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February 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

SapphireSteel backs IronRuby in alpha release

SapphireSteel Software has released a public alpha version of the IronRuby edition of its Ruby in Steel developer tool for Visual Studio.

IronRuby is a .Net version of the Ruby programming language. The alpha release is accessible here.

Included in the tool is a visual forms designer for IronRuby. Also featured are a range of code editing and project management features

Posted by Paul Krill on February 28, 2008 07:01 AM

February 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Adobe upgrades Director

Adobe is announcing Tuesday an upgrade to its Director multimedia authoring tool for building interactive applications and rich content, featuring built-in Ageia PhysX technology to expand graphical display capabilities.

Used for building interactive applications, e-learning and simulation as well as games, Director 11 features a customized publishing interface and functionality enabling users to convert files developed in previous versions of the product.

Ageia PhysX technology provides enhanced built-in physics, Adobe said. Real-life interactions can be developed, according to Adobe.

Also featured in Director 11 are simplified authoring in multiple languages and cross-platform support. Adobe acquired Director when it merged with Macromedia. Version 11 is the first release of the product combining Adobe and Macromedia capabilities.

With Director, users are able to bring in content from a wide variety of formats, said Rick Jones, Adobe director for Director and ShockWave.

Director 11 can work with the ShockWave Player for developing content for desktops, CD/DVDS, kiosks and online playback. Corporate presentations can be developed using Director 11.

Also, users can add Adobe Flash SWF files to Director projects. These files then can be played in Director and Shockwave and edited by launching Adobe Flash CS3 Professional.

Also featured in Director 11 are bitmap filters to speed up the addition of characteristics such as shadowing to text or images.

The JavaScript and Lingo languages are supported in version 11, with JavaScript now offering feature parity with Lingo.

Director 11 is expected to ship March 8, priced at $999 for the full product and $299 for an upgrade from the prior three versions.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 19, 2008 06:09 AM

February 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Gordano offers Gizmos for mashups

Gordano is announcing the release Tuesday of Gizmos, a mashup technology bundled with the Gordano Messaging Suite (GMS), which serves as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

With Gizmos, GMS users can interface with external data sources without leaving the GMS interface. Integrated into the main WebMail interface, Gizmos can in some instances do work in the background with no interface at all, Gordano said. Email tasks such as dictionary lookups and playing video and sound files are some of the mashups offered. Users also can build their own Gizmos in GMS.

Gordano's technology will simplify integration with third-party data such as customer databasesa dn CRM systems, the company said.

A Gizmo is a JavaScript file containing code needed to build an object with a set of predefined prototypes. Code required to develop Gizmos is related to what is used in Greasemonkey scripts. By aligning Gizmos with Greasemonkey code, users get access to more than 13,000 user-written scripts that can be adapted to work with GMS.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 5, 2008 10:50 AM

February 01, 2008 | Comments: (0)

AccuRev change management links to ClearCase

AccuRev formally unveiled this week its AccuRev 4.6 for ClearCase product, enabling the AccuRev software change and configuration management (SCCM) system to co-exist in environments with the IBM Rational ClearCase software change management platform.

The AccuRev product provides bidirectional integration, said Cliff Utstein, AccuRev vice president of marketing. Users often need to have multiple SCCM systems under the same roof to accommodate different needs, according to Utstein.

"The benefit [of the integration] is in a ClearCase shop, they can now enable individual teams to choose the tool that best meets that team's requirements," Utstein said.

AccuRev's product accommodates agile development practices and outsourced, distributed development, for example, while ClearCase is seen as the commercial market leader in the space and is for a larger scale of use, Utstein said.

Although only officially announced this week, AccuRev 4.6 for ClearCase actually has been shipping since November.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 1, 2008 06:50 AM

January 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Klocwork advances source code analysis

Klocwork this week announced shipments of Klocwork Insight, bringing system-wide source code analysis to the developer desktop, the company said.

The company has filed multiple patents on what it calls ground-breaking advancements in the product.

With Insight, users get the productivity benefits of local desktop code analysis with the accuracy of system-wide analysis, thus making source code analysis a developer support tool. Organizations can find complex cross-system bugs within a developer's local build and ensure that vulnerabilities are not propagated into the code stream, according to Klocwork.

Developers can use a collaborative peer-to-peer environment that provides a view of an entire system from an individual workspace. Also, developers get greater connectivity to static analysis to enable them to contain defects at the point of creation rather than having to check in buggy code in order to find out what is broken.

The product, Klocwork said, gives development organizations the ability to track bug fix rates at the desktop. A reporting interface aggregates information on what is found by Klocwork and fixed on the desktop before code is checked into the integration build.

Also featured is a declarative language that can extend Klocwork products to customize analysis of C, C++ and Java for any code base, Klocwork said. Developers can extend the Klocwork built-in library by adding their own checkers for organizational, regulatory or code base requirements.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2008 04:48 PM

January 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Visual environment eyed for Ruby on Rails

SapphireSteel Software, which has specialized in development tools for Ruby programmers, plans to soon release a visual design environment for Ruby on Rails, to be named The Visual Rails Workbench.

Due in late-February, the environment will be an addition to SapphireSteel's Ruby In Steel Developer IDE, which is a Ruby development tool for Visual Studio users. In addition to a design workspace, the workbench will feature tools to navigate through ERb templates and to drag and drop components. ERb is the native Rails view format, SapphireSteel said.

"The main benefit [of the workbench] is that, for the first time Rails developers will be able to design complete Web pages including styles, colors, graphics and forms," said SapphireSteel Director of Technology Huw Collingbourne, in an email.

Developers also will be able to import and export pages to and from external HTML editors. The Visual Rails Workbench will be part of Ruby in Steel 1.2 Developer.

A screen shot of the workbench can be found here.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 25, 2008 08:26 AM

January 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)

VersionOne adds Eclipse to agile development

VersionOne this week announced an upgrde to its V1: Agile product suite for managing agile software development projects, featuring what the company calls a simpler, more intuitive user interface and Eclipse integration.

With Release 8 of V1, Users get "1 click" access to agile process functionality. Through Eclipse integration, developers can work in Eclipse without leaving the Eclipse IDE.

Also featured is a release forecasting tool and open source tool integrations for plug-and-play integration into existing environments. The Intelligent Release Forecaster tool enables teams to do a "what if" analysis of projects. Parameters are input such as velocity to forecast the release delivery date.

Software integrations include data sharing and updates with development tools Jira, Bugzilla and HP Mercury Quicktest Pro. Integrations are provided via open source at the VersionOne community site.

V1 is available in both behind-the-firewall and hosted versions.

The Community Edition of V1 is free while the Enterprise variant costs $30 per user per month. A Team edition, for five users, is priced at around $17 per month per user.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 23, 2008 07:19 AM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft contributing spec for disabled access

Microsoft announced plans Thursday to contribute its UI Automation specification royalty-free to the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA), an engineering working group looking to make it easier for developers to make computer products accessible to people with disabilities.

The specification describes the company's latest accessibility framework technology and will help developers include advanced accessibility into implementations designed to be used with any operating system, Microsoft said. Featured is a programming model for developers to make software compatible with assistive technology products such as screen readers for persons who are blind.

AIA, Microsoft said, was formed by a coalition of information and assistive technology companies intending to collaborate on reducing barriers that people with disabilities can encounter when trying to access information and technologies, including Web sites.

Developers currently must work across multiple platforms, application models and types of hardware to create accessible technology. AIA is addressing interoperability by working to harmonize current technologies so they interoperate more easily and by working to build a unified accessibility model.

UI Automation is available now for Windows platforms. Microsoft has agreed to grant a royalty-free license for Microsoft patents necessary to implement portions of the specification.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 17, 2008 02:43 PM

January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)

OpenSpaces framework gets community site

GigaSpaces Technologies announced Tuesday OpenSpaces.org, a Web site for developers who want to use and contribute to the open source OpenSpaces development framework.

Tools provided on the site offer the ability to upload, review and download code. Bug tracking and forums are offered as well.

Geared to the building of applications for distributed environments such as SOA and cloud computing, OpenSpaces extends the Spring Framework for Java and leverages the GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) for data caching, messaging and as the container for application business logic, GigaSpaces said.

OpenSpaces has been used in industries such as financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, Web 2.0 and retail.

OpenSpaces.org features more than two dozen projects submitted by developers. Among these projects is an instant messaging platform and another that integrates with PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor).

GigaSpaces recently announced its OpenSpaces Developer Challenge, a developer competition that will feature prizes for the most innovative applications built using OpenSpaces.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 15, 2008 04:20 PM

January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Ruby on Rails gets new default database

A minor, incremental upgrade to the Ruby on Rails Web application framework released on December 17 makes a change in the framework's open source default database.

With the 2.0.2 release of Ruby on Rails, the default database has been switched from MySQL to SQLite3, David Heinemeier Hansson, the founder of Ruby on Rails, said on Thursday.

The default database is just the database that a fresh Rails application is configured to use, Hansson said in an email.

"It's really not that big a deal, it's just what database the default configuration file is designed to work with," he said. Ruby on Rails still supports the same databases as before, said Hansson.

"MySQL is still by far the preferred production database and will continue to be so. SQLite3 is just great for getting started (you don't have to run a separate server) and for small applications," Hansson said. "Rails makes it effortless to switch from SQLite3 to MySQL when you're ready to go into big production."

Ruby on Rails 2.0, a major upgrade to the platform, was released on December 7 and emphasized REST-based (Representational State Transfer) Web services.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 3, 2008 04:46 PM

December 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

WaveMaker ships Enterprise Web 2.0 tools

WaveMaker is shipping its "Enterprise Web 2.0" application toolset this week, the company said on Tuesday.

Featured is the WaveMaker Visual Assembly Studio and WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Framework. Developers can bring Web 2.0 capabilities such as self service to the enterprise, according to the company. Visual Assembly Studio comes with the Apache Tomcat server and the deployment framework. "Customers don't pay until they go to deploy," said Rick Saletta, WaveMaker director of marketing and product management.

Once deployed, WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Framework lists for $25,000 per server.

WaveMaker, formerly called ActiveGrid, announced the products in November.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 18, 2007 12:02 PM

December 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sybase offers SQL developer tool

Sybase this week announced Sybase WorkSpace 2.0, a design and development environment combining enterprise modeling and database and Web development in an Eclipse-based framework, Sybase said.

WorkSpace 2.0 also offers data federation and services development. Enhancements in this version include advanced integration with the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise, Sybase IQ and SQL Anywhere databases. Incorporation of open source technology is done via plugins such as the Eclipse Data Tooling Platform, the company said.

With WorkSpace, users can leverage the Sybase environment from data, reporting and analytics levels. Data services can be developed. SQL editing and debugging is featured for Sybase databases. Support also is included for notification of real-time database events.

Pricing for Sybase WorkSpace 2.0 begins at $495 per seat.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 14, 2007 03:55 PM

December 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM offers complex systems tools

IBM is announcing Tuesday upgraded software products intended to take the complexity out of complex systems development while also improving developer productivity.

Complex systems development involves systems such as cellular phones, airplanes, missile defense systems and even automobile anti-lock braking systems.

Among the products being unveiled is an upgrade to IBM Rational Test Real-Time, for testing to meet industry standards such as Defense Standard 00-55 and MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association). Static analysis, runtime analysis and component-testing are featured; the Eclipse tools platform is leveraged. Host and target platforms include C, C++, Ada and Java. Developers can ensure the quality of real-time and embedded systems, IBM said.

Also introduced are updated versions of IBM Rational Systems Developer and IBM Rational Software Modeler, which are design and development tools for model-driven development via UML (Unified Modeling Language) 2.1. These have been updated with the new UML Profile for DoDAF (Department of Defense Architecture Framework) and MoDAF (UK Ministry of Defense Architecture Framework) standards defined by the Object Management Group, which describe enterprise architectures in such a way that the architectures can be exchanged and analyzed. These two products are built on top of the Eclipse platform.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 11, 2007 09:02 AM

November 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft links design tool to Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft this week released an update to its Expression Blend application design tool to enable Blend projects to work in the newly released Visual Studio 2008 application development platform, said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in his blog.

Expression Blend Service Pack 1 can be downloaded on this Web site.

"Earlier this year, we released Expression Blend that is tailored to the designer community. Last week, we released Visual Studio 2008 for the developer audience. These are two products that together can help to build this seamless workflow and relationship between developers and designers," Somaseger said. "Obviously, we all want the latest versions of these products to work together."

Posted by Paul Krill on November 30, 2007 07:07 AM

November 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CollabNet links Eclipse, ALM

CollabNet is announcing Wednesday the latest release of the CollabNet Desktop for Eclipse, providing Eclipse developers with access to CollabNet application lifecycle management (ALM) tools for distributed teams.

CollabNet Desktop - Eclipse Edition 1.1 features integration with the CollabNet Cubit virtualization technology, giving developers access to build and test servers and environments allocated to their project, CollabNet said.

With the CollabNet product, Eclipse developers can from their Eclipse desktop track and manage project assets, Subversion-related activities and tasks managed in CollabNet tracker repositories. Also featured are links to resources including technical tips, discussion forums and blogs available on openCollabNet.

Developers also can search from Eclipse any publicly accessible community sites that run CollabNet Community Edition, such as tigris.org, java.net and dev2dev.bea.com.

CollabNet Desktop - Eclipse Edition 1.1 is available as a free download. The company plans later this month to make CollabNet Desktop available to users of the SourceForge Enterprise Edition ALM platform, which CollabNet acquired from VA Software in April. It is being integrated into CollabNet products.

Later this year, CollabNet Desktop - Eclipse Edition will become the first graphical user interface for the Subversion Merge Tracking capability.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 7, 2007 10:50 AM

November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Curl RIA platform advances

Curl this week is unveiling a beta release of Curl Rich Internet Application Platform Version 6, for building enterprise Web applications.

The product works with the Curl language and is intended for applications with large data sets. The company is announcing version 6 of its desktop system as a well as an IDE for building applications.

Curl could be considered an alternative to AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) and supports implementation of dynamic Web applications, said Richard Treadway, vice president of product marketing at Curl.

"Curl is on the far end of that scale on the enterprise side, where you have hundreds of thousands of records and you have to visualize on the client," Treadway said.

APIs, toolkits and underlying libraries for Curl are open source.

New in version 6 is Macintosh support and skinnable controls for making the UI and components. AJAX interoperability in the release enables Curl applications to be called from an AJAX HTML page and vice versa. "If you wanted to use Google Maps from a Curl app, you would need this," Treadway said.

Curl requires a plugin, which serves as a runtime piece hosting applications that execute on the desktop.

Version 6.0 is available in late-November, with a base entry price of $12,000 for the runtime and $859 for the developer component.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 5, 2007 05:10 AM

November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Infragistics previews tools for Microsoft apps

Infragistics on Monday is releasing previews of tools built for Microsoft's Windows Presentation (WPF) and ASP.Net AJAX as well as a new gauge to work with the Microsoft Silverlight platform for multimedia applications.

For the Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 7.2 toolset, the company is releasing as a preview a chart component allowing developers to build chart types in 2D and 3D rendering styles. Also being released is a preview of ribbon control incorporating capabilities found in the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon. NetAdvantage for WPF 7.2 ships in January.

Also on tap from Infragistics is a preview of its Aikido framework for the NetAdvantage for ASP.Net toolset, which leverages ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). The Web user interface in the framework provides for lighter and better-performing controls. The framework is designed to leverage Web development technologies such as XHTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and AJAX.

Infragistics also is unveiling several controls to boost Web development in NetAdvantage for ASP.Net, which are built on top of Aikido.

With Infragistics's Silverlight gauge control preview for NetAdvantage for Silverlight, developers can add to executive dashboards gauges that can reveal, for example, how many units have been sold or the level of hits on a Web site. Availability of NetAdvantage for Silverlight is contingent on Microsoft shipping Silverlight 1.1.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 5, 2007 05:00 AM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

OASIS approves e-business standard

OASIS has approved a messaging standard for electronic business as an official OASIS standard.

Members have approved ebXML Messaging Services 3.0: Part 1, Core Features. EbMS defines a Web services-based method for reliable and secure exchange of business information, OASIS said.

"This specification is the first major revision of ebMS since version 2.0 was approved as an OASIS Standard in April 2002 and subsequently as an ISO Standard in March 2004," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, in a statement released by the organization. "It ensures ebXML's continuing relevancy and achieves compatibility with Web services specifications developed after ebMS 2.0, including SOAP 1.2 as well as the WS-Security, WS-Reliability, and WS-ReliableMessaging OASIS Standards."

Version 3.0 is designed to handle differences in message flow capacity, intermittent connectivity, lack of static IP addresses and firewall restrictions. Legacy electronic business systems such as EDI and HL7 can leverage ebMS infrastructure as can systems based on emerging technologies.

EbMS can be used with or without other ebXML standards, including ebXML Business Process Specification Schema 2.0.4 and the forthcoming version of ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement.

The OASIS ebMS Technical Committee is continuing to work on Part 2 of ebMS 3.0, which will provide functional extensions to ebMS 3.0 Core.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 16, 2007 04:18 PM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

StrikeIron forges community for Web services use

StrikeIron, which offers an online marketplace for commercially available Web services, has launched a beta version of StrikeIron Developer Community, enabling developers to collaborate on business applications.

The community, StrikeIron said, lets developers share and collaborate as they build business applications, mashups, widgets and Web sites with Web services available from the company.

Featured in the community are project pages with links to sample code from partners such as Sun Microsystems and IBM; sample code for developing in various languages, including C# and Ruby, and sample applications with source code. Also offered is a framework for submitting code, mashups and applications that can be shared. Technical documentation, videos and tutorials are available as well.

Developers can access StrikeIron data through downloadable widgets, tools and code. Additionally, the community offers a developer forum for researching issues with StrikeIron Marketplace Web Services.

Developers who wish to try out StrikeIron can access free Web services at this Web page.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 16, 2007 11:02 AM

October 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

JetBrains adds to Java IDE

JetBrains is offering an upgrade to its Java IDE, IntelliJ Idea 7.0, featuring Web development tools and backing for the Ruby language.

Included are tools for developing complex Web applications, with Web services and dynamic language support. Advanced JavaScript capabilities with basic Flex support will be accompanied with plugins for Ruby/JRuby and Groovy development within a few weeks.

Version 7.0 has new factorings and about 50 new code inspections and bug fixes. A new debugger UI, visual Structure Dependency Matrix and enhanced usability and performance are featured as well.

With so many new features being added, a JetBrains official said the company pondered which ones should be considered the major highlights.

"When we were preparing our press release, this was actually a challenge for us, to determine the main highlights," said Ann Oreshnikova, marketing director at JetBrains.

Also featured is support for Hibernate object persistence technology and the Spring Framework, including aspect-oriented programming.

Improved support for a host of technologies is featured also, including:

* Java Persistence API (JPA).
* EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans).
* JSP (JavaServer Pages).
* HTML.
* CSS Cascading Style Sheets.
* XML.

Version 7.0 integrates with the Maven software project management tool. Unified version control systems support has been extended to Rational ClearCase.

IntelliJ Idea 7.0 costs $499 for a commercial license.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 15, 2007 08:12 AM

October 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Borland boosts apps modeling

Borland Software is adding domain-specific language (DSL) capabilities to its Together package for application modeling.

Available Monday, Borland Together 2007 is intended to help developers as well as application analysts and architects to deliver enterprise applications through rich visual models that capture business requirements within a specific business domain.

Project teams can build models that provide a blueprint for a business process, application and enterprise architectures and data structures, Borland said.

"We really see [the new release] as a significant leap forward in its ability to provide better business agility and lower application costs through use of domain-specific languages," said Marc Brown, Borland vice president of product engineering.

A DSL is a notation that allows individuals within a business to capture a model visually within the context of a business domain, such as for insurance or health care, Brown said. DSL encompasses architectures and business processes.

The DSL Toolkit in Together 2007 is intended to overcome the complexity of Unified Modeling Language (UML) models by enabling project teams to build model notations aligned with a business domain.

Borland is enabling creation of models that leverage UML but are simpler and domain-focused, said Richard Gronback, chief scientist at Borland and co-leader of the Eclipse Modeling Project.

Together 2007 is based on the open source Eclipse framework and conforms to Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) standards, including UML, XML, Metadata Interchange and Object Constraint Language.

Also in Together 2007 is .Net support with C# code generation. Users can generate C# source code from UML 2 models in support of .Net development projects.

Support for the Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project bolsters generation of documentation in a standardized way, Borland said.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 14, 2007 09:01 PM

October 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Serena offers software configuration management tool

Serena Software announced this week the release of Serena Dimensions Express, a developer-focused software configuration management tool that is intended to be easy to use.

With the product, advanced software configuration management is offered as a standalone capability, giving companies a way to address immediate requirements and position for a more holistic approach if needed in the future, Serena said.

Leveraging the Serena Dimensions 10 Dimensions distributed development platform, Express is intended to address issues of rapid implementation and usability with the need for control and management. Developers gain native platform support for their preferred workspace/repository and native integration with leading IDEs, Serena said.

When changes are made to source code, Dimensions Express handles version control so if the need arises, developers can revert to the previous configuration.

Support for parallel development is supported, enabling Dimensions Express to be used by development teams.

Dimensions Express is available now for $995 per user.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 10, 2007 02:30 PM

October 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Infragistics offers toolsets for Windows apps

Infragistics announced Monday Infragistics NetAdvantage for .Net 2007 Volume 3, featuring toolsets for ASP.Net and Windows Forms.

NetAdvantage for .Net is a suite of controls, components and tools for .Net. Developers can build user experiences in line-of-business applications, Infragistics said. Featured in the new release is a reduction in development time.

The ASP.Net toolset includes PDF/XPS (XML Paper Specification) reporting capabilities, export to Excel enhancements and charting features for building commercial-class interfaces and rich Internet applications.

With the Windows Forms side of the product, new tools, including a navigation bar and tool bar manager, make it easy to build user interfaces with the same look and feel as Windows Vista, Infragistics said.

Infragistics in 30 days plans to release TestAdvantage 2007 Volume 3, which will have parity with NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007.3. TestAdvantage enables automated testing of the presentation layer, including regression testing for Windows Forms applications.

A single NetAdvantage product, such as NetAdvantage for ASP.Net, starts in price at $795.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 8, 2007 03:19 PM

October 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Green storage, converged storage, and rich enterprise apps

Rotating green matter?: So while AMD and Intel have been shouting in our ear about how they are putting money in our pockets by making their processors more power efficient, storage vendors have been eerily silent. Now they're starting to get the green religion too. Green storage starts with management tools like thin provisioning (hey look, we were green already!) but is moving toward power management technologies like MAID (massive arrays of idle disk) and Hitachi Data Systems' PSSS (Power Savings Storage Service). Ted Samson outlines these developments in yesterday's Sustainable IT. And don't miss his video interview on the subject with HDS CTO Hu Yoshida.

Deja vu all over again: In his October 1 blog post, "All the Wood Behind One Arrow," Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun would be combining its Storage and Server product teams to "focus on the evolution and convergence of computing." Does that portend a datacenter without arrays? Mario Apicella says grab a camera and take some souvenir photos, because stand-alone storage has booked an appointment for a makeover.

Server-side mashups: For "rich enterprise application" frameworks JackBe Presto and Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite, rich AJAX clients (and in the case of Nexaweb, also Java clients) live to be windows into back-end data resources. These toolkits shine in exposing server-side resources as data services, and creating business dashboards and other clients for interacting with data. See Peter Wayner's review, "Refining the art of enterprise Web apps."

Posted by Doug Dineley on October 5, 2007 09:38 AM

October 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: California's vision for an accessible Web, Microsoft's blunted run at Flash

Opening the Web to everyone: The state of California has taken the long overdue step of enforcing Web site accessibility requirements. Developers, dev tool vendors, content creators and on-line advertisers should be making accessibility a priority if for no other reason than the substantial market they're turning away. Some software companies, like Apple and Adobe, get it. Apple added support for captions to QuickTime, and Adobe's Web authoring tools check for accessibility standards adherence. Perhaps this judicial nudge will make accessibility core of the next-generation Web.

Sorry, Microsoft, but Flash already has its AIR apparent: Martin Heller's review of Microsoft Silverlight details Microsoft's .net-based rich Web client framework. It's packaged as a rather fat native code plug-in for Windows and OS X browsers. Looked at in a vacuum, Silverlight is nice, and it demos smashingly well, but Microsoft is bringing a plug-in and unfamiliar tools to developers and content creators, while Adobe is expanding its Flash ecosystem with its own Internet run-time framework, AIR. The cross-platform ubiquity of Flash, a worldwide community of skilled developers, a well-established toolsuite and legitimate (read that: beyond lip service) engagement in open source will net Adobe the crown in rich Web apps when AIR debuts in Q1 '08. If Silverlight amounts to little more than a wedge that carries Windows Media Player and .net+HTML to Intel-based Macs, that's a win for Microsoft and for Mac users. But there's no need to hope for a Flash killer; Flash just needs to be opened and evolved. Adobe's on that.

Here's a bit of parting-shot trivia for non-developers: What's Adobe's little-acknowledged high card in the rich Web app game? JavaScript.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 4, 2007 12:52 PM

October 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Java development to be easier

Interface21, builders of the Spring Framework, are partnering with Tasktop Technologies, builders of Eclipse Mylyn, to develop Spring Tool Suite, with the goal of reducing complexity in Java development and maintenance.

Mylyn is an open source, task-focused UI for Eclipse while Spring is a popular open source framework for Java. Building on Eclipse and Mylyn, Spring Tool Suite will simplify the large aggregation of tools used to develop complex enterprise Java applications. This will reduce information overload and streamline developer workflow, Interface21 said.

The suite will support: Spring 2.0 framework features, including namespace-based configurations; Spring Web Flow; tools for Spring AOP (aspect-oriented programming) and Spring Java configuration.

An open source project, Spring Tool Suite is expected to be available in March 2008.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 2, 2007 03:55 PM

October 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Silverlight Shines

It's a great day in the Test Center, with a review on a top web app development system, and looks at sustainable reading and hacker tools.

Coding by Silverlight: The race is on for web-application development framework, with Ajax, Flash, Curl, Ruby, and others all muscling and edging one another for attention. Microsoft has thrown Silverlight into the mix, and Martin Heller finds a lot to like in the upstart development language. Between a well thought-out development environment and a clear division between tasks for designers and programmers, Martin thinks that Silverlight can offer a lot to new web app developers, especially if they've already committed to Microsoft Visual Studio.

Sustainable Reading: Some folks cast a skeptical glance at any capitalist involvement with "Green" issues, but Ted Samson looks at a business publication and finds encouragement in corporations that take a serious look at sustainable operations. When top management sees sustainability in terms of dollars and cents, that's when change can truly start in the enterprise.

Learning the Hacker Way: There's no reason that hackers should have all the cool tools, and Roger Grimes points out two of the best in his latest column. The Security Adviser thinks you should know how hackers think and how they work -- and these tools will give you a leg up on each of those goals.

Posted by Curt Franklin on October 2, 2007 10:30 AM

September 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BluePhoenix assists with Cobol migrations

BluePhoenix Solutions this week announced a solution for migrating mainframe customers from outdated or unsupported versions of Cobol to Cobol Language Environment (LE).

Older Cobol compilers are no longer supported for DB2 V8 and CICS TS V3.1, BluePhoenix said. Only the Cobol LE runtime is supported for these environments. DB2 V8 only supports Enterprise Cobol V3.4 and starting with CICS TS V3.1, transactions compiled with OS/VS Cobol or earlier must be converted and re-compiled to an LE environment.

With IBM's withdrawal of support for older Cobol versions, mainframe customers must migrate to LE environments to receive full support for mission-critical systems and implement new technologies and architectures such as SOA, BluePhoenix said.

"Mainframe customers are facing a major challenge with IBM's withdrawal of support for older versions of COBOL," said Arik Kilman, CEO of BluePhoenix Solutions, in a statement released by the company. "Especially now, as SOA projects continue to proliferate, mainframe customers are looking for ways to leverage their existing DB2 and CICS application components as reusable resources in SOA environments. Our enhanced solution provides an excellent means for these customers to rapidly and safely migrate their existing systems to LE conforming environments upon which they can build for the future."

The Blue Phoenix offering features a service that identifies, upgrades and recompiles non-LE-compliant modules. Source code and executables are analyzed. A report is provided on code and modules that need to be modified. The BluePhoenix Cobol LE enabler tool modifies selected source code, compiles impacted modules and promotes development of cost-effective test plans before migrating the LE code.

IBM declined to comment on the BluePhoenix announcement.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 20, 2007 02:41 PM

September 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

StrikeIron, IBM partner on enterprise mashups

StrikeIron and IBM are partnering to deliver more than 100 data services from StrikeIron to IBM's enterprise mashup maker, QEDWiki,

Also, StrikeIron has developed seven widgets allowing users to drag and drop data directly onto the mashup maker, for users to leverage Web 2.0 and SOA, StrikeIron said.

Mashups are quickly-developed new applications pieced together from parts of other applications. To build enterprise mashups, users need data sources and the StrikeIron-IBM parternship provides access to business services such as business intelligence, address verification, e-mail verification, currency rates and more.

QEDWiki is a browser-based assembly canvas to build mashups. Web users and developers gain a wiki foundation with a single framework for hosting and developing a range of Web 2.0 applications.

StrikeIron is publishing seven data access widgets for public use on IBM's alphaWorks Web 2.0 content repository server and feed generator, called Mashup Hub. Widgets include:

* D&B (Dun and Bradstreet) Business Prospect, providing information on business prospects.
* Global SMS (Short Message Service), for communication to contacts on mobile phones via text messaging.
* Reverse Phone Residential Intel, providing address information in conjunction with any residential phone number.
* Reverse Phone Business Intel, providing address information connected with a business phone number.
* Sales and use Tax Rates Complete, offering tax data for shopping cart applications.
* US Address Verification, to improve deliverability and save on shipping costs.

StrikeIron Web services also are available via the IBM SOA Business Catalog.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 17, 2007 10:44 AM

September 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Koders assists with code search

Koders released this week Koders Pro Edition, for individuals and teams to search private code bases.

Koders Pro Edition lets developers find, reuse and share source code on their computers and in networked version control systems. Development teams get access to existing code assets and visibility into distributed code repositories, Koders said.

Once deployed, Koders Pro can be shared using email or instant messaging.

Specifically, developers can search multiple version control systems from Eclipse, Visual Studio or a Web browser and generate source code metrics across repositories. Opportunities for reuse can be identified through reporting and analysis.

Featured in Koders Pro are APIs and Web services to integrate with existing application lifecycle management tools and enterprise content search products, such as Google appliances and Microsoft SharePoint. Koders Pro is preconfigured to index CVS (Concurrent Versions System) and Subversion as well as code in a file system.

After a 30-day trial period, Koders Pro users can upgrade to annual support subscriptions, priced at $99 per year. The product is available for download by clicking here.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 13, 2007 04:42 PM

September 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CollabNet 5.0 ALM offered

CollabNet on Monday is announcing availability of its CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0 application lifecycle management platform.

The platform leverages tools such as the Eclipse IDE, software configuration management and testing platforms, which are available to internal or external project members. With version 5.0, Web 2.0 features and structured collaboration tools such as e-mail, discussion forums and Wikis have been adapted for the software development process, CollabNet said.

Features of version 5.0 include:

* ALM templates, with an enhanced version of the CollabNet Baseline Process template allowing project teams to get started more quickly in ALM.

• Subversion reporting, for code management.

• Project-level Wiki, for collaboration on project content.

• Online discussion services, with integrated communication capabilities including e-mail, mailing lists and discussion forums.

• Web services APIs, to integrate CollabNet with other solutions at the administration level.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 10, 2007 06:07 AM

September 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

WPF reference app offered

Infragistics plans to release Monday a reference application for using Microsoft's Windows Presentation Framework (WPF). The company is partnering with Amazon and Microsoft in this endeavor.

WPF focuses on visual effects. Reference applications and guidance on WPF are few and far between, said Andrew Flick, product manager for rich clients at Infragistics. The reference application, called Tangerine, features a storefront browser for searching on Amazon, featuring use of Amazon Web services.

WPF is about user experience, Flick said. With the reference application, developers can see how it works.

"It gives you the ability to say, OK, this is how I would use the different features of WPF and you take that knowledge and plug it into your existing environment," said Flick.

The reference application, which leverages Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF, is downloadable on Monday at this Web site.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 10, 2007 05:00 AM

September 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Adobe touts Flash streaming

Adobe Systems on Thursday unveiled features planned for the upcoming Adobe Flash Media Server 3 release.

Due in the first quarter of 2008, the upcoming release will offer traditional streaming media capabilities and an environment for building and delivering interactive social media applications. Performance will double and industry-standard H.264 video codec backing is included along with AAC+ audio codec support. A new encrypted protocol will protect streamed content.

Adobe on Thursday also announced:

* The Cisco Content Delivery System will be the first system to support Adobe Flash streaming capabilities. Cisco's service will be able to deliver Adobe Flash Player capabilities to PCs and TVs via Adobe Flash streaming.

* With the unveiling of Adobe Audition 3 software, audio professionals including sound designers, recording and mastering engineers and musicians, can develop music and radio spots and restore imperfect recordings. New features include VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology) virtual instrument support with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) piano roll, enhanced spectral editing options, fast fade and crossfade controls and advanced multi-core processor support.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 6, 2007 04:51 PM

August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: The zen of Web apps and Mac OS X

Have you been thinking to get yourself a Mac for a long time and never did? Then don't miss this week Enterprise Windows where Oliver Rist asks (with his well known subtlety): "Does Mac OS X suck?". Oliver's column is the closest you can get to walking the Apple road yourself, and may be you will after reading it.

Is the Web treating you well? Or more to the point, are Web applications treating you well? Moving an application from the quiet waters of a corporate network to the stormy weather of the Net takes more than being technically savvy, warns Tom Yager in this week's "Ahead of the Curve". In his column Tom explains why, and reveals what's the secret sauce to make good Web apps. A useful reading also for non-developers.

Posted by Mario Apicella on August 29, 2007 08:30 AM

August 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Compuware challenges developers

Compuware is running a contest called the "Broken Code Challenge," in which developers must spot the errors in a sampling of code.

Participants are eligible for prizes ranging from a Starbuck's gift certificate to a Bose stereo, with one participant to be awarded $10,000 in December.

Devised for developers using Microsoft languages including Visual Basic, C++ and C#, players must find four lines of broken code out of about 30 lines. In one game, for example, a developer has to identify a line of code with a buffer overrun error.

So far, there have been 134,000 participants since the contest began running June 29. The endeavor, which was built by media company ePrize, ends on December 15.

Those participating are encouraged to sign up for Compuware's breakPoints newsletter, which features code quality tips. They also can register for a trial version of Compuware DevPartner Studio Professional Edition, for debugging and tuning code in Microsoft's Visual Studio platform.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 23, 2007 03:23 PM

August 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

WSO2 adds Web services for PHP, C

Open source middleware vendor WSO2 this week launched Web services frameworks for the PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) and C languages.

WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP (WSF/PHP), 1.0 is a framework for provision and consumption of Web services in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Serving as an extension to the PHP scripting language that supports the WS-* stack, developers using the framework can bring to PHP security and reliable messaging for enterprise-class SOAP Web services, WSO2 said. The framework supports WSDL on both the client and server.

Developers can create new PHP Web services and use existing code in Web services.

WSF/PHP 1.0 is a binding of the Web Services Framework for C (WSF/C) into PHP, providing an open source PHP extension based on Apache technologies. REST (Representational State Transfer) also is supported.

WSO2 Web Services Framework for C (WSF/C) 1.0, features an enterprise-grade library for providing and consuming Web services in C, WSO2 said. It, too, supports the WS-* specifications and is based on Apache projects such as Apache Axis2/C.

Web services standards such as SOAP and WSDL are supported in WSF/C.

WSO2 provides the two frameworks without licensing fees but does sell service and support for them. Both of the frameworks are available on the WSO2 Web site.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 22, 2007 04:30 PM

August 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Serena eyes "Business Mashups"

Serena plans on September 10 to offer a tool called Vail for creating "Business Mashups," which are simple business applications that combine content, services, workflow and other applications building blocks.

The tool is intended for semi-technical business developers. These mashups can be deployed on IT-managed servers or to on-demand servers hosted by Serena via a SaaS program.

"In this model, IT and the business enter into a new type of partnership: IT creates the building blocks and the business assembles them into new, nimble applications that meet specific business needs," Serena said.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 17, 2007 03:52 PM

August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

JetBrains extends IDE to Groovy, Grails

JetBrains announced Monday a public preview of the JetGroovy Plugin, enabling Groovy and Grails developers to leverage the company's IntelliJ Idea IDE.

Productivity features of IntelliJ become accessible by Groovy and Grails programmers. Capabilities available include:

* Context-sensitive code completion with resolution of symbols between Groovy and Java.
* Syntax highlighting, code formatting and folding.
* Error highlighting, including unresolved classes, unresolved unqualified properties, incompatible type assignments and method calls.
* Auto-insertion of imports statements.
* Refactorings, advanced navigation and views.
* Automatic generators for Grails controllers.

Users of the IntelliJ Idea 7.0 Milestone 2 release can use the JetGroovy Plugin preview, which is downloadable here. The final release is due by the end of the year.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 13, 2007 04:13 PM

August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

FireScope adds SDK for business service system

FireScope has added a software development kit for building custom interfaces to its FireScope business service management appliance.

The company's software and appliance offer a real-time view of the health and security of IT operations, FireScope said. With the FireScope Business Services Management Software Developer Kit, developers can integrate customer IT software into the FireScope interface or blend data from security or business applications into FireScope to provide unique views of IT operations.

A reseller, for example, could link to assets being tracked, said Ryan Counts, FireScope marketing director. The SDK is for select partners and clients.

"The SDK itself exposes the data that we're collecting and our own custom interface elements like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) charts and graphs," Counts said.

Developers can write portlets in a choice of languages, including Java, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) or Ruby. Development environments can be used such as Eclipse or IntelliJ Idea. The SDK is based on Java Specification Request 168, which provides a portlet programming model.

More information about the SDK can be found here.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 13, 2007 10:06 AM

August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Rally adds integrations to agile software service

Rally Software is bolstering its hosted service for managing agile software development projects, with new or upgraded integrations with open source and commercial development tools.

New integration connectors link Rally Version 2007.5 to the Subversion version control system, Microsoft Visual Studio and Bugzilla and Jira defect tracking. Also added are integrations with Microsoft SharePoint, Skype, Instant Messaging and Seapine TestTrack Pro for bug tracking.

Rally also offers integrations with the CruiseControl and Maven build systems.

Updated integrations have been made with the Eclipse Mylin project for an Eclipse workbench, and Eclipse 3.3. Linkage to Mercury Quality Center also has been improved.

Agile development, which produces software in short iterations, continues to gain traction, said Ryan Martens, Rally CTO. Software produced through it "tends to be of higher value to customers," than software built via traditional methods, he said.

The new release provide for resource management to balance workloads across teams. Also included are project hierarchies and dependencies for multi-level projects and dependent work products.

Configurable dashboard widgets are featured to display work status. Executive dashboards in the product are easier to understand than before.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 9, 2007 10:21 AM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Zend, IBM expand PHP pact

Zend Technologies and IBM are expanding their partnership in the PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) application development space Wednesday, focusing on IBM's DB2 database.

Featured in the arrangement are enhanced IBM DB2 Express-C capabilities in IBM Zend Core for IBM, which is Zend's PHP offering. DB2 Express-C is IBM's hybrid relational-XML data server for accessing enterprise capabilities such as data replication, clustering and offsite disaster recovery.

Also included is new support for DB2 Connect technology to access i5/PS and z/OS DB2 data servers. DB2 Connect technology makes it easy to build PHP applications that leverage DB2 hosted on IBM System z and System i servers.

Additionally, users can leverage IBM System i Linux partitions and the System i attached BladeCenter and System x servers.

Users also get a single source of support for the integrated PHP and DB2 stack. Zend will provide this support.

Zend Core for IBM features a PHP-based application development and deployment stack that includes Apache, PHP, the Zend Framework and DB2 Express-C.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 8, 2007 08:34 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft's Astoria project advances for data services

The Project Astoria team at Microsoft has extended the online service to enable development of experimental Astoria data services hosted by Microsoft, according to a blog on the project.

The Astoria online service is an experimental effort to explore programming models for data on the Web, offered in the form of a service. The goal of the project is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by Web clients within corporate networks and across the Internet, according to Microsoft.

Developers can build custom structured data stores as much as 100MB in size on the Web and access them anywhere via the Internet. These services can be the storage or data source for mashups or the backing store for Internet-enabled applications. They also can be applied to a scenario requiring a rich data service on the Web.

The Astoria CTP was announced at the Mix 2007 conference this spring.

To develop an Astoria data service, developers need a Passport account. Developers can build services by navigating the "Online Service" page for the project here.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 7, 2007 10:46 AM

August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: BRMS wars, mainframe futures, and encryption caveats

BRMS Pushmi-Pullyu: Doctor Doolittle's two-headed llama has nothing on ILOG's JRules, a product that is moving forward and backward at the same time. JRules 5.0, which James Owen reviewed in June 2005, was a silky combination of strong performance and rich rule tools, nabbing the highest score we've given to a rule management system. But by the time of Owen's evaluation of JRules 6.0 and top rival Blaze Advisor 6.1 in July 2006, JRules had not only lost ground in performance to the Fair Isaac engine, it stumbled on documentation at the same time it introduced more complexity in its tools and repository. With Version 6.5, reviewed last week by Stephen Nunez, JRules continues the flow of important new functionality -- now exposing decision logic as Web services -- but hasn't reversed the ebb in performance, documentation, or general ease of use.

Project Big Green: We already knew that the mainframe is harder to kill than Stephen Seagal. The mainframe's resource management and high availability features are unparalleled, and it has virtualization capabilities that the x86 can only dream about. Although "mainframe migration" stories sprout like weeds from enterprise IT publications, if you ask deep-pocketed IT shops (think IRS) that can actually afford what they really want, they'll tell you they're running their most important apps on Big Iron. Turns out there may be another reason to invest in the monoliths: IBM claims they are more energy efficient than little iron. See Ted Samson's report in Sustainable IT.

Encryption dos and dont's: Embarrassing data breaches are all the rage these days, and encryption seems like a sensible, no-brainer solution. But as Roger Grimes points out in Friday's column, file encryption is not as simple as lock and key. Encryptors can require a surprising amount of free disk overhead. Some files will refuse to be encrypted. Some encryption processes leave readable traces of file text behind. Before you take the plunge, check these considerations and caveats from the Security Advisor.

Posted by Doug Dineley on August 6, 2007 10:52 AM

July 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BEA readies BPM upgrade

BEA Systems plans this month to release a new version of its business process management suite, AquaLogic BPM 6.0, which has been optimized for complex process needs, the company said in an email bulletin on Wednesday.

Also highlighted in the release are "simple-to-use" tools for IT and business users. In addition, version 6.0 focuses on ad hoc collaboration and SOA. Process types are enabled including collaborative human processes and system-centric processes.

BEA's Dev2Dev Web site for developers has had a page that said version 6.0 features a new version of the BPM Studio process modeling and design tool based on the Eclipse platform. Also in version 6.0 are support for BPEL 2.0, XML Process Definition Language 2.0 and enhanced business rules.

Others features include optimized integration with BEA's AquaLogic Service bus and support for WS-Security User Name Token Profile. A new configuration wizard is featured for the WebLogic Server application server.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 18, 2007 04:21 PM

July 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

MKS unveils 2007 edition of ALM platform

MKS launched the 2007 edition of its application lifecycle management platform Tuesday, supporting reuse and change management of requirements.

These capabilities, featured in MKS Integrity 2007, enable a project manager to pick up an individual or a complete set of previous requirements and alter them in a parallel development scenario to shorten project and delivery cycles. Automotive and telecommunications industries will especially benefit because they can build products faster, better and cheaper, MKS said.

Also supported in MKS Integrity 2007 is process automation for SAP and change management for Oracle/PeopleSoft within a single ALM platform.

With the new version, MKS enters the testing space, offering a process-based solution for test management that allows a user of the system to link requirements to test specifications, plans, test suites and results. This information can be linked to source code and deployed objects.

MKS Integrity 2007 is offered in a single platform.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 17, 2007 04:24 PM

July 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Tamino XML server coupled with Ruby on Rails

Software AG has developed an open source project offering interoperability between the Ruby on Rails Web development framework and the Tamino XML Server.

Tamino On Rails is an open source contribution found here on SourceForge.net. With it, Tamino users can leverage Ruby on Rails to more quickly develop new applications, according to Software AG.

Tamino is an XML server for data management based on Internet technologies, featuring an XML engine to process and exchange XML documents.

"Due to its native support for all XML document types and schemas, Tamino can quickly configure multiple data sources into a single view. This makes it a premier platform for creating highly-dynamic, multi-channel Web applications," said Dr. Peter Kürpick, a Software AG executive board member, in a statement released by the company. "With minimal coding and configuration required, Ruby on Rails makes it comparatively easy to develop highly responsive applications and Web [sites] that fully leverage Tamino’s extensibility. Furthermore, Tamino helps to overcome some of the lack of adaptability inherent in the framework due to the underlying support for complex data types and manipulations that it offers."

Tamino on Rails version 1.0 provides applications using Ruby on Rails with access to XML-based data sets in XQuery-capable databases. Featured in the project are adapters to build Web-based front ends for database applications.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 17, 2007 02:54 PM

July 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Nokia launches mobile app dev contest

Nokia is looking for mobile application developers to use the company's Open C environment and has launched a contest in a quest to meet this goal.

The "Open C Challenge" is focused on development of applications for the S60 smartphones running the Symbian OS. Open C Challenge will enable open source and freeware developers to apply desktop and open source development skills using the Nokia Open C Posix environment. The contest is being sponsored by Forum Nokia in conjunction with Orange and the Symbian Developer Network.

Open C Challenge finalists will be invited to present their applications to a panel of industry judges at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London October 16-17. Contest winners can receive cash prizes totaling more than $20,000 or other prizes.

"Nokia's global invitation to millions of developers to take the Open C Challenge taps the exponential growth in open source and Symbian developers currently working on exciting new applications for smartphone devices," said Lee Epting, vice president, Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer program, in a statement released by Nokia. "Identifying and rewarding the latest and greatest applications being built or ported with Open C will showcase the exciting growth in developer productivity that Open C is already driving in S60 smartphone application development worldwide."

Contest categories include porting an existing application or developing a native application. Winning applications will be selected based on quality, usability, creativity and degree of middleware difficulty. Participants can be provided with webinars, training sessions and discussions boards to ease migration from desktop to mobile application development by registering here.

Open C leverages three open source projects: OpenSSL, Gnome and Libz.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 16, 2007 12:35 PM

July 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Agile development platform upgraded

VersionOne is bolstering its platform for conducting agile software development projects, adding capabilities for strategic planning and enterprise teams.

The Summer 2007 release of V1: Agile Enterprise continues to provide for software development projects based on agile practices, which are characterized by short release cycles and accommodations for changing requirements.

Strategic planning capabilities added in the new release allow users to define strategic or project-based goals and ensure that features are delivered within each short iteration, said Robert Holler, VersionOne CEO. A goal, for example, could be to reduce operating expenses by 10 percent.

Team capabilities in the platform enable tracking and reporting on a single development team's efforts across any number of projects, Holler said. Agile development itself is spreading to larger, more complex organizations, said Holler.

V1: Agile Enterprise is available in hosted or locally installed versions. The hosted version costs $30 per person per month while the local product is priced at $500 per user plus 20 percent added on top of that for support and maintenance.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 10, 2007 03:58 PM

July 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft offers CTPs for .Net 3.5, ADO.Net

Microsoft released this week Community Technology Previews of its upcoming .Net Framework 3.5 and ADO.Net Entity Framework technologies.

A June CTP of .Net Framework 3.5 is available here, following an earlier Beta 1 version. .Net Framework 3.5 features a set of software development technologies including Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows CardSpace.

The framework, due for release by the end of the year, builds incrementally upon the current .Net Framework 3.0. It will be part of the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 developer platform.

Other capabilities in .Net Framework 3.5 include Language Integrated Query (LINQ) technology and ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) for building interactive Web applications.

Web protocol support for building WCF services is featured, including AJAX and REST (Representational State Transfer). Tooling support for .Net Framework 3.5 is included as well. New classes in the framework base library address customer requests, Microsoft said.

The CTP for ADO.Net Entity Framework includes updates since the Beta 1 release of Visual Studio 2008. Changes have been made in areas such as Object Services, Query and the Entity Data Model Wizard.

The CTP is accessible here.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 3, 2007 01:56 PM

June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft ALM tool offered on CodePlex

Microsoft has posted version 1.0 of its TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit on its CodePlex site for hosting of open source projects.

The toolkit enables users of the company's Team Foundation Server software to build custom tools to migrate and syncrhronize with other version control and work-item tracking systems. Team Foundation Server is Microsoft's application lifecycle management software.

"Customers have asked us for this toolkit to help them integrate TFS into their existing development environments," the company said on CodePlex.

The toolkit provides bi-directional synchronization of data between TFS and another system, so that transition can be done over time, Microsoft said. Microsoft is asking developers to try out the toolkit and provide feedback.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 29, 2007 04:51 PM

June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft boosts Office apps

Microsoft published Friday two additional Office Business Application (OBA) Reference Application Packs (RAP), which guide developers and architects on the applicability of Microsoft's Office Business Applications to industry-specific challenges.

New reference applications packs include OBA RAP for Public Sector Electronic Forms Processing, highlighting the use of forms and automated workflows, and OBA RAP for Plant Floor Analytics, for plant floor operations. The packs are free.

The reference application packs published Friday, along with one for health plans published last week, are part of a series of whitepapers and technical resources to guide development of Office business applications.

Previous reference application packs covered supply chain management, retail store management, financial service loan origination and oil and gas price management.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 29, 2007 12:45 PM

June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Open source tools project set by JBoss

JBoss.org will introduce on Monday Exadel Eclipse software development plug-ins as part of the new open source JBoss Tools project.

The intent of the project is centralize tooling for JBoss middleware. The Exadel plug-ins provide for split-screen development, instant synchronization and visual editing of JBoss RichFaces components and JavaServer Faces configuration files. Drag-and-drop capabilities also are included. These plug-ins, along Ajax4jsf and RichFaces, were contributed to Red Hat, which owns JBoss, in March by Exadel.

JBoss's efforts will contribute to the delivery of Red Hat Developer Studio, an IDE due later this summer that will be a superset of JBoss Tools. JBoss and Red Hat runtimes will be part of Red Hat Developer Studio.

Also part of JBoss Tools are Hibernate Tools, JBoss jBPM Tools, Drools IDE, JBoss Application Server tools and others. JBoss Tools features nightly builds and an Eclipse update manager for accessing the latest versions of plugins.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 25, 2007 06:00 AM

June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Borland forges ALM links

Expanding its Open ALM partner ecosystem, Borland Software on Monday is announcing integrations between its application lifecycle management software and third-party products providing capabilities such as build automation.

As part of this effort, the Borland Gauntlet integration and test automation package can be linked with Codefast PerfectBuild, for pattern-driven build automation. This provides for a continuous integration and test infrastructure, Borland said.

Also, Borland SilkPerformer, which provides load and stress testing, has been integrated with dynaTrace Diagnostics, for root cause analysis. The resulting integration offers improved detection and resolution of performance issues in .Net and Java applications.

Connectors from Ring-Zero Software to Borland products, meanwhile, are designed to protect investments in third-party tools by enabling better use of products such as HP/Mercury test tools.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 18, 2007 10:39 AM

June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BEA sets July release for Web 2.0 products

BEA Systems plans in July to ship three products that leverage Web 2.0 concepts.

The products are referred to as BEA's "enterprise social computing" products, said Ajay Gandhi, BEA director of emerging products in the company's Business Interaction Division. With the three AquaLogic offerings - Ensemble, Pages and Pathways, the company is looking to meld consumer capabilities for managing information and communities to the enterprise.

"We think Web 2.0 is a logical progression of Web 1.0, where you have this great content space and addressable network that was built and now we added on top of it interaction technologies on the consumer side to let people interact with each other," Gandhi said.

BEA touted the three products at a company event in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday evening.

AquaLogic Pages is a mashup builder designed to let business users build simple Web applications for different business situations. Different data and content can be brought together.

"You can do everything from a basic wiki to a blog," Gandhi said. A mashup could be built, for example, to track a customer support issue.

AquaLogic Ensemble is designed for Web application developers. "It essentially lets you build very flexible and developer-oriented mashups," said Gandhi. Web resources can be mashed with other applications; Ensemble is designed to work with XML widgets. Developers not have to code all the APIs, Gandhi said.

AquaLogic Pathways also is designed for business users. It brings social bookmarking and tagging and the ability to form social networks into the enterprise context. Pathways makes enterprise search more effective, said Gandhi. Users can create networks of relevant persons for a particular subject.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 15, 2007 09:27 AM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mashups offered for Web 2.0

Kapow Technologies unveiled two editions of its Kapow Mashup Server on Monday, providing what the company describes as a mashup solution offering universal access to data and services across the enterprise.

New products include Web 2.0 Edition, which increases the ability to develop data-centric mashups based on RSS feeds and REST (Representational State Transfer) services. Developers can build mash-able components from Web resources and reuse Web data or business logic from the Web or within a company. Once generated, feeds can be published as lightweight feeds or services.

The second product, Content Migration Edition, eliminates a cut-and-paste approach to migration of content between or into enterprise content management systems. Using Kapow Mashup Server, source content can be collected and converted to an appropriate format that maps to a relevant target schema or template in an automated fashion. Web-based content can be incorporated into a content management data store.

The new editions of Kapow Mashup Server are available in July. Kapow also offers an online mashup building community, at openkapow, which features pre-built mashup "robots" and provides the ability to build and test new mashups on a hosted server.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 11, 2007 08:50 AM

June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sneak peek: PrimalScript 2007's new features

This is for you, PrimalScript fans: My contacts at Sapien allowed me to leak a few teasers about the next version of PrimalScript that will hit the streets around August 1.

The new 2007 release of this scripting environment shows that Sapien put a lot of thought into what their customers want. I got my hands on an early beta, and as an avid user of PrimalScript, I can say that some of the features will benefit only the power users, while others will benefit everyone.

The UI has a brand-new look that I actually kind of like. It has new dockable panels and tabbed document groups for when you’re working with a lot of files.

Maybe it's just because I'm a DBA, but I consider one of the more significant features in PrimalScript 2007 to be the cached metadata for the query builder. That allows you to cache the definitions of the database objects in your project so you can browse and work with them offline. Not only can you work away from the office, but the cached metadata speeds up your work while in the office by eliminating the need to query the database for simple table information.

Another nice upgrade: the "find in files" results have been organized into a tree view. I've always found the other results a bit hard to read when it returned a lot of entries, but the new tree view is much cleaner and can handle more results without overwhelming you. I hadn't thought much about the way the results were organized, but after seeing this, I'm glad Sapien did.

Sapien also added script packager support for HTA and PowerShell, improved the smart spell checker, and integrated online VBScript help reference.

I can't talk yet about the coolest features of all, but they'll be revealed soon enough. Until then, if you want to track the progress of this new version, you can do so on Sapien's Web site.

Posted by Sean McCown on June 6, 2007 04:07 PM

June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mainsoft boosts .Net development for Linux

Mainsoft announced the release Wednesday of Mainsoft for Java EE, version 2.0, which features a suite of products enabling developers to produce .Net Web and server applications that run on Linux and other Java-enabled platforms.

Formerly called Visual MainWin for J2EE, the upgrade includes support for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE, .Net Framework 2.0, ASP.Net 2.0 controls, role-based security and C# generics. The product name was changed to avoid confusion between the product and company name, said Yaacov Cohen, Mainsoft president and CEO.

Mainsoft uses cross-compilation to enable C# 2.0 and Visual Basic to be supported by the Java Virtual Machine. MainSoft for Java EE resulted from the company's four-year collaboration with the Mono project, an open source development initiative providing a multi-platform version of .Net technologies.

"We're expanding the Java EE platform to support multiple languages," Cohen said.

Mainsoft for Java EE is available in three editions. A free Developer Edition, also known as Grasshopper 2.0, is offered for individual developers and small group deployments on the Apache Tomcat Java servlet container.

The Enterprise Edition is for enterprise developers and multi-CPU deployments. It supports IBM WebSphere Application Server and Tomcat as well as JBoss and BEA WebLogic Java servers.

A Portal Edition enables enterprises to populate Java EE portals.

The company announced the product release at the Microsoft TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 6, 2007 09:31 AM

June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spring framework for .Net advances

Interface21 announced at the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla. Tuesday a milestone release of the Spring.Net 1.1 application framework for building enterprise .Net applications.

The software is rooted in the popular Spring Framework for Java. A key feature in Spring.Net 1.1 is an ASP.Net framework for Web development, which supports bi-directional data binding and dependency injection for pages and user controls.

"Interface21 has long recognized that the fundamental concepts of the Spring Framework can provide real and immediate value to .Net development," said Rod Johnson, CEO of Interface21 and founder of the Spring Framework, in a statement released by Interface21.

ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) integration is featured in version 1.1. Also, declarative transaction management is offered via XML configuration and attributes. An ADO.Net data access framework in version 1.1 simplifies use of ADO.Net. Portable service abstractions, meanwhile, export plain .Net objects via .Net Remoting and other methods. Client-side proxies can be created based on endpoint URL and service interfaces.

Software downloads for Spring.Net can be found here.

Also at TechEd, Microsoft and Analog Devices announced that Analog is porting the .Net Micro Framework to function with Analog's Blackfin processors. .Net Micro Framework is a bootable runtime supporting .Net development for embedded devices.

Crossbow Technology, which supplies wireless sensor technology, announced Imote2Bulder for .Net Micro Framework. Imote2Builder features tools for developing wireless sensor applications on Marvell PXA hardware. Microsoft development tools will be usable on this platform.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 5, 2007 01:56 PM

May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CollabNet offers distributed development for Eclipse

CollabNet announced a distributed software development platform for Eclipse IDE-based developers on Wednesday.

CollabNet Desktop, Eclipse Edition enables software engineers to collaborate globally using CollabNet Enterprise Edition as a backbone to track and manage the lifecycle of source code, project tasks and assets, CollabNet said. Free Eclipse software for distributed development is offered as part of the package.

Featured in CollabNet Desktop, Eclipse Edition is use of the Eclipse Mylar task-focused UI to update and synchronize projects. Subclipse is used to version and synchronize Subversion-based code hosted in the CollabNet environment. Integration with the CollabNet Enterprise Edition enables collaboration on project tasks and artifacts through the software application lifecycle. A Web interface for CollabNet's Cubit global virtualization solution also is featured, to allow Eclipse users to load and build software using a build and test environment.

Users can access the CollabNet Desktop and related plugins for Eclipse for free here. In addition, CollabNet plans other free products this year for distributed software development,

Posted by Paul Krill on May 30, 2007 02:23 PM

May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Compuware offers apps delivery management

Compuware next week plans to unify its "application delivery management" products, for application lifecycle management, under the Compuware Optimal nameplate.

Featured in the Optimal suite are an integrated set of offerings for application delivery management, business requirements management, project management, quality assurance and performance assurance. Among the product families included in Optimal are DevPartner and QACenter. The suite is integrated through the new Optimal Delivery Manager, which features dashboards giving IT managers visibility and control of application delivery projects, Compuware said.

"It is a set of management dashboards that are aimed at [application delivery] delivery managers and gives them end-to-end visibility across the application lifecycle for all the projects that they have in their portfolio," said Mike Burba, Compuware marketing director for application delivery management.

Key to the product portfolio is a new integration between requirements management and other products in the suite. Business requirements are captured in the Optimal Trace product.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 30, 2007 07:53 AM

May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

MyEclipse IDE updated with Java spec

Genuitec announced on Monday the general release of its MyEclipse 5.5 Enterprise Workbench IDE, which is based on the Eclipse platform.

MyEclipse features a variety of value-added capabilities on top of the base Eclipse platform. "We add no less than 2,000 features on top of the Eclipse baseline," said Maher Masri, president and co-founder of Genuitec.

Featured in the latest update is conformity with the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 5 specification, including Enterprise JavaBeans 3, for persisting of Java objects to databases. Also included is Java Persistence Architecture (JPA) support, providing a model to bind data elements to an application without having to be vendor-specific.

JavaServer Faces backing, for Web development, is included as well. Support of Facelets allows for quicker writing of user interfaces.

Also featured is the MyEclipse Derby database. "The database gives you an out-ot-the-box ability to write applications without having to go out of your way to find a different [database]," Masri said. Future plans call for embedding Web and application servers in MyEclipse.

Genuitec had offered a preliminary, "milestone" release of version 5.5 in January that did not feature Java EE 5 capabilities but focused on SNAPs (Simple Nonintegrated Applications) tools for development tasks.

MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench IDE is available now and cosgts $29.95 for an annual subscription to the Standard edition or $49.95 for the Professional edition, which adds capabilities such as Unified Modeling Language support and development of Swing-based interfaces.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 21, 2007 01:20 PM

May 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Rails management riding in at conference

FiveRuns is announcing on Thursday FiveRuns' Management Suite for Rails, a hosted service providing application lifecycle management for Ruby on Rails application development.

Being announced at the RailsConf 2007 event in Portland, Ore., the suite automates the setup and maintenance of an integrated Rails development environment and ensures Rails applications perform well in production, FiveRuns said. The suite was built as an extension to the company’s Enterprise Management Platform, a hosted service introduced last August.

The first product in the suite, RM-Manage (Rails Management) manages the production performance and availability of Rails applications in the context of underlying hardware and software such as Web servers and databases. Transactional analysis also is featured. It is available now.

A second product, RM-Install, follows in June. It deals with installing and configuring of software components and supports platforms such as Windows and Linux. RM-Install features a Rails stack with binaries for Ruby, Rails, the MySQL database and other libraries.

The final three products in the suite are due later this year. They include RM-Develop, RM-Deploy and RM-End-to-End.

RM-Install is free but maintenance services are available for $49 per server per year. RM-Manage is offered at a subscription pricing model starting at $20 per server per month.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 16, 2007 09:01 PM

May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM offers hosted Web development tool

IBM is announcing a free Web application development tool on Wednesday, featuring a simple user interface to accommodate persons without technical skills in small businesses and other organizations.

With IBM Development Engagement Service, or DevEngage, users will be able to build applications that solve daily tasks, IBM said. The tool, built at IBM's Haifa Research Laboratory in Israel, requires no programming skills and serves as a user-friendly interactive tool for developing online forms.

"This new application development tool will let users with no software development expertise skill create online forms with ease that complete routine tasks," said Gal Shachor, project lead for this technology at the IBM Research Lab in Haifa, in a statement released by IBM. "IBM wants to ensure users at small- and medium-sized businesses are able to capitalize on modern Web 2.0 technologies in a simple, user-friendly way."

Available as a hosted technology, DevEngage leverages technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Online forms can be developed with any Internet browser. The tool also features a Java-based server component where an application is constructed.

DevEngage is hosted on IBM's alphaWorks Services.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 15, 2007 09:01 PM

May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Serena Mariner 6.2 focuses on ALM integration

Serena Software unveiled a product this week intended to integrate project and portfolio management into a single application lifecycle management (ALM) offering.

Serena Mariner 6.2, for project and portfolio management, integrates with Serena's Dimensions package, for automating the development lifecycle, and TeamTrack product, for collaborative application development. This helps IT executives make better decisions and manage their application portfolio like a business, Serena said. The integrated offering gives CIOs visibility into operations; they can drill down on current project metrics and communicate IT value back to the business.

Serena Mariner 6.2 features consolidated dashboard views of key project metrics through integrating with TeamTrack and Dimensions. Version 6.2 is available now.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 15, 2007 08:48 AM

May 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spring gets batch processing

Developers of the Spring Framework for Java application development have partnered with Accenture to build Spring Batch, providing for batch processing in the Java realm.

Many enterprise customers have a requirement for batch processing and Java historically has ignored this, said Neelan Choksi, senior vice president of Americas at Interface21, in an email. Interface21 oversees development of Spring technologies. Spring Batch is a generalized batch processing solution consistent with the Spring programming model.

"Spring Batch's aim is to provide tools and applications to support bulk processing in an enterprise environment," Choksi said.

The initial release will feature tools for the Spring Batch infrastructure, enabling operations to be batched together. Work can be retried if there is an exception.

A Spring Batch Milestone 1 release is planned for this quarter.

Interface21 also announced this week that Oracle has contributed its transaction manager integration code to the Spring Framework. This integration will enable organizations to more easily build applications based on Oracle Application Server, Interface21 said.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 10, 2007 05:41 AM

April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Coverity checks source code

Coverity has unveiled Coverity Prevent Plug-in for Eclipse, which allows developers to find software defects in source code as it is being written.

An extension to the company's Prevent source code analysis system, the plug-in enables a fast analysis of local source code that can be run multiple times throughout the workday. The plug-in features integration with the Eclipse development environment.

The plug-in is available to Coverity Prevent users at no additional cost.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 30, 2007 06:45 PM

April 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Infragistics leverages Microsoft WPF

Infragistics is shipping a toolset that extends Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for graphical presentation.

Called NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 Volume 1, the toolset provides editable DataGrid-style controls for developers. Leveraging WPF capabilities such as vector-based graphics, animation and stylization, NetAdvantage for WPF helps developers build a new breed of user interfaces, Infragistics said.

DataGrid functionality in NetAdvantage, offered through the toolset's xamDataGrid control, supports traditional grid UI features such as inline data editing, hierarchical data display and sorting and grouping of data.

Other capabilities in NetAdvantage include xamData Presenter, featuring tools to build user interfaces. These tools include xamDataCarousel, xamCarouselListBox and xamCarouselPanel, providing UI layout capabilities not previously possible prior to WPF, Infragistics said. Designers can build innovative UI patterns with layout controls and developers can choose the control based on the complexity of their needs, Infragistics said.

Downloadable here, NetAdvantage for WPF is available for an introductory price of $395 or $895 with priority support. It is sold on an annual subscription basis.

MSDN subscribers can get a free WPF xamDataGrid with one year of online support.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 23, 2007 12:47 PM

April 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Aptana touts Ruby, AJAX mix

Aptana has added the Ruby Development Tools (RDT) project into the Aptana IDE and also has hired the lead developer of RDT, Chris Williams.

The company announced the moves at the SDForum Second Annual Silicon Valley Ruby Conference in San Jose, Calif. this past Saturday.

The IDE is an AJAX-focused (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) open-source IDE supporting JavaScript, CSS and HTML. It also features integration with FireBug for JavaScript debugging.

Both the RDT and RadRails IDE project will be integrated into the Aptana IDE within a few months, Aptana said.

Adding RadRails and RDT to Aptana IDE makes "AJAX on Rails" a reality, Aptana said.

"With numerous Web 2.0 startups using Ruby on Rails, our embracing of these two projects will have a tremendous and positive effect on the development community," said Paul Colton, Aptana CEO, in a statement released by the company. "We're looking forward to providing these developers with a powerful, consistent, end-to-end development environment, spanning all layers: database, Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS and JavaScript."

Posted by Paul Krill on April 23, 2007 12:12 PM

April 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Metallect touts software risk management

Metallect with a release of its IQ Server software risk management tool this week is providing users with new capabilities to gauge application dependencies.

IQ Server version 2.7.1 features a new interface with visual application diagramming capabilities that display an application portfolio and how components relate to each other.

"You can actually zoom in and out from the highest level. You can look at your apps and your databases holistically," said Guy Hoffman, Metallect CEO. Users can drill in on parts of an application and view dependencies.

Previously, IQ Server offered just a text view that lacked the visual capabilities of the new release. Also featured in version 2.7.1 are embedded workflows to show dependencies between the database, interface and other application components.

IQ Server scans source code and a database schema to make determinations on the impacts of software changes. New builds are audited to ensure that changes were intentional.

With the new release, Metallect also has added capabilities to report on code that is no longer in use. Eliminating this "dead" code can dramtically improve build cycle times, Hoffman said.

IQ Server 2.7.1 costs $150,000 for a perpetual license or $50,000 per year.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 16, 2007 05:00 AM

April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Java getting REST

Noelios Consulting plans to announce on Monday the 1.0 version of the Noelios Restlet Engine, providing the reference implementation of the Restlet API 1.0, the company said.

The Restlet open source project was launched in 2005 as the first REST (Representational State Transfer) framework for Java. REST is an alternative to SOAP-based Web services.

The Noelios Restlet Engine was built based on the observation that no Java framework was available to assist developers with easily building REST-ful applications. Noelios is offering support services for the project.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 13, 2007 04:54 PM

April 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CollabNet, Ohloh partner

CollabNet, which enables collaborative software development, is partnering with Ohloh to provide project dashboards to more than 1 million users on the CollabNet platform and users of the Collabnet Subversion version control system.

Ohloh offers intelligence on thousands of open source and public projects, CollabNet said. Software metrics are collected from a variety of sources such as source code. CollabNet plans to make Ohloh development dashboards available within its collaborative platform. An announcement is being made this week.

CollabNet said it hosts more than 25 public developer communities; the partnership with Ohloh gives customers more intelligence about the level of activity on their developer networks and the effectiveness of open source strategies.

"Ohloh is the trusted provider of development metrics on thousands of open source projects," said Scott Collison, CEO of Ohloh, in a statement released by CollabNet. "By offering our metrics directly through the CollabNet platform, we bring advanced project information to their users so they know what is happening with their projects and how they stack up against other open source projects."

Integrating Ohloh into CollabNet also benefits companies evaluating open source software for internal use, CollabNet said. Companies can evaluate the health of a project via the Ohloh dashboard.

Users also can try Ohloh dashboards on openCollabNet, which is an extension to CollabNet accessible here.

"CollabNet hosts thousands of projects for its customers and these communities add up to over 1 million users. CollabNet is building a network of partners around openCollabNet to add value for these users." said Bill Portelli, president and CEO of CollabNet, in CollabNet's statement. "The partnership with Ohloh is consistent with our value-add strategy because it provides advanced project metrics for these users which leverages 8 years of content built by the open source and developer communities of CollabNet’s customers."

Posted by Paul Krill on April 9, 2007 06:35 AM

April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VersionOne extends agile reach

Looking to demonstrate the benefits of agile development methodologies to smaller user sites, VersionOne released this week a free five-user version of its agile lifecycle management application.

The full-featured community edition of the product, called V1: Agile Community, offers the same features as the enterprise-level release, VersionOne said. With the community edition, small teams can use a lightweight Web-based planning and management tool.

VersionOne provides lifecycle planning and management to support agile methdologies such as scrum and extreme programming.

V1: Agile Community is available for download here.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 4, 2007 10:48 AM

April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parasoft tests C, C++ apps

Parasoft announced this week it is shipping two application testing tools for C and C++ development, which are focused on the embedded systems market but also can be used for enterprise-level applications.

The company is featuring the two products at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif.

Version 7.0 of Parasoft C++test 7.0 and Parasoft Insure++ 7.1 automate best practices.

C++test enables coding policy enforcement, static code review and unit and component testing. The 7.0 release features plugins for the Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs.

"It is completely IDE-based," said Sergei Sokolov, professional services product manager at Parasoft.

Also new in the product is Bug Detective, which traces and simulates execution paths to expose runtime bugs that would otherwise be difficult to find.

A new Code Review Module automates peer code reviews. C++test 7.0 integrates with Wind River Workbench for device development environments.

Insure++ 7.1 is a memory runtime checking tool. "It looks for things that crash your programs," Sokolov said.

The product verifies proper use of Standard Template Library during runtime to provide dynamic verification of STL containers, iterators, pointers and references. Users can find insidious bugs that result from improper STL usage, Parasoft said.

The enterprise editions of C++test 7.0 and Insure++ 7.1 cost about $50,000 each for a five-license configuration.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 4, 2007 10:15 AM

March 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Hands on: Sun shines on Adobe Apollo

Adobe last week launched the alpha SDK of its Apollo runtime engine, a developing framework that boasts the hallmark cross-platform deployment capabilities availed through Flash, yet its slant toward widely adopted standards opens the door for developers to build some fairly rich Internet desktop mashups.

The Apollo framework enables development of desktop/Web application hybrids based on Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, Flash, and beyond. Unlike with Flash, however, the resulting apps connect more tightly to underlying resources, thanks to provisions for read/write to local storage, system- and app-level notifications, drag-and-drop, and the like.

I like the abilities for local storage, as well as the network-detection taps being built into the API, which will open a wealth of opportunity for getting occasionally connected apps re-synced upon connection.

Really exciting, too, will be the ability to bridge Javascript/Actionscript models without serialization. Direct object access will help developers more easily hurdle the Actionscript wall.

The HTML engine here has a fairly light footprint - based on a snapshot of the open source Webkit project - leaving the door open for future mobile deployment opportunities, no doubt.

Development is command line driven. But, Adobe has also provided an extension to integrate Apollo projects within Adobe Flex Builder (the Flex IDE).

Builder brings to the table some decent project management tools, debugger, and packager to bundle up Apollo AIR files for deployment. Builder is not free, unlike the basic SDK, but the wizard-driven project launcher did a good job at jumpstarting the requisites XML configuration skeleton and MXML, with added guides for working on ColdFusion and Flex Data Services projects.

Flex extensions also deliver Apollo control components for HTML, windowing constructs and file access display (such as data grids, trees, and lists). And, the debug launcher for Apollo did a decent job while Flex debugger does the dirty work. For anything serious, Builder will likely be worth the investment.

There remains much to be done before this application is ready for primetime deployment – currently targeted for late 2007. You still can't create library projects, and there are a number of rendering issues. Apollo resource security options are limited, and performance was rough. But, this is clearly stamped alpha – so there's no surprise there.

So, while I'm not yet singing paeans for its worth, I do find Apollo to represent a well-formed alpha, showing good promise at influencing the opportunity for future desktop-to-Web application development in the coming years.

Apollo SDK Alpha 1
Availability: General release planned for Q4 2007
Pricing: SDK, free
Verdict: Adobe Apollo is pushing into the desktop space with an experience more in line with the vision of Windows WPF and .Net. Although the product is alpha, it shows good underpinnings for enhancing desktop apps (as well as users' Web UI experience) with data access, interaction, and rendering facilities currently unavailable through other means. Although Apollo's foresight is warmly welcomed and seemingly well lit, final execution on the promise will ultimately decide if this goes supernova or fades to a black hole for Adobe.

Posted by James Borck on March 29, 2007 10:00 AM

March 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

PeakStream offers tool for multicore apps

PeakStream is announcing on Tuesday availability of a beta release of PeakStream Workstation for Microsoft Windows Edition, which enables application developers to leverage multi-core processors.

The product gives Windows developers the same PeakStream functionality already available for Linux. Developers can program high-performance processors such as multi-core CPUs and graphics processor units (GPU) on their desktops.

Featured in the Windows offering is a set of math libraries in C/C++ with an optimizing runtime and a set of Visual Studio 2005 tool extensions for rapid application development. An API insulates code from low-level hardware details and ensures portability across future hardware platforms without recoding, PeakStream said.

PeakStream recommends the product be used with an AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon workstation or server running a GPU such as the ATI Radeon 1950 or the AMD Stream processor.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 27, 2007 06:14 AM

March 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Oracle upgrades Web apps tool

Oracle on Monday plans to announce availability of Oracle Application Express Release 3.0, which is a free tool for building and managing Web application using only a browser.

Users with limited programming skills are able to develop secure Web applications that run inside an Oracle database and scale to support thousands of users, Oracle said.

New enhancements and features in version 3.0 include:

* PDF Printing, for exporting a report region to PDF.
* Flash Chart integration, for incorporating Flash charts into Web applications.
* Microsoft Access Migration Workshop, to migrate Access applications to Oracle Application Express.
* Enhanced Web services capabilities, with support for document-style Web services such as those produced in the Oracle JDeveloper tool or Oracle BPEL Process Manager Web services.
* Drag and Drop Item Layout, allowing users to re-order items, change select attributes and add and delete items.

The tool supports development of AJAX-enabled (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web applications. Also, version 3.0 works with Oracle Application Express packaged applications available for download on the Oracle Technology Network, such as Bug Tracker, Discussion Forum and Online Store.

The tool is integrated with Oracle Database 10g and Oracle 9i Database release 2. It can be downloaded on the Oracle Technology Network.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 25, 2007 09:12 PM

March 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Teamprise links CodePlex, Eclipse users

Teamprise, which links Eclipse and Unix developers to Microsoft's application lifecycle management server, is offering complimentary licenses for CodePlex users to to use Teamprise Client Suite.

CodePlex is Microsoft's open source community service.

An Eclipse member, Teamprise provides access to the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server from non-Microsoft platforms.

"After talking with the CodePlex team we discovered that many open source projects would like to use CodePlex as their home but were unable to because some of the developers were working on Linux or the Mac. We wanted to remove that restriction," said Martin Woodward, senior software developer at Teamprise, in a statement released by the company this week. "Since CodePlex is based on the popular Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, we decided to provide developers of this open source community access to the same tools we offer to the enterprise."

"Developers can now use Teamprise to access CodePlex directly from the Eclipse IDE or from their Linux and Apple Macintosh computers," said James Newkirk, product unit manager for CodePlex, in a statement released by Teamprise. "I am excited to see where the community takes this and what new projects will develop as a result."

CodePlex users who want a complimentary license for Teamprise can access the Teamprise Web site. These users will be able to access features provided by the 2.1 release of Teamprise.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 22, 2007 09:38 AM

March 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

JBoss improves Java persistence software

JBoss on Tuesday said it has added search and data clustering capabilities to its Hibernate Java persistence and object/relational mapping software.

New features enable users to better abstract data sources from where they are consumed. Google contributed to the release bundle.

Key improvements include Hibernate Search and Hibernate Shards. Implemented through Java Message Service, Hibernate Search is a search engine framework for business applications, providing clustering for search features embedded in users' applications. Asynchronous indexing is used to increase response time.

Google's contribution, Hibernate Shards, provides data clustering and support for horizontal partitioning, also called Shards. Customers now can keep data in more than one relational database without adding complexity.

"The ability to improve scalability by seamlessly distributing data across multiple databases is crucial for enterprise applications that transact against large or physically distributed datasets," said Google software engineer Max Ross, in a statement released by JBoss. "We're pleased to contribute our implementation for horizontal partitioning to open source via Hibernate, and we look forward to working with the Hibernate team to further this technology."

Also featured in the release bundle are:

* Improved support for legacy mapping, including better native SQL customization and fetching strategies. This cuts down on coding.

* Integration between all Hibernate components, to ease configuration.

* Improved integration with third-party environments such as IBM WebSphere and BEA Systems WebLogic.

The release bundle is available here and is licensed under the open source GNU Lesser General Public License.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 20, 2007 09:33 AM

March 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft offers Expression Design beta

Microsoft last week released a second beta of Microsoft Expression Design, which is the company's planned tool for graphic and illustration design.

Beta 2, available here, supports the Microsoft Expression Blend Release Candidate and features enhanced XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) Export with a live preview feature, to make it compatible with the latest version of Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0.

Expression Blend provides for the interactive design aspect of an application, for adding capabilities such as 3D or animation.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 19, 2007 02:36 PM

March 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parasoft sets AJAX apps testing

Parasoft is adding AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) testing capabilities to its WebKing testing tool.

WebKing 6.0, which is available on Monday, tests Web applications and Web sites to ensure they meet reliability, security and performance goals. The product determines where errors have been introduced into AJAX and rich Internet applications. It gauges whether errors were the result of problems on the client side or on the server, through generation of reusable test cases.

Users do not have to rewrite scripts as Web applications evolve, Parasoft said.

Separating the new version of WebKing from the old is its ability to isolate different components and create specialized tests for them. This includes server- and client-side components. "What makes AJAX applications so complex is that they have so many moving parts," said Nathan Jakubiak, WebKing product manager at Parasoft.

Previously, WebKing was more geared toward testing applications with synchronous calls. But AJAX applications feature interactivity and pages in which only piece parts are refreshed.

With WebKing 6.0, JUnit tests are generated that use an AJAX-enabled library, to assist with collaboration between development and quality assurance persons.

Pricing for the enterprise version of WebKing 6.0 is about $50,000 for five users. Training is included with that pricetag.

Parasoft is making its WebKing 6.0 announcement at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo event in New York City.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 19, 2007 06:48 AM

March 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Quest upgrades Java performance tuner

Quest Software announced this week an upgraded version of its JProbe product for Java performance tuning, featuring support for Java Platform, Standard Edition (SE) Release 6.

Version 7.0 of JProbe also supports advanced memory diagnostics offered in the IBM Java Virtual Machine. JProbe is a Java profiling tool that fine-tunes Java application performance by diagnosing and resolving performance and scalability issues, Quest said. Developers can diagnose the root cause of performance and memory issues within Java applications.

Java SE 6 was recently released, featuring enhancements in areas such as Web services and scripting. JProbe 7.0 leverages the Java Virtual Machine Tool Interface feature of Java SE 6 for diagnostic data collection.

Other new features in JProbe 7.0 include stronger memory analysis to provide deeper statistics, tracing of object references and "what-if" resolution testing. Support is offered for IBM Portable Heap Dump Analysis, a data format that provides a memory image of the Java heap.

Version 7.0 also offers optimized performance analysis workflows and visualization of performance data for improved workflows and simplified analysis. A unified console features tools for memory, performance and coverage and uses tables for configuring these three tools.

JProbe integrates with Quest's PerformaSure, for Java application diagnosis, to allow for multi-JVM and multi-tier Java application and portal performance diagnostics. The products linked together constitute the Quest Application Assurance Suite.

JProbe 7.0 is available now with prices starting at $2,000.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 16, 2007 01:06 PM

March 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Krugle adds code search to CollabNet

Krugle is announcing on Wednesday a partnership with CollabNet to provide code search capabilities to developers on the CollabNet platform and CollabNet Subversion.

Code search functionality will be made available on CollabNet customers' development sites, enabling them to search for code without leaving their CollabNet environment. CollabNet provides a collaborative software development platform; the company also sponsors the Subversion open source project for version control.

Founded in 2005 around the idea of contextual search, Krugle crawls, parses and indexes code found in public and partner repositories. Developers can find code and related technical and licensing information to evaluate and use the code.

With Krugle tools, developers can search an index of more than 1.5 billion lines of code, more than 400 million Web pages and more than 100,000 projects.

The arrangement with CollabNet follows last month's addition of 6.5 million lines of code from Microsoft's shared and open source initiatives to Krugle's index. Also, Krugle in February announced code-searching plans for the Yahoo Developer Network.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 14, 2007 07:31 AM

March 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Visual Studio SDK touted

Microsoft has released Version 4 of the Visual Studio 2005 Software Development Kit, enabling developers to build custom tools, editors, designers, languages and other extensions for the company's development environment.

The new SDK includes broader integration possibilities and new community resources, Microsoft said. Among the features of the SDK are a Toolbox Control Installer as well as a tool for generating managed class library documentation and a Visual Studio SDK Browser.

Microsoft has set up its Visual Studio 2005 Extensibility Center offering information on the SDK, which can itself be accessed here.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 1, 2007 11:22 AM

March 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft hails Orcas, beginning developers

Microsoft this week launched the March Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its Visual Studio "Orcas" release and also set up its Beginner Developer Learning Center.

The CTP, accessible here, features a WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) designer, said S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft corporate vice president of the company's Developer Division, in his blog. Also featured are enhancements pertaining to the Team Foundation Server for application lifecycle management.

Orcas is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web, Microsoft said. The March CTP consists of two releases, Visual Studio Team Suite and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. These are available in a pre-configured Virtual PC image or as self-extracting installation files, Microsoft said.

The Beginner Developer Learning Center is intended as a centralized learning environment for beginning programmers, Somasegar said.

"This fun site provides a learning environment for anyone who is new to programming - the lessons start at a basic level with an introduction to general programming concepts, and gradually work their way up in difficulty to guide people through creation of complete Windows or Web solutions. It is a great way to learn to program, and a great way to increase your passion for coding by sharing this knowledge with others," Somasegar said.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 1, 2007 06:53 AM

February 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Semantic Web toolset readied

TopQuadrant plans on Monday to announce availability of TopBraid Composer 2.0, a modeling toolset for languages pertinent to the Semantic Web.

These languages include RDF/S (Resource Description Framework Schema) and OWL (Web Ontology Language).

TopBraid Composer 2.0 is an Eclipse-based Semantic Web ontology development tool supporting multiple inference, or reasoning, engines for specific tasks. Semantic Web applications can be developed that allow rules, queries and description logic to be combined to solve business problems, TopQuadrant said.

“Semantic Web technologies are making it possible for software applications to organize and process information on the Web in ways that are making the Web 'smarter' for people and machines,” said Ralph Hodgson, co-founder of TopQuadrant, in a statement released by company. “The same technologies are changing the way data can be integrated and interoperated between diverse systems and databases. With these advances, enterprise-scale Semantic Web applications need a professionally engineered integrated development environment that has an open, pluggable architecture and offers state-of-the-art support for complementary tools and core Semantic Web capabilities such as reasoning.”

Featured in the product are information visualization and mash-up facilities and ontology mapping support as well as integration with XML, relational databases and other legacy data sources.

Users can configure layout of forms and other content to be user-friendly. Multiple persons can edit an ontology at the same time. Users can run SPARQL (Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language) queries.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 26, 2007 09:59 AM

February 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft bolsters collaboration server

Microsoft has released version 1.2 of its Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Power Tool, which is intended to improve the user experience for the Team Foundation Server collaboration server for application development.

Formerly known as Power Toys, Power Tool features a set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities. Version 1.2 offers a set of custom check-in policies, a build test task and a process template editor. Also featured are bug fixes.

Download details can be found here.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 22, 2007 01:29 PM

February 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Genuitec extends tools to NetBeans, Visual Studio

Visual Studio and NetBeans users now can access Genuitec's SNAPs (Simple Nonintegrated Applications) developer tools.

By downloading Genuitec's "Use-Anywhere" connectors, developers working in the NetBeans and Visual Studio platforms can utilize Genuitec's MyEclipse Visual HTML Designer, XML Editor, Database Explorer and Image Editor SNAPs.

SNAPs is part of the Genuitec Fusion Technology suite of tools to allow developers to accomplish focused tasks without requiring an entire IDE.

Use-Anywhere connectors for NetBeans and Visual Studio require installation of the MyEclipse 5.5M1 Enterprise Workbench, which can be downloaded here. The connectors can be found here for NetBeans and here for Visual Studio.

Accessing the connectors does require an annual subscription to the MyEclipse IDE, which costs $30 per developer for a basic subscription.

Genuitec offers Java and J2EE development tools and bases its technology on the Eclipse open source platform. The company recently announced availability of its MyEclipse 5.5 Enterprise Workbench IDE that leverages SNAPs tools.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 13, 2007 11:50 AM

February 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Progress ships service-oriented apps builder

Progress Software has announced shipment of its Progress OpenEdge 10.1B platform for developing service-oriented business applications.

OpenEdge features a development environment that allows developers to concentrate on creating business logic, Progress said. This release emphasizes large-scale data management.

Featured in OpenEdge are database administration tools for building business applications. Extremely large data tables are supported, with tables able to grow to trillions of rows to ensure data availability, Progress said.

Also enabled in version 10.1B is support for 64-bit data formats and backing for Linux and the 64-bit PowerPC platform.

OpenEdge is built on the Eclipse 3.2 platform.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 13, 2007 10:59 AM

February 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Review: Ruby in Steel proves a speedy debugger

SapphireSteel Software recently shipped Ruby in Steel Developer, a professional Ruby programming environment for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition and above. I have used Komodo, RadRails, and the free tools that ship with Ruby before, but Ruby in Steel improves on all of these in several ways.

Ruby in Steel Developer has advanced Ruby and RHTML editing and IntelliSense support, and allows fast debugging of Ruby and Rails applications. The fast debugging and IntelliSense support wowed me. SapphireSteel claims a 100x speedup for their Cylon debugger over the standard Ruby debugger, but I measured a 200x speedup during my work.

On the other hand, I thought that the way Ruby in Steel integrates Visual Studio with external Ruby and Rails tools and tests was OK, but not as nice as RadRails' integration.

While the ability to do fast debugging of Rails application is very valuable, it currently requires a rather complicated setup. If you need to debug multiple Ruby threads, you'll need to switch to the standard Ruby debugger (something that will be fixed in a later release). The need to switch between the Ruby in Steel RHTML editor and the Visual Studio HTML editor for complicated layouts is awkward; plans to add a visual layout editor for Rails pages in a later release should alleviate this problem.

Tire-kickers can download a 30-day free trial of Ruby in Steel Developer or an unlimited free copy of Ruby in Steel Personal Edition (PE), which lacks the fast debugger and IntelliSense. Of course, those two features are the best parts -- so getting the full version will be worth it to professional developers.

Ruby in Steel Developer
Cost: Launch special: $199; rises to $249 with release of version 1.1
Availability: Now
Verdict: Any serious professional Ruby developer who has a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional or above should at least try out Ruby in Steel Developer. If you're like me, the asking price will seem cheap for the combination of the fast debugging and the great IntelliSense support.

Posted by Martin Heller on February 12, 2007 11:04 AM

February 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft updates CodePlex

Microsoft recently updated CodePlex, its collaborative portal for software development and sharing of source code, a Microsoft blogger reported.

A blog by James Newkirk, Microsoft product unit manager for CodePlex, notes the improvements, which include:

* Updated forums, including the ability to edit a post and received email notifications of replies.
* Source code browsing, in which anyone can view source code directly.
* Sponsored ads.
* Automated project creation.
* Granular RSS feeds, in which users can subscribe to a feed for just the wiki, releases, issue tracker, discussions or source code.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 6, 2007 03:47 PM

February 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mainsoft forges Visual Studio ties to Linux, Unix

Mainsoft this week announced general availability of a plug-in to Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 IDE for the Mainsoft C++ application porting platform.

The plug-in links the company's Visual MainWin for Unix and Linux, Version 5.1.1 to Visual Studio. Visual MainWin enables ISVs to port C++ applications to a multitude of platforms, including Solaris, IBM AIX and Linux variants from Red Hat and Suse.

With the plug-in, ISVs can use Microsoft's development environment to develop functionalities for Visual C++ applications and deploy these applications on Windows, Linux and Unix.

Version 5.1.1 offers a single code base to support both 32- and 64-bit requirements, new operating systems and compilers.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 1, 2007 01:57 PM

January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Eclipse tools advanced by Genuitec

Genuitec on Wednesday announced availability of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 5.5, a version of the company's IDE that features SNAPs (Simple Nonintegrated Applications) tools for quick development tasks.

The workbench is an Eclipse-based IDE and a set of plug-ins for development of Web-based and e-commerce applications.

The company's SNAPs Fusion technology provides a more lightweight presentation of standard MyEclipse tools. The SNAPs tools are packaged as Eclipse Rich Client Platform applications.

SNAPs tools featured in version 5.5 include: Image Editor, including a screen capture capability; Visual Web designer; Database Explorer, with support for MySQL advanced features, and XML Editor.

Version 5.5 also features integration between Hibernate tools and the Spring framework to support advanced object-relational mapping. UML (Unified Modeling Language) support also is featured. Improvements also have been made for Web services, with support for the XFire 1.2.4 SOAP framework.

MyEclipse 5.5 Enterprise Workbench with SNAPs Fusion Technology costs $29.95 for an annual subscription to the Standard Edition.

Also in the Eclipse realm, Klocwork this week released Klocwork Developer for Java, a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE. The product provides source code analysis and identifies security vulnerabilities at the earliest possible stage of development, Klocwork said.

A license for Klocwork Developer for Java costs $299 per year. An Enterprise Development Edition of the product adds build integration tools, architectural analysis, defect management and other capabilities.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 31, 2007 10:27 AM

January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

NetBeans adds languages

The NetBeans 5.5 open source IDE has been gaining support for several additional languages.

Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans community on Wednesday will announce availability of the IDE for Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese and Traditional Chinese. In addition, plans are under way to support several other languages, including Albanian, Azerbaijani, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.

Languages are being added as part of the NetBeans Translation Project.

Sun cited community participation in the translation efforts, with developers contributing from places such as Brazil and Taiwan. The company is sponsoring a NetBeans Day World Tour to promote the platform in places such as India, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and France.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 30, 2007 10:38 PM

January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Preview: Klocwork Developer for Java

Klocwork, the company that earned InfoWorld's nod for best code analyzer solution for 2006, made a subset of its K7 analyzer engine available yesterday as an Eclipse plug-in at a discounted price.

The product, called Klocwork Developer for Java v. 7.6 (the version number refers to the release of the larger K7 product from which it’s derived and which I reviewed last year), goes beyond the usual style-oriented warnings of the built-in Eclipse source checkers. Instead, it steps through the program logic and finds subtle errors in code that would otherwise appear correct.

For example, in test code for this posting, it found a suspicious test for a null passed parameter inside a method. What made the test suspicious was that it occurred lines after the parameter was first accessed. This is the type of error that can only be found by advanced code checkers that go beyond enforcing of rules from various style guides or making sure you’re hewing to coding conventions.

You may customize the warnings in Klockwork Developer for Java so that it complains about only the errors and infelicities you're interested in. One set of alerts you will not want to reconfigure is the product's security recommendations. These detect numerous practices that can lead programs to fail in ways a cracker can exploit, such as not closing files and streams when you're done with them; not checking user data for excessive length (risking a buffer overflow); and not checking user data that is subsequently used in databases (potential for SQL injection), HTTP headers (possible spoofing and cross-site scripting), or directory or filenames (can cause exceptions that might not be trapped).

Like most products that detect security vulnerabilities, Klocwork Developer for Java is sold on a subscription basis: $299/year per developer. It works on J2EE, J2SE, and J2ME code, and from what I saw, it works pretty well.

Klocwork Developer for Java v. 7.6
Cost: $299/year per developer
Availablity: Now
Verdict: This subset of Klockwork's K7 analyzer engine is an inexpensive way to get one of the best static code checkers and security analyzers onto a developer’s desktop. Remember that it requires Eclipse or IBM Rational Application Developer.

Posted by Andrew Binstock on January 30, 2007 04:21 PM

January 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft posts SharePoint SDKs

Microsoft this week posted software development kits for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The SharePoint Services kit features conceptual overviews, programming tasks, samples and references to assist with developing solutions based on SharePoint Services 3.0, according to the Web page where the SDK is posted.

The SharePoint Server 2007 SDK offers conceptual overviews, programming tasks, code samples and an enterprise content management starter kit, its Web page says.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 24, 2007 01:21 PM

January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mainsoft readies Visual Studio-Linux link

Mainsoft on Wednesday is announcing the release of Grasshopper 2.0 Technology Preview 2, a plug-in to Visual Studio 2005 enabling .Net developers to write ASP.Net Web applications and deploy them on Linux and other Java-enabled platforms.

Featured is the ability for developers to create Web projects using .Net 2.0 technologies such as ASP.Net 2.0 authentication and authorization. ASP.Net controls can be deployed on the Apache Tomcat servlet container.

Bundled with the preview is a copy of the IBM Cloudscape database, which features a Java runtime. Developers can port existing ASP.Net applications to Linux and other Java-enabled platforms. The Visual Studio 2005 debugger can be used to attach the Web application to Java and control execution.

A Web site administration tool allows for management of membership and roles. A tutorial is featured to take developers through the process of developing a Web-based accounting application, with membership and security, and deploying it on Linux.

The preview is the result of Mainsoft's collaboration with Mono, an open source development initiative featuring an open source version of Microsoft .Net technologies.

Grasshopper 2.0 will be featured in the upcoming Visual MainWin 2.0 product suite.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 23, 2007 06:32 PM

January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Eclipse Data Tools Platform offered

The Eclipse Foundation on Tuesday released Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) 1.0, which is an open source project featuring frameworks and tools for developing data-centric applications in the Eclipse environment, Eclipse said.

Developers with DTP 1.0 can leverage existing data sources, such as enterprise databases, with the Eclipse Platform.

"DTP 1.0 provides a rich set of frameworks that solve real-world issues related to the development of data-centric applications," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement released by Eclipse. "The growth and momentum of the Eclipse data tooling platform project has resulted from the efforts of committers from the Eclipse community, including many from Sybase, IBM and Actuate."

DTP 1.0 simplifies development of data-centric applications in heterogeneous environments by offing agile development tools. It features components for model-driven development and connection management as well as a data access framework and SQL development tools.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 23, 2007 12:52 PM

January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Orcas getting new Web designer

Orcas, the planned next version of the Visual Studio development platform, is being outfitted with a new Web designer, according to a Microsoft blogger.

The HTML and ASP.Net WYSIWYG designer was described by Scott Guthrie, general manager within the Microsoft Developer Division, as a "major, major improvement over previous HTML designers" within Visual Studio. Guthrie discussed the designer in his blog.

Due in an upcoming Community Technology Preview release of Orcas, the designer will be leveraged in both Visual Studio and the Expression Web Designer tool. It features capabilities such as rich Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support, improved view switching and a split view between HTML Source and WYSIWYG design.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 22, 2007 04:37 PM

January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Preview: ActiveState's multilingual IDE Komodo evolves

Recently, I've been playing with beta builds of Komodo 4.0, ActiveState's IDE for dynamic languages. I have been using Komodo over the years for many of my Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl/Tk, and regular expression development tasks.

Conveniently, I use it on most of my Windows and Linux installations, because licensing is per-person, not per installation. Komodo also runs on Mac OS X and Solaris -- the latter did, that is, up until this version: ActiveState has dropped Solaris support due to low sales.

What's new in this version of Komodo? Quite a lot, as it happens, but most of the enhancements fall under the "improved" category. What's really new and worth considering, in my humble opinion, is the client code development support.

Komodo 4.0 does JavaScript debugging using Firefox and the JavaScript DBGP extension. It also has an interactive JavaScript shell that's available within JavaScript debugging sessions. These work well, although debugging this way slows down JavaScript execution noticeably.

Komodo 4 has a local proxy server that acts as an HTTP inspector, which examines HTTP requests and responses as they happen. Komodo's editor does auto-completes and call tips for XML and HTML, making mark-up editing almost as convenient as code editing.

The IDE also has a new DOM viewer for XML and HTML documents, which provides structured document navigation in the same way that the code viewer provides structured source code file navigation.

Komodo 4.0 is slated to ship next Tuesday.

ActiveState Komodo 4.0
Cost: $295 Professional, $29.95 Personal
Verdict: Komodo speeds up development in a number of scripting languages, even compared to the constantly improving free development environments for the individual languages. It's worth having if you do more than occasional programming in one or more of the scripting languages that it supports.

Posted by Martin Heller on January 19, 2007 05:40 PM

January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Ruby on Rails is upgraded

Version 1.2 of Ruby on Rails, the popular open source Web framework, was released on Thursday, David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of the technology confirmed.

A featured theme in version 1.2 is REST (Representational State Transfer) functionality. Also included are enhancements for HTTP status codes and multiple representations of the same resource.

Unicode capabilities also are key. "Since Ruby won't be multibyte-aware until this time next year, Rails 1.2 introduces ActiveSupport::Multibyte for working with Unicode strings," Hansson said in an email.

Ruby on Rails 1.2 installation instructions can be found here. A full discussion of version 1.2, dated today, is on the Ruby on Rails Web site here.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 19, 2007 04:52 PM

January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Komodo 4.0 IDE readied

Komodo 4.0, ActiveState's IDE for dynamic languages, is due to be released next Tuesday.

The IDE has been re-engineered for end-to-end development of dynamic Web applications, with tools for dynamic languages and Web application frameworks.

Komodo allows for editing and debugging of server-side and browser code. Technologies supported include: JavaScript, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, XML, Perl, Ruby, Rails and Tcl (Tool Command Language). Supportive platforms include Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

New in version 4.0 is a DOM (Document Object Model) Viewer, which is a graphical tool presenting a tree view of XML and HTML files. Also featured is HTTP Inspector, for viewing and adjusting browser-server requests. HTTP Inspector allows for correcting application behavior.

A new JavaScript interactive shell helps uncover bugs in code.

Programmers can extend the IDE as well. ActiveState is offering a new community site with resources for developing and sharing extensions. Also featured are forums, FAQs and contests. The site is currently in a beta stage of development.

A new license for Komodo 4.0 costs $245 until February 28. After that, the price is $295. Upgrade pricing also is available.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 19, 2007 11:24 AM

January 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Mono adding C# 3.0

Mono, an open source implementation of the .Net Framework, is to be fitted with features from the C# 3.0 programming language, specifically LINQ (Language Integrated Query) functionality, said Miguel de Icaza, founder of Mono.

"It means that you get a kind of strongly typed, SQL-like query system built right into the language," de Icaza said on Tuesday. LINQ for XML capabilities, for interacting with XML documents, are expected for Mono in the short term but no timetable is set for implementing LINQ capabilities for SQL, for database activities.

Addition of C# 3.0 capabilities to Mono are expected to take six months, with a trial version due in three months.

Lambda expressions, which turn code into data, also are planned for Mono. Additionally, a Visual Basic compiler is planned. "What this allows [Visual Basic developers] to do is actually move their development over from Wndows to Linux," said de Icaza.

Mono is an implementation of .Net for Linux, Mac OS and Solaris. "Today, there's a very large contingent of people that develop for Windows for .Net and they also want to support Linux and Mac OS and Solaris," de Icaza said.

"It's probably today our largest user base," he said.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 16, 2007 04:27 PM

January 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft offers Orcas CTP

Microsoft has released a January 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the planned "Orcas" release of Visual Studio.

Orcas is Microsoft's next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System and the Web, Microsoft said.

Orcas is intended to deliver on Microsoft's vision for smart client applications by enabling developers to build connected applications with a rich user experience, the company said. The CTP enables developers to work with the upcoming toolset and platform improvements.

Featured in the CTP are more powerful data APIs, with the ADO.Net Entity Framework and LINQ (Language Integrated Query) to ADO.Net technologies. Also included is C# 3.0 language support, as are ClickOnce improvements for deploying Windows Presentation Foundation applications.

Runtime and design-time support for Office 2007 is included.

Download details can be accessed here.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 11, 2007 03:14 PM

January 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

.Net apps monitored

AVIcode next week is announcing version 4.0 of Intercept Studio, a tool for monitoring and diagnostics for .Net applications.

Both application failures and performance bottlenecks are examined. Application health is viewed from per-application and system-level perspectives of key performance metrics.

"First and foremost, in this release is our ability to [detect] both application exception failures as well as performance problems concurrently in real-time," said Chris Childers, product manager for Intercept Studio at AVIcode.

Also new is integration between Intercept Studio and system-level performance metrics collectors, which gauge functions such as memory and CPU utilization. Cause and effect relationships are viewed between these various factors.

Examining of 64-bit .Net applications is supported in version 4.0. Microsoft Reporting Services technology is leveraged to provide improved insight into application availability and behavior trends.

A disconnected monitoring capability enables monitoring and root cause data collection on non-networked computers.

Available now, the product can be used both in application staging environments or for ongoing monitoring. Pricing starts at $12,000 for a single monitoring console and server agent.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 8, 2007 03:18 PM

January 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Groovy language advances

The Groovy developer team this week is touting the final release of Groovy 1.0, a dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine that integrates with the Java platform.

Groovy features a Java-like syntax with features inspired by Smalltalk, Python or Ruby. With Groovy, Java libraries can be reused and investments in Java skills, tools and application servers are protected, according to the Groovy Web site.

The language can be used for purposes ranging from shell scripting to Web applications built on Spring and Hibernate through the Grails framework.

"A lot of passion and energy has been put in this new version after two release candidates that have been tested against real-world projects: on a mission-critical insurance application, on the XWki second-generation wiki engine, as well as on the RIFE framework and through the Spring 2.0 scripting integration," said Guillaume Laforge, Groovy project manager, writing on the Groovy Web page.

Groovy can be downloaded here.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 4, 2007 12:27 PM

January 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Ruby readied for Visual Studio

Ruby in Steel Developer Edition, a Ruby programming environment for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, is being set for a late-January release, developer SapphireSteel Software said this week.

The package features editing and debugging tools for Ruby and Ruby and Ruby on Rails developers. Also, developers also can import existing Ruby on Rails projects.

Ruby in Steel Developer Edition is priced at $249, with a limited-period pricing of $199 available for early adopters.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 3, 2007 02:11 PM

December 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft readies AJAX technology

Microsoft on Friday began shipping a Release Candidate - the precursor to the general release - of its AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology.

The company's ASP.Net team shipped the Release Candidate of ASP.Net AJAX 1.0, which enables Web developers to build pages with a rich UI and more efficient client-server communication. The general release of ASP.Net AJAX 1.0 is expected to ship around the end of this year.

New features in the Release Candidate include a built-in Visual Studio Web Application Project template for building ASP.Net AJAX applications, said Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, general manager within the company's Developer Division, in his blog. Additional globalization support for AJAX applications also is featured, along with new script resource handler features to improve substitution logic, compression and caching.

Also featured is dynamic invocation of Web service proxies from JavaScript.

ASP.Net AJAX will be part of the core .Net Framework going forward. It also will be part of the upcoming Orcas release of the Visual Studio development platform.

The Release Candidate is accessible here.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 15, 2006 12:36 PM

December 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft readies Visual Studio service packs

updated| Microsoft on Friday will release Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta.

A Microsoft representative said the service packs should be accessible from this link by 9 am Pacific time on Friday, December 15.

Visual Studio Service Pack 1 (SP1) features bug fixes as well as improvements in a number of areas. A company official emphasized community participation in the Visual Studio service pack.

"For some of the product areas within Visual Studio, more than 50 percent of the bugs that we fixed were reported by customers," said Jay Roxe, Microsoft group product manager for Visual Studio.

Bug fixes cover a variety of issues, including an issue with syntax coloring for key words in programs. Some bugs pertained to crashing issues.

Feature improvements include code generation and profling support for the Intel Core Duo processor. Scaling and performance are boosted for the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server collaboration server as well. Team Foundation Server also now can be integrated with Microsoft's Excel 2007 and Project 2007 products.

The service pack adds support for the Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition database and Windows Embedded 6.0.

Microsoft's ClickOnce deployment technology, for updating to the most recent versions of applications, has been extended to Visual Studio 2005 applications running on devices.

SP1 features more than 70 improvements for common development scenarios, Microsoft said.

The Vista service pack beta for Visual Studio 2005, meanwhile, is intended to provide the same full-fledged develpoper experience on Vista as developers have with Windows XP. There have been issues in areas such as debugging that Microsoft has been addressing. The general release of this service pack is planned for the first quarter of next year, after consumer availability of Windows Vista.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 14, 2006 09:48 AM

December 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

NetBeans developer tools released

Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans open source community will unveil NetBeans Visual Web Pack and the NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack on Wednesday.

Based on the Sun Java Studio Creator IDE, the Web pack offers a visual design time environment for developing Web applications. A Data Provider API is featured for binding to data sources. The pack also supports AJAX-enabled JavaServer Faces components.

The C/C++ pack, for C and C++ development projects, works with the NetBeans IDE and includes a makefile wizard. Language model features are enabled such as dynamic syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding and a class browser.

The C/C++ pack has been tested with GNU and Sun Studio compilers.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 5, 2006 09:01 PM

December 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Teamprise advances developer collaboration

Teamprise is shipping version 2.0 of the Teamprise Client Suite, which enables access to Microsoft's developer collaboration server from Java, Macintosh and Unix systems.

Developers can use the server, called Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, for capabilities such as item tracking. It is accessible from the Eclipse IDE. Also featured in version 2.0 are a range of source control operations in Team Foundation Server such as Branch and Merge, Label and Shelve and Unshelve.

A Team Explorer view provides access to documents and reports.

An online demonstration of Teamprise 2.0 is available here. The product costs $499.

Posted by Paul Krill on December 5, 2006 12:36 PM

November 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Spring LDAP capability improved

Spring LDAP, which is a Java library for simplifying LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) operations, has been upgraded, the Spring Framework community said on Saturday.

The new release, called version 1.1.1, adheres to the Spring Framework 2.0 internally. Spring LDAP complements Spring by making it easy to write applications that integrate with LDAP servers.

Other features in Spring LDAP version 1.1.1 include:

* An added capability to use server-side controls in search.
* Added lookup methods that can take an array of return attribute names.
* The DirContexAdapter.getnameInNameSpace() programming interface now returns a full DN (Distinguished Name), which is used to identify a directory entry.
* The DistinguishedName programming feature now supports multi-valued RDN's (Relative Distinguished Name) separated by a + sign, like "cn=Rod+sn=Johnson," for example.

An LdapTemplate class encapsulates plumbing work involved in traditional LDAP programming. Programmers can tend to more important issues such as where to find data.

Spring LDAP can be found here.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 22, 2006 03:22 PM

November 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MyEclipse Workbench IDE is upgraded

Genuitec this week announced shipments of the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 5.1 IDE, which bundles the Java 5 runtime environment, Eclipse 3.2.1 and MyEclipse in one download.

This combination, made possible through the product's Developer Installer Stack, allows developers to quickly utilize all three technologies, the company said. MyEclipse features a toolset covering Java application development from the enterprise version of Java to frameworks such as Hibernate and Spring.

Also featured in version 5.1 is a wizard for building a Web service client from any WSDL file. JavaServer Pages performance has been improved as well.

Other features include improved support for the Sybase SQL syntax and Linux.

Version 5.1 is available for $49.95 for an annual subscription to the Professional Edition.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 17, 2006 04:10 PM

November 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google touts Web toolkit

Google on Thursday released Google Web Toolkit 1.2, a free software development framework for building rich Web applications without having to deal with the quirks of JavaScript.

The upgraded toolkit simplifies development of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications by enabling developers to write in Java and then convert the applications to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

In addition to bug fixes, the toolkit features full support for Mac OS X as well as faster debugging. A new HTTP request module provides functionality such as custom headers, status code and timeouts, all in one API.

Tree items can contain widgets such as a check box, text box or image.

The toolkit is downloadable here.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 16, 2006 12:47 PM

November 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Icesoft offers AJAX technology to open source

Icesoft Technologies on Tuesday is making its Icefaces AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development platform for Java available under an open source license.

Specifically, Icesoft is using the Mozilla Public License.

Icefaces is an integrated AJAX application framework for Java EE. It extends JavaServer Faces technology to enable Java developers to more easily build thin-client rich Web applications, Icesoft said. AJAX push technology allows for building of rich enterprise applications that provide instant feedback to users when server-side application events occur.

Also new to Icefaces is tighter links with IDEs. Integration with the JBoss Seam application framework also is featured.

Additionally, Icesoft is announcing Icefaces.org, which provides technical resources and fosters communication among the Icefaces community.

Enterprise support options are available for Icefaces, starting at $2,500 per year.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 14, 2006 06:52 AM

November 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Borland upgrades ALM tools

Borland Software on Monday is unveiling the 2006 versions of the StarTeam and CaliberRM tools in the company's application lifecycle management platform.

CaliberRM is an enterprise requirements management product while StarTeam manages software change and configuration management, serving as a repository for managing software development assets. A key addition to StarTeam is it can now be deployed on Red Hat Linux systems.

The new CaliberRM offers customized tracing of requirements, based on roles in an organization. StarTeam offers a visual compare and merge capability enabling team members to coordinate work done on different branches of a software development project.

Also new in StarTeam is support for the Eclipse 3.2 and Visual Studio 2005 IDEs as well as for the latest versions of Borland's JBuilder and Delphi environments. Red Hat Linux is support now as well.

CaliberRM costs $2,000 per named user while StarTeam is $2,500 per named user.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 13, 2006 07:06 AM

November 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Dynamic language IDE upgraded

ActiveState Software has released a beta of Komodo 4.0, the next version of the company's IDE for dynamic Web development featuring client-side language support.

The release extends dynamic language support to client-side AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) languages including JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), HTML and XML. Komodo also supports Perl, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), Ruby and Tcl.

With support for the full technology stack, Komodo enables developers to edit, test and debug Web applications including the server, client and the HTTP conversation that connects them.

The general release of Komodo 4.0 is set for January.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 1, 2006 02:55 PM

November 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM tool can convert .Net to J2EE

IBM on Wednesday is unveiling Lotus Expeditor, which the company is positioning as a tool to integrate applications and move Microsoft .Net applications to J2EE.

Expeditor is an Eclipse-based development platform to integrate existing and new applications and deliver them in connected and disconnected devices. Developers can create a personalized user experience spanning platforms and devices and providing access to business applications.

The tool also enables interoperability between Visual Basic, .Net and Expeditor to enable creation of a universal client of choice. Expeditor enables transformation of .Net applications into J2EE applications through the use of Expeditor's rich client and Web-based user interfaces.

With Expeditor, developers can build composite applications combining existing and new software assets within an SOA. Developers also can add extensions to existing databases allowing mobile workers, for example, to access financial or sales information from mobile devices. Web 2.0 applications, such as a VOIP plug-in to an instant messaging client, can be developed.

Features in Expeditor include:

* An enhanced offline toolkit providing wizards for offline portlets, Web services-based applications and templates for implementing offline capabilities.
* Facilities for composite application and mashup enhancements.
* Mobile device support.
* Enhanced client security, including encryption, key store and desktop lockdown.

Lotus Expeditor is due by the end of the year.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 1, 2006 09:20 AM

October 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

VoiceObjects opens phone app server API

Looking to advance development of phone-based self-service applications, VoiceObjects this week is announcing that the API for its VoiceObjects Server is being opened up to the public.

This move enables third-parties to create IDEs and other tools to use with VoiceObjects Server. This product is a Web services-enabled phone application server that lets enterprises and telecommunications carriers develop and manage self-service applications for phones. VoiceXML is generated for development of personalized dialogs with each caller, leveraging information in CRM or other databases.

Additionally, VoiceObjects is making available VoiceObjects XDK, an XML development kit for building tools to work with VoiceObjects.

IDEs to support VoiceObjects via the API include SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer, Angel.com Site Builder, OpenMethods openVXML Studio and SpeechVillage SpeechDraw. Third-party tools supporting the phone application server feature the same benefits as the VoiceObjects Desktop tool for building voice-activated applications. These benefits include the abilities to develop personalized dialogs and prompt menus and perform online application maintenance with no downtime.

Other benefits include integration with other IT assets via Web services as well as analytics and reporting for dialog interaction and systems usage.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 16, 2006 04:35 PM

October 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sun: Java runs great on Vista

Responding to a rumor started on Microsoft Watch that Java doesn't get along well with Vista, Sun Java Client Group Architect Chet Haase declared quite firmly in his own blog that Java runs quite well on Redmond's next-born.

In a Sept. 29 blog posting, Microsoft Watch cited eWeek Lab tests running various Java-based apps on Vista. "In each case, Aero Glass [the Vista UI] wasn't just disabled for the (apparently) offending application, but for our test machine as a whole--until we closed the Java app."

The entry dispenses the following advice to Sun: "Sun Microsystems would do well to give a ring to one of the interop contacts at Microsoft that came out of the firms' historic make-nice agreement back in 2004, and figure out how to make Java apps first-class Vista citizens."

That final bit particularly irked Haase, who responded in a recent entry in his blog.

"[O]lder versions of Java do have problems on Vista, and that's what the original report was about; someone tried running some older version of Java on Vista and noted some problems. But that's like saying that your favorite XBox game, Bloody Mess X, doesn't work on XBox360. Of course it doesn't; the original game was written for a completely different system."

Haase goes into great detail to explain just how hard Sun has worked to adapt Java to the ever-evolving Vista.

"... [It] has been an ongoing process of learning, testing, debugging, submitting bugs against Microsoft, fixing our bugs, re-testing. ... And since Vista has been a moving platform during the Java SE 6 development process, we've been in this development cycle continually with every new drop of Vista (they are still releasing weekly builds for us to test; we just found a bug in RC1 that has since been fixed in the latest release we got yesterday)."

(Application developers in particular may want to read his post; it's quite detailed, technical, and blissfully devoid of marketing.)

Java SE 6, by the way, "is the best solution for Vista," Haase writes. "That release has received most of our focus during the Vista beta release timeframe, and it is where most of the fixes to the known problems currently reside."

As for other flavors of Java: "J2SE 1.5 should work fine, but there may be some nuances that may not be as perfect... . Some additional Vista-specific fixes (such as component animation) may not be back-ported, so the fidelity may not be as close as that in Java SE 6... . But the full gamut of Vista work that we feel is necessary for J2SE 1.5 should be available in update 11, which we hope to release around January of 2007."

Moreover, J2SE 1.4.2 will basically work, according to Haase. "We see 1.4.2 as being functional, usable, and perfect for situations where a customer is absolutely locked into that particular release for now. But we encourage developers and customers to migrate to a more full-feature Vista release soon."

Stay tuned to InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Vista for the latest news and reviews.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 10, 2006 09:41 PM

October 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Developer tool leverages Google kit

Instantiations later this month will unveil GWT Designer 1.0, which the company describes as a comprehensive tool for building AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web applications using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

GWT is a Java development framework intended to make it easy to develop AJAX applications. GWT Designer is built on WindowBuilder Pro, Instantiations's Eclipse tool for building Java GUI applications for Windows, Linux, Macintosh and other platforms. With GWT Designer, Instantiations is providing a WYSIWIG GUI construction environment. Developers drag and drop composites, layouts and controls when building a user interface.

With the Instantiations tool, developers can focus on building and testing rich Internet applications using Eclipse, Java and GWT without having to deal with the complexities of AJAX coding.

Other features in the tool include: bidirectional code generation, in which changes to Java source code are reflected immediately in the graphical designer, and vice versa; Cascading Style Sheets support and rich editing. One-click deployment also is featured, as is internationalization.

GWT Developer is priced at an annual subscription of $39 per seat. Two- and three-year subscriptions cost $69 and $89. A two-week trial copy can be accessed here.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 10, 2006 01:14 PM

October 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

BEA offers Fuego BPM update

BEA Systems on Tuesday is unveiling AquaLogic BPM Suite 5.7, which is the first release of the former Fuego business process management (BPM) product since BEA acquired the technology in March.

With this release, BEA is attempting to bridge BPM and SOA. Version 5.7 provides browsing and discovery of managed services as well as dynamic binding to services. IT personnel can separate system complexity from business processes. Also featured in version 5.7 is support for a multi-language approach to BPM, with Unicode certification and localized versions of the product's designer and modeling environments. Among languages supported include English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, simplified Chinese and Spanish.

Additionally, version 5.7 features new capabilities for leveraging best practices within a process template repository and a master role directory. Common process patterns can be captured as templates and managed within a central repository. UDDI is supported in version 5.7 to allow services used within a modeled process to be discovered and bound to a process from within the design-time modeling environment. Improved business activity monitoring dashboards also are featured.

BPM Suite 5.7 is part of a multi-product introduction taking place as part of BEA's SOA 360 plan and blended strategy for mixing open source and commercial offerings.

BEA also is rolling out its Kodo 4.1 persistence engine product, basing its JPA (Java Persistence API) implementation on the same packages used in the Apache OpenJPA incubator. This boosts compatibility between Apache and BEA's commercial products. Kodo 4.1 supports the JDO (Java Data Objects) 2.0 specification for persisting objects to data stores either via JDO 2.0 or JPA. Kodo is an object-relational tool for linking to databases.

BEA also is releasing its BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform 9.2 development tool featuring an updated IDE Design Views function. The new product builds upon existing integration with the Eclipse 3.1 platform and the Eclipse Web Tools Platform 1.0 project. This Design Views capability now features point-and-click development of Web services, said Pieter Humphrey, senior manager of product marketing for the BEA Workshop tools division.

Before, developers were using Java 5 standard annotations or writing source code in Eclipse. "Point-and-click makes it a lot faster. You can develop a pretty enterprise-quality Web service in just a few clicks," Humphrey said.

Also in version 9.2, a new Page Flow overview for Beehive Web applications provides developer navigation and documentation. Version 9.2 relies on the Eclipse Update Manager for distribution.

Additionally, BEA is introducing is a new version of the Workshop Studio development tool, labeled version 3.2.1. This version includes updates from the Eclipse platform as well from the Eclipse Web Tools Platform 1.5.1 project. The Spring 1.3.4 Java framework also is supported. The Studio product is a platform-independent offering running on WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss and Tomcat.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 9, 2006 05:33 AM

October 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google launching code search app

Google on Thursday is launching Google Code Search, which enables developers to search publicly available source code.

The application searches repositories such as Subversion and CVS and crawls the Web for code.

"We're bringing over billions of lines of code," said Tom Stocky, Google product manager for the Code Search application. With the application, Google is providing a tool for developers looking to find specific code, sample calls or function definitions.

"They can now search for it in one place," Stocky said.

"Usually, the first thing a programmer does when they're going to build apps is they search over existing code, which is pretty hard to do today," Stocky said.

The application is available at google.com/codesearch.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 4, 2006 09:15 PM

October 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Nexaweb offers framework for AJAX, Java

Nexaweb Technologies at the AJAXWorld Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. this week unveiled Nexaweb UCF (Universal Client Framework), giving developers the flexibility of using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) or Java for Web applications.

UCF is being billed by Nexaweb as the industry's first zero-install, universal client framework using Java or AJAX to deploy enterprise-class business applications over the Web. Both Java and AJAX clients download automatically to a Web browser and access cache data and program components to minimize network overhead, Nexaweb said.

In combination with messaging and integration components from the Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Platform, UCF provides an application development and deployment platform to leverage legacy and service-enabled IT assets and build secure business applications for a browser. UCF is part of Nexaweb Web 2.0 Platform.

Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Platform with Nexaweb UCF is due to be generally available on November 30.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 4, 2006 11:00 AM

October 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google launches search API

Google on Tuesday launched Google AJAX Search API 1.0, enabling developers and publishers to add a Google search box to their site or build Web applications on top of Google's offerings.

The API was unveiled at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. Although this is a 1.0 beta release, the company since June has had a release numbered 0.1 that had not been publicized. New in this release is the addition of Google News results and Maps results in five additional countries: France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Canada.

Also featured is targeted advertising alongside AJAX Search API Web results; this feature currently is in the experimental phase and advertisers will not be charged for ads clicked.

Google with the API is looking to make it easier for developers to build their own search-based applications, Tom Stocky, Google product manager, said.

The general release date for the API has not yet been determined. The API beta is available here.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 3, 2006 03:59 PM

October 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Spring framework released

The Spring 2.0 Java framework was released Tuesday, with such a great user reception that the download site has been crashing, according to a representative of Interface21, which has guided the project.

The company is working to mend the situation.

Although originally anticipated late last month, version 2.0 is arriving just a few days late. Spring 2.0 features enhancements pertaining to aspect-oriented programming, JRuby and Enterprise JavaBeans. Additionally. The release makes Spring simpler and and adds increased power and performance.

"Version 2.0 brings major new simplifications to the framework's overall usage model. As our existing users know, the heart of Spring is the Bean Container which drives the configuration of your Java and Java EE application. In version 2.0 many common configuration tasks have been simplified through the introduction of custom Bean Configuration Dialects," the Spring site says.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 3, 2006 11:05 AM

October 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

JetBrains upgrades Java IDE

JetBrains on Monday is announcing the release of its IntelliJ Idea 6.0 Java IDE, which expands support for Java standards.

Highlighted are enhanced Java Enterprise Edition capabilities including JSP (JavaServer Pages) Web content development improvements. Support also is featured for the JavaServer Faces (JSF) component model for Web development and the Struts framework.

Version 6.0 offers support and migration mappings for the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 component architecture. Users can refactor EJB 1.x and 2.x modules into EJB 3.0 modules, JetBrains said.

The Swing GUI designer in version 6.0 supports multiple Swing layout managers and allows for quick importing of existing user interfaces.

Code-editing has been enhanced as well. Web development functions include support for JavaScript, AJAX( Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), HTML/CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XML.

More application servers are supported, including BEA WebLogic 9, IBM WebSphere and JBoss. A team collaboration tool called IDEtalk, meanwhile, lets developers exchange messages.

Testing and code analysis tools in version 6.0 include code coverage and JUnit 4 integrations and code inspections for Java and Java EE.

JetBrains also is announcing availability of JetBrains TeamCity, an integrated team environment for .Net and Java developers and managers. Key features include an automated build and testing capability, notification of when a change fails a test, server-side code inspections and a rich Web interface with a project dashboard.

Posted by Paul Krill on October 2, 2006 09:56 AM

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: WebAssist eases Dreamweaver e-commerce dev

You might think that sophisticated e-stores are back-ended by elaborate applications like Microsoft's Commerce Server. While that's true in some cases, there are about 85,000 developers building great e-commerce sites with Adobe Dreamweaver and WebAssist's eCart extension. This potent combination provides coders with point-and-click, fully customizable shopping carts.

The just-released $249.99 eCart 3.7 ($199.99 until Oct. 10) takes the shopping experience to a new level, while still shielding developers from the hard work. As previously, you merely drag shopping cart components from the eCart Dreamweaver Behaviors panel to the desired spot on your ASP, ColdFusion, or PHP pages.

One significant new feature lets you select PayPal Website Payments Pro for checkout. Many merchants will find this important because there's one transaction rate for all payments and low monthly fees. Importantly, users don't have to leave the main site for payment processing with credit cards. In all, eCart now supports 35 checkout methods and eight merchant gateways, including PayPal Standard, LinkPoint, and WorldPay.

A separate new component, Digital File Pro ($99.99), securely delivers digital goods (software, pay-per-view, and digital assets) through your shopping carts. Again, there's no heavy coding involved - but excellent flexibility, such as restricting downloads to authorized users within a date range or limiting the number of downloads.

If you're still unsure about eCart 3.7, WebAssist offers a $19.99 monthly subscription (plus a one-time $19.99 activation fee). As with the purchased software, there's no limit on the number of online stores you can build. This subscription option, plus high quality support I've always received from WebAssist, is more reason for getting eCart 3.7 to polish your commerce websites in time for the fast-approaching holiday buying season.

For more information, go to www.webassist.com.

Posted by Mike Heck on September 29, 2006 11:51 AM

September 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: MyEclipse 5.0 gets a workout

Fresh from the Test Center: Feisty Genuitec has a new version of the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench IDE, and it's a broad (but not deep) toolkit that holds much promise for enterprise Java developers, according to contributing editor Andrew Binstock's review. My Eclipse 5.0 is also an example of how open source technology can benefit consumers: it incorporates Matisse, the GUI designer developed by Sun for its NetBeans IDE (which we reviewed in April). Because NetBeans is open source, Genuitec was able to quickly dive in and create a port of Matisse to Eclipse, giving developers the added functionality fast.

Office 2007: Simplicity, at last?: Oliver Rist agreed to a meeting with the Office UI crew because he was curious to see if the bugs from Office 2007's first beta were cleaned up (and because they might bring good cookies). But he got more than he bargained for -- turns out that Microsoft engineers really were listening to user feedback, and that results in a focus on simplicity. Does this bode well for the end result of Office 2007? Check out the latest installment of Enterprise Windows and see for yourself.

Salesforce ups customization: Salesforce.com is planning "unlimited customization" of analytics features in the Winter '07 release of its CRM suite, according to recent news reports. A new AJAX-based UI is reportedly in the works, too. Keep an eye on the InfoWorld Test Center for a review of Salesforce.com Winter '07 as soon as we get our hot little hands on it; until then, check out our take on a previous release.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 14, 2006 06:00 AM

September 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Java and .Net come together

Shattering language barriers: Taking in such recent news as the release of IronPython 1.0 and Sun's snagging of JRuby, InfoWorld Blogger in Chief Jon Udell contemplates, "Why argue about dynamic versus static languages when you can have the best of both worlds?"

Talkin' 'bout SOA integration Real World SOA blogger Dave Linthicum contemplates WebMethods' acquisition of Infravio: " I suspect that the driving force behind this acquisition is the fact that the other major integration and SOA players are adding governance to their respective stacks, either building or buying."

A bigger bite of Apple: Tom Yager expands on his Mac Pro review: "Mac Pro is a model of efficiency. But it does not thrill next to Opteron with PowerNow! and Cool and Quiet enabled."

Posted by Ted Samson on September 13, 2006 06:00 AM

September 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Atlas AJAX tools renamed

Atlas shrugged off: Microsoft unveiled its plans to drop the code name "Atlas" from its AJAX dev tools, replacing it with the more formal "ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions." Too bad - "Atlas" was kind of catchy. Either way, the toolkit is about as open-source as Microsoft gets, and its breadth of features stood up nicely in our review of free AJAX toolkits. Check out Jon Udell's screencast for a closer look at Atlas/ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions. You can also get more specifics at Scott Guthrie's blog (Guthrie is a general manager with Microsoft's Developer Division).

Security alert: Roger Grimes is back from vacation with a heads-up on reports of a Microsoft patch that's causing data corruption. Check out the Security Adviser blog and see if you're affected.

Desktops and servers and datacenters, oh my!: Virtualization is the buzzword du jour, but early adopters are seeing benefits despite some management hurdles and a huge range of choices, especially on the desktop virtualization front. InfoWorld's special report breaks down the basics and offers some options; we've also got a host of analysis articles to get you up to speed on the many available options, as well as plenty of virtualization product reviews, including Parallels Workstation for client virtualization, SWSoft Virtuozzo for Linux (server virtualization), and Softricity SoftGrid for virtualized application deployment.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 12, 2006 06:00 AM

August 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

TechExcel offers project planning for app dev

TechExcel on Wednesday is announcing availability of DevPlan, a project planning tool to manage application development.

DevPlan features a Gantt chart view, resource management, baseline comparisons and integrated knowledge management. Team-based planning and calendaring also are included. The product works in conjunction with the company's DevTrack tool for issue-tracking and defect management.

All work done in DevTrack is done within the context of DevPlan's project breakdown structure.

TechExcel's DevPlan offering is similar to what Rational is providing in the application lifecycle management space but Rational does not provide a way to track a project plan, according to a TechExcel representative.

DevPlan costs about $1,500 per user while DevTrack is approximately $700 per user.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 16, 2006 03:19 PM

July 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Icesoft offers AJAX framework for enterprise Java

Icesoft Technologies on Wednesday released Icefaces Enterprise Edition v1.0, an integrated AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) framework for Java EE (Enterprise Edition),

The product extends JavaServer Faces to enable Java developers to build thin-client rich Web applications, Icefaces said. Application logic is resident on the server, with incremental changes to the presentation delivered to the browser and reassembled using a lightweight AJAX bridge.

Developers can develop thin-client Java applications while eliminating the proliferation of JavaScript code, according to Icefaces. Icefaces supports "AJAX Push" technology, which allows presentation changes to be pushed directly from the server to the client.

The Icefaces Community Edition is offered at no cost while the Enterprise Edition is a commercial upgrade with basic Community Edition features and enterprise-level scalability, advanced connection management and an asynchronous HTTP server. Clustering also is supported in the Enterprise Edition.

Pricing for the Enterprise Edition starts at $1,500 per CPU.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 19, 2006 09:06 AM

July 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Real Software upgrades Realbasic for Linux

Real Software is shipping Realbasic 2006 Release 3 for Linux, which is a new version of its Visual Basic-like object-oriented programming language and environment.

The offering is intended to help enterprise developers migrate Visual Basic applications to Linux. More than 100 features and fixes are included in Release 3, which has been specifically optimized for use with the Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell.

Improvements include a version control format function that saves and exports projects in text format for use with version control systems such as CVS (Concurrent Versions System) and Subversion. Code error-checking also is highlighted, as are improved project navigation and Linux-specific improvements to boost the user experience and reliability.

Realbasic 2006 Release 3 for Linux Professional Edition is priced at $500. The Professional edition features cross-platform compilation, multi-user database development support and the ability to develop secure networked applications.

Posted by Paul Krill on July 7, 2006 08:59 AM

June 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Compuware rolls out renamed requirements definition package

Compuware on Monday is unveiling Optimal Trace 4.1, which is a new version of the requirements definition and management package formerly known as SteelTrace.

Compuware purchased SteelTrace in April. Optimal Trace is intended to enable IT and business groups to better collaborate to improve application delivery outcomes. It features a requirements capture approach called "structured requirements," which are user-centric stories that describe requirements from the user perspective and feature visual storyboards.

A key new feature in version 4.1 is enhanced connectivity to better enable offline work access and connectivity when an Internet connection is obtained. In version 4.1, challenging connections are supported such as virtual private networks and intermittent wireless connections.

A new administration tool, meanwhile, makes it simpler to perform tasks such as assigning security privileges to users from remote locations.

Licensing mechanisms in the new release have been updated to support various configurations managed from a central location and accessible to verifiable users.

Optimal Trace 4.1 is available now.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 26, 2006 09:05 AM

June 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft offers service pack for .Net Compact Framework 2.0

Microsoft this week released a service pack for the .Net Compact Framework 2.0 that supports development of Windows CE-based "headless" devices such as embedded systems that lack a keyboard and display screen.

.Net Compact Framework is the managed programming layer for the Windows Mobile OS as well as for the Windows CE platform, according to Microsoft.

Also featured in the service pack is the .Net Compact Framework Remote Performance Monitor, which is a debugging and performance tuning tool featuring a user interface that enables developers to view performance data while an application is running. The service pack also has the command-line debugger previously supported on the .Net Framework.

The .Net Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 is downloadable here.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 22, 2006 04:37 PM

June 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Oracle boosting Spring Java apps framework

Oracle is integrating TopLink Essentials, which is an open source EJB 3.0 Java Persistence API (JPA) reference implementation, with the popular Spring Framework 2.0.

Spring Framework 2.0, a Java/J2EE application framework, will ship with TopLink Essentials and support JPA, Oracle said. Oracle has been working with Interface21, which has overseen Spring, to add JPA support to Spring 2.0.

Oracle and Spring technologies will be leveraged to drive adoption of lightweight development frameworks that simplify development of next-generation application platforms. The integration will make it easier for developers to build applications by enabling them to access business data as Plain Old Java Objects, Oracle said.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 15, 2006 09:52 AM

June 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Compuware, Borland boost ALM at TechEd

Boston - Compuware and Borland Software at the TechEd 2006 conference this week bolstered application lifecycle management (ALM) offerings for Microsoft's .Net platform.

Compuware announced DevPartner Studio 8.1, which is the company's suite of tools for measuring code quality.

"The things we're doing [are] really trying to extend the collaboration between the QA (quality assurance) organization and the developer organization," said Ken Cowan, product manager for DevPartner at Compuware.

Version 8.1 features integration with work items in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. This function enables test assets to be shared between developers and QA personnel by storing them in Foundation Server, which is the collaboration component of Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System ALM platform.

Also in version 8.1 are additional rules to test for compliance with .Net coding standards. Compuware also has made it easier to automate the static analysis function in the product; additionally, users can add their own rules for static analysis.

Compuware also enhanced its Vantage product, for monitoring of applications in production. A new version, release 9.9, now features full-time monitoring and root cause analysis for .Net applications.

"The idea is to fix the application before it seriously impacts your business," Cowan said.

DevPartner 8.1 ships on June 19 and costs $2,300 per seat. Vantage 9.9 also is available; Compuware officials did not immediately have pricing information for the product on Tuesday.

Borland is providing Unified Modeling capabilities to Visual Studio users.

Borland's visual modeling tool, Together 2006 for Visual Studio, has been integrated with the Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, providing UML support and Borland LiveSource capabilities. LiveSource offers roundtrip engineering between source and class diagrams.

The new version of Together is due to ship later this summer.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 13, 2006 02:38 PM

June 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM Jazz-ing up Rational offerings

IBM with its Jazz research project is looking to fine-tune collaboration capabilities in its Rational software products.

The company discussed Jazz at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference 2006 event in Orlando, Fla., this week.

With Jazz, users of Rational products would be provided automatically with software development artifacts pertinent to the project they are working on, said Roger Oberg, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Rational. Rather than doing this manually, artifacts would be furnished to the desktop in an automated fashion.

Also included in the Jazz project is real-time communications via instant messaging. Jazz technology, however, is not expected to be included in IBM products for at least a year.

IBM is seeking contributions to Jazz from the community at large. Some parts of Jazz are expected to be made available via an open source format.

IBM this fall, meanwhile, plans to release versions of several products that will feature a greater componentization capability.

"One of the key aspects of this release is we're going to component-ize the products so that customers can configure their desktops more flexibly," Oberg said. The move benefits packaging and installation, allowing users to download the specific software they need rather than downloading an entire platform. For example, if a user just wants a Unified Modeling Language (UML) component but not the code analysis plugin, the user can just download the UML offering, said Oberg.

Products to be upgraded include Rational Application Developer, Rational Software Architect, Rational Software Modeler, Rational Functional Tester and Rational Performance Tester.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 8, 2006 04:52 PM

June 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM enhancing AJAX by contributing to Dojo toolkit

IBM is looking to boost AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) with extensions to the Dojo Toolkit that accommodate persons with disabilities.

Specifically, IBM plans to contribute technology via open source that will enable internationalization of applications and access to the disabled, through use of assistive technologies such as DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and Accessible widgets. The Dojo Toolkit is an open source JavaScript toolkit for building Web applications. It is sponsored by the Dojo Foundation.

Also, IBM will help integrate support of the Dynamic Web Accessibility specification into the Dojo Toolkit widget set. This specification is being developed as part of the World Wide Web's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative, IBM said. The W3C technology is intended to enable development of rich user interface components for Web applications that are accessible via the keyboard and when using assistive technologies such as screen readers and screen magnifiers.

The IBM contribution will extend the Dojo Toolkit data model and provide a foundation architecture and Web-based tools pertinent to software development best practices.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 5, 2006 04:05 PM

June 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Altova upgrades XML tools

Altova this week announced availability of the version 2006 release 3 (v2006r3) of its XML products line, including the revised Altova StyleVision 2006 visual stylesheet designer.

StyleVision now includes cascading stylesheets and JavaScript support. Other new features in v2006r3 include XML validation and error-tracking in XMLSpy 2006, which is an XML development environment.

MapForce 2006, a graphical data integration and Web services implementation tool, now has seamless integration with Microsoft Visual Studio.Net and Eclipse, according to Altova.

AltovaXML 2006, an XML standards processor, features XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Transformations) support, an XQuery 1.0 engine and COM (Component Object Model), Java and .Net interfaces.

Also part of v2006r2 is Authentic 2006, a free XML and database content editor.

Posted by Paul Krill on June 2, 2006 11:41 AM

May 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Zend boosts PHP developers

Zend Technologies is offering a free developer's version of Zend Platform, the company's PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) runtime optimization technology, to buyers of the Zend Studio Professional 5.2 PHP development environment.

Zend Platform provides PHP deployments with real-time debugging, monitoring, configuration, performance management, clustering and Java integration, Zend said. The developer version offers identical functionality to the production version of Zend Platform. PHP developers can deploy applications faster and reduce the frequency and severity of post-deployment problems, the company said.

Zend also is releasing a developer version of Zend Platform for Windows as part of its Zend Studio Professional 5.2 announcement. Zend Studio Professional 5.2 is available for purchase at www.zend.com for $299 per developer workstation. A 20 percent discount is available for purchases made before July 1.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 31, 2006 01:47 PM

May 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Compuware upgrades load test tool

Compuware on Tuesday introduced QALoad 5.5, a new version of its application load testing tool that automates tests through use of reusable scripting rules.

Also featured is enablement of collaboration and wizard-driven automation.

QALoad tests Web, Java, .Net, ERP and CRM applications and distributed environments. It simulates thousands of users performing transactions. Testers can pinpoint problems, optimize system performance and help to ensure a successful application deployment.

Features and enhancements in version 5.5 include:

* A parameterization wizard to simplify creation of rules. This reduces the need to use code during the scripting process.
* A rules library for managing rules developed with the parameterization wizard. Rules can be shared with the test team and a collaborative approach to scripting is offered.
* An expert user for Web applications, to improve diagnostics and root cause analysis for troubleshooting performance bottlenecks.
* Enhanced remote monitoring for servers, to correlate server metrics for SAP, BEA Systems WebLogic and IBM WebSphere with the overall performance of a test. This improves root cause analysis of performance problems.
* Enhanced reporting through templates to analyze results, to perform low-level transaction analysis and to identify poor performers.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 23, 2006 10:18 AM

May 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Borland unveils JBuilder roadmap

Borland Software at JavaOne announced a three-year roadmap for its JBuilder Java developer environment.

Featured in the roadmap is an update to JBuilder 2006 and a new framework based on Eclipse in JBuilder 2007, which is codenamed "Peloton" and shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.

A free JBuilder 2006 Foundation edition is available now and two JBuilder 2006 updates are planned for release later in 2006. An update due in June will support Java SE 6, the "Mustang" release of Java; an additional service pack will ship once Mustang is formally released by Sun Microsystems this fall.

Peloton will provide simplified access to Eclipse plug-ins as well as enhanced support for visual EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) and Web services design and development. An intent-based user interface planned for Peloton provides a consolidated view of project responsibilities.

The roadmap also includes Web development tooling and support for open source systems. An SOA cockpit for building SOA applications also is planned.

Future versions of JBuilder also are expected to back additional open source tools and frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate and Shale as well as further integrations with application lifecycle management products from Borland and others. The latest versions of application servers and Java standards also will be supported.

Borland has expressed intentions to sell off its developer tools so it can focus on the application lifecycle management space.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 17, 2006 10:46 AM

May 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft updates LINQ query technology

Microsoft on Wednesday released a new Community Technology Preview of its .Net Language Integrated Query Project (LINQ) Project.

LINQ extends the C# and Visual Basic programming languages with native language syntax for queries, thereby reducing the need to use multiple query languages for different data types, the company said. Included in the CTP are updates to integrated querying capabilities for relational data, objects and XML, to enable developers to integrate data into a range of application types.

Also featured in the CTP are productivity enhancements such as debugger support within the Visual Studio IDE, support for a broader range of development scenarios and feedback-driven features such as deep stored procedure support.

The CTP can be downloaded here.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 10, 2006 11:49 AM

May 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MobiForms offers mobile app dev tool

MobiForms has released version 3.0 of its MobiForms development tool for mobile applications, featuring the ability to build client-server applications using serial, USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi or mobile phone connections.

The product includes the MobiScript language, with file and data transfer commands that use any given IP address and port combination with TCP/IP. Version 3.0 also features an image object type for JPG and GIF files.

Using the MobiForms drag and drop interface, applications can be developed quickly for asset collection, field service, inspection, market research, site surveys, stock control and workshop repair.

MobiForms builds mobile applications for the following platforms: Tablet PC, Pocket PC, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, EPOC, Symbian and Palm. MobiForms can be downloaded here.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 9, 2006 08:19 AM

May 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Metallect linking change management to Eclipse

Metallect on May 31 is releasing a plug-in to link its Metallect IQ Server application change management software to the Eclipse development platform.

The Metallect offering is intended to help enterprises minimize risks by gauging impacts of changes to application logic or the underlying database. Metallect views its offering as pertinent to application change management, to SOA implementations and governance, to application portfolio management and to risk management.

Linking change management to the developer tool is critical, Metallect believes. "If you look at impact analysis and a dependency map, if you look at change management throughout the lifecycle, a big portion of it is actually executed by developers," said Metallect CEO Guy Hoffman.

The free plug-in will function with IQ Server 2.4, which starts in price at $100,000.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 8, 2006 04:15 PM

May 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MobiForms 3.0 does wireless

MobiForms said today its new version, 3.0, now includes networking functionality, allowing client-server mobile app to be built using serial, USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi or cell phone connections.

Its integrated MobiScript language includes file and data transfer commands using any given IP address and port combination, and includes a new image object type for JPG and GIF file support, the company said.

MobiForms Developer, "a rapid application development tool for building mobile applications for Tablet PC, Pocket PC, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, EPOC, Symbian and Palm based mobile computers and PDAs", has also been shifted to a Windows theme.

It cam be downloaded at the MobiForms Web site.

Posted by Mike Barton on May 8, 2006 10:27 AM

May 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Biferno Web scripting language heats up

Tabasoft has released an enhanced version of Biferno, an object-oriented, HTML-embedded scripting language for Web development.

Featuring a plug-in architecture for extensibility, version 1.3 of Biferno enables developers to add functionality through internal and external classes. The open source offering, which is a Web server add-on, works with Linux, Windows and MacOS and can be recompiled for other operating systems as well.

Enhancements in version 1.3 include an Apache 2.2 module, a customizable debug error page, email notifications on errors and better formatted log files.

Version 1.3 also includes many bug fixes, some relating to script timing and timeouts.

Biferno 1.3 is a free download available under the GNU General Public License. Tabasoft also has added a forum for developer communication about Biferno, accessible here.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 2, 2006 11:52 AM

May 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Scapa boosts application testing

Scapa Technologies on Tuesday announced Scapa 3.3, a new version of the company's application performance testing software featuring reporting and monitoring enhancements.

Version 3.3 includes version 2.0 of Eclipse BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools). Enhanced reporting capabilities featured include the ability to create percentile reports and improved styling and formatting.

Increased configurability and flexibility means data can be sourced from multiple test runs; a facility for structured data export also is featured.

Load testing has been improved through the configurability of the user interface. Integration with third-party enterprise monitoring technologies also is featured.

Posted by Paul Krill on May 2, 2006 10:29 AM

April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Eclipse readies Callisto project

The Eclipse Foundation on Wednesday unveiled a release candidate for its Callisto project, which combines 10 technologies into a single release.

The release candidate has all the features of the full platform, but bug fixes are expected between now and the general release planned for June.

"The goal of the Callisto Simultaneous Release is to release 10 major Eclipse projects at the same time," Eclipse said on its Web site. "We are doing this simultaneous release to support the needs of the ecosystem members who integrate Eclipse frameworks into their own software and products."

"Callisto's goal is to eliminate uncertainity about project version numbers, and thus to allow ecosystem members to start their own integration, cross-project, and cross-product testing efforts earlier," Eclipse said.

Each technology in Callisto currently requires a separate download. The Callisto page on Eclipse.com is here.

Included in Callisto are:

* Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project.

* C/C++ IDE.

* Data Tools Platform.

* Eclipse Modeling Framework.

* Graphical Tool Framework.

* Graphical Modeling Framework.

* Eclipse Project.

* Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform Project.

* Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project.

* Visual Editor Project.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 20, 2006 09:40 AM

April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sybase upgrades 4GL tool

Sybase on Monday announced availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 10.5, a version of the company's 4GL rapid application development tool that features improvements to the product's DataWindow technology for data access and presentation.

In version 10.5, DataWindow enables users to build complex reports and forms using autosize height functionality for all bands in a report, not just the main band where data resides, Sybase said. Also, a new presentation style, the TreeView DataWindow, enables hierarchical data to be easily displayed.

New properties in DataWindow make complex data access, manipulation and presentation easier and codeless, according to Sybase.

Also in version 10.5, a rich text control lets users deliver rich text in applications. Additionally, the product offers built-in support for new data types and boosts support for Web services.

The user interface has been enhanced with new icons, menus and toolbars.

PowerBuilder Enterprise version 10.5 is priced at $2,995. Current users on an Upgrade Subscription Plan pay $645..

Posted by Paul Krill on April 17, 2006 04:31 PM

April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Pegasystems Announces Autonomic BPM

Pegasystems announced that Version 5.1 of its BPM suite, PegaRules Process Commander, will be released in May. End-users gain a richer AJAX interface; developers benefit from easier navigation, component search capabilities, wizards that streamline configuration, and preflight simulations for testing and debugging process execution, business-rules execution, integration components, and UI components. The new edition also leverages the process and rules engine for self-diagnosis and self-repair.

PegaRules Process Commander 5.1, Pegasystems

Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 02:51 PM

April 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft releases Atlas toolkit

Microsoft this week released an Atlas Control Toolkit enabling developers using Visual Studio to build controls that use Atlas client-side technologies.

Atlas is a framework for building rich Web applications on top of ASP.Net 2.0. Developers can use the toolkit in Atlas-enabled Web sites to build reusable components. The toolkit features source code, documentation and samples. Code is being released as a Shared Source project. The kit is downloadable here.

Microsoft also has posted Release Candidate 1 of a Web Application Project option for Visual Studio 2005. This provides the same Web project approach as with Visual Studio 2003, but with Visual Studio 2005 features such as refactoring, class diagrams, test development and generics.

The project is downloadable here.

Microsoft on April 10, meanwhile, released an April Community Technology Preview of Atlas, foucsing on bug fixes and security.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 13, 2006 10:46 AM

April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Icesoft boosts AJAX, Java, Web apps

Boosting development of Web applications, Icesoft Technologies this week released a beta version of Icefaces Community Edition, a framework for J2EE featuring AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality.

Components are featured to reduce the complexity of application development. No applets or proprietary plug-ins are required. Icefaces applications are rendered as JavaServer Faces applications and Java developers are sheltered from doing JavaScript-related development.

Applications can be deployed to J2EE application servers such as IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and JBoss. Collaborative development is supported.

The offering can be downloaded here.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 12, 2006 11:39 AM

April 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Zend offers IP protection for PHP code

Zend Technologies on Wednesday is shipping Zend Guard 4, enabling developers, businesses and ISVs to protect intellectual property in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) code.

The product line features protection against reverse engineering of code while an application is being encoded. Zend Guard 4 is comprised of an encoder and a license manager, to protect the mass distribution of commercial PHP applications. Licenses can be modified or renewed without deploying new software, Zend said. Different license models, such as concurrent user or server-specific models, can be used.

A new interface features wizards to help encode applications and manage licenses. The product supports PHP 5.1.

Zend Guard 4 costs $995 for an annual subscription.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 11, 2006 12:06 PM

April 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Compuware links software testing, Microsoft ALM

Compuware is shipping an upgraded version of its functional testing product for software that works with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team System application lifecycle management package.

Compuware TestPartner 5.4 supports both the new Team System and .Net Framework 2.0, supplementing Team System with enterprise-level functional testing during the software development process.

"It now allows developers and testers to share common testing assets and it allows people to improve the quality of their applications earlier in the lifecycle," said Mark Eshelby, Compuware quality solutions product manager.

Other new features in TestPartner 5.4 include:

* An ActiveData wizard for automatic data parameterization, to build data-driven tests for less-technical users.

* An Import/Export wizard for moving, sharing and archiving test assets.

* Support for the Java 1.4.2 and 5.0 specifications as well as for the SAP 6.20 GUI for HTML and the SAP 6.40 GUI for Windows.

* A test results summary.

When purchased separately, TestPartner 5.4 costs $6,000 per concurrent user. It also can be purchased part of the QACenter Enterprise Edition testing suite, which starts in price at $8,000 per concurrent user.

Earlier this week, Compuware announced an agreement to acquire requirements management software vendor SteelTrace for approximately $20 million.

Posted by Paul Krill on April 6, 2006 01:31 PM

April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Eclipse unveils open source projects

The Eclipse Foundation on Tuesday announced several new projects and releases aimed at extending the Eclipse platform in the embedded and device software market.

Among the new initiatives is the next release of the C/C++ Development Tools (CDT) project, which, along with the Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project established last year, is being demoed at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif., this week.

The CDT and DSDP projects extend the Eclipse platform and provide frameworks for OEMs and vendors of real-time operating systems (RTOSs), software development tools, and electronic design automation (EDA) tools.

The CDT project forms the basis of at least 17 commercially available development tools, including those from QNX Software Systems, Intel, Nokia, Texas Instruments, and Siemens. More than 25 companies are contributing to the CDT project.

The first Eclipse projects are slated to be released in June; commercial products are expected to ship shortly after. Both projects are actively recruiting new contributors to their technology.

Posted by Caroline Craig on April 4, 2006 08:18 AM

March 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

OpenConnect introduces soaConnect CDI

OpenConnect Systems is partnering with HostBridge Technology to provide automation to CICS-based applications.

The companies' new joint mainframe software, soaConnect CDI, enables CICS transactions and data to be easily integrated with other applications.

By eliminating the need to rewrite CICS applications, customers can quickly transform existing mainframe-based business systems into Web services or integrate them with business processes within a SOA.

Posted by Caroline Craig on March 23, 2006 07:22 AM

March 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sun unveils developer programs

Sun Microsystems this week launched two developer programs, including one that provides developers with advice.

The Sun Developer Expert Assistance service offers specialized advice for programming issues pertaining to Sun software on a per-request basis, with guaranteed response times. The service costs $99 per request.

The Sun Community Champions Program helps members of SDN (Sun Developer Network) promote their experience with Sun technologies and tools. Participants can share strategies and solutions with the community through a written column.

Posted by Paul Krill on March 22, 2006 11:58 AM

March 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Newbury Networks announces location-based developer kit for Wi-Fi

Newbury Networks will release in the second quarter a software development platform, the Newbury Presence Platform, for adding location-based services to any Wi-Fi network.

The platform is targeted at both corporate developers and OEM solution providers who want to add services based on the location of the user.

For example, a user entering a conference room might receive information on the audio-visual equipment available in the room and instructions on its use.

In addition, the presence platform can be used for asset tracking of devices or people.

Security guards might be equipped with Wi-Fi tags on their belts, giving managers a way to track movements of guards and sending an alert such as a page, if the guard has not covered an area within a designated time period.

The Wi-Fi tags become the data collection points with the intelligence at the server layer.

Active Wi-Fi tags they send out signals over a designated time period can be used to track expensive equipment.

In addition to the Presence Platform, Newbury also announced its own Wi-Fi tracking application called Active Asset.

The Newbury Presence Platform and Active Asset will be available within 60 days. Active Asset starts at $12,995.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on March 21, 2006 03:13 PM

March 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sun announces C/C++ support for NetBeans IDE

Sun Microsystems has announced a preview version of the NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack, which allows developers to edit, compile, and build C and C++ applications on multiple platforms, including Solaris, Linux, and Windows.

The plug-in is supported in NetBeans 5.0 and preview versions of NetBeans 5.5, and includes such features as editor syntax highlighting, easier code browsing via hyperlinks between invocation and declaration, a makefile wizard, and templates for building C/C++ libraries and applications. The NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack preview version is available at http://cnd.netbeans.org.

Posted by Mike Barton on March 21, 2006 11:17 AM