anuff, Apigee's head of product strategy, in a statement. He added that the new feature enables highly focused, context-aware push campaigns. The free, self-service Apigee platform is available as software-as-a-service or on-premises. More information about the new push notifications feature is available here.
• SOA Software has added support for Windows Azure to its API Management solution. The newly released API Management solution for Microsoft is designed to help developers "plan, build, run, and share your APIs on Windows Azure," the company says, both in on-premise environments and hybrids. The API management software integrates natively with the Windows Azure Service Bus, BizTalk Server, and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). "SOA Software's approach to API management is to emphasize management across the full lifecycle," the company said in an email. "In our experience, working with large corporations, the best practice is to involve stakeholders and processes fully through the plan/build/run/share phases of an API's life." For more information, visit the API Platform page.
• Enterprise middleware maker WSO2 has released API Manager 1.4, which the company says is the first API manager that can run on a private, public, or hybrid cloud environment. The company also claims that it's the first such product to enable federated access to APIs across multiple entities, "enabling new models for organizations to collaborate and monetize APIs." Launched last year, this birth-to-death API governance and analysis tool/platform is the company's bid to "democratize API management" with an affordable piece of software for controlling and managing the API lifecycle.

Posted by John K. Waters on June 14, 20130 comments