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 Integration Watch
By Andrew Binstock
Solaris 10: A Flat in the Hat?
(Issue 116, December 15, 2004)
In mid-November, Sun launched Solaris 10, the latest incarnation of the company’s Unix operating system. Unlike the ambivalence that characterized Solaris 9’s x86 support, this version of the operating system is completely committed to the AMD and Intel 32-bit and 64-bit x86 platforms, as well as its SPARC processors. The x86 play, however, shows an interesting new strategy by Sun to be a player in the Linux server market.
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OSGi: Java’s Client-Side Container
(Issue 115, December 1, 2004)
Eclipse 3.0 contains an important architectural innovation that distinguishes it from previous releases: the use of a standardized Java plug-in framework, called OSGi. Before getting into what it is and why it’s important, let’s examine the reasons Eclipse architects made this change to begin with. click for full story
Open-Source Enterprise: A Mixed Prognosis
(Issue 114, December 1, 2004)
This fall, JBoss released version 4.0 of its Java application server—the first open-source product to receive the official sanction of J2EE compliance from Sun. click for full story
The Faithful Spouse
(Issue 113, November 1, 2004)
In my last column, I discussed my plans to use Java for future development projects because of the announced changes to Windows APIs. Since those changes will be the third round of API changes Microsoft has announced in five years, I chose Java over .NET purely because I don’t want to keep rewriting the same software.
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The Unfaithful Spouse
(Issue 112, October 15, 2004)
Recently, I completed a complex, client-facing application that had unusual user interface requirements and it made heavy use of XML, network access, and various forms of encryption on the back end. More than in previous projects, as I negotiated these various programming domains I had the sensation that I was using the wrong programming language: with C++, I was always working at too low a level. It was akin to mowing my lawn with a pair of scissors. The choice, alas, was unalterable because the product could not impose on users the requirement of installing a runtime framework such as .NET or the Java runtime. click for full story
Solving the Problems of Distributed Computing
(Issue 111, October 1, 2004)
Commercial distributed computing increasingly looks like grids or clusters and less like the traditional multitiered paradigm. More and more sites are forgoing the expensive monolithic server in favor of large numbers of inexpensive computers hooked together in a network of peers. The reason sites prefer this design is simple: price. There are other benefits as well, but price is the overriding consideration. click for full story
The End of IDE Competition
(Issue 110, September 15, 2004)
Believe it or not, there was a time when developers read head-to-head product roundups with considerable interest and delight. Most famous of these comparative reviews was the annual roundup of C compilers published in Computer Language (now called Software Development). Even the systems-oriented magazines like PC Tech Journal ran C compiler shootouts that included extensive benchmarks, deep analysis of the products and well-reasoned opinions. click for full story
Assessing Sun-Novell Rumors
(Issue 109, September 1, 2004)
The Aug. 2 issue of the Wall Street Journal contained an article that attributed to Sun Microsystems Inc. president Jonathan Schwartz comments regarding Sun’s inspection of Novell as a possible acquisition target. If true, these comments, I believe, do not augur well for either company. It’s hard to determine which one would be worse off if such a merger or acquisition were to take place. click for full story
Caching In on Java Caches
(Issue 108, August 15, 2004)
There is a growing perception that J2EE suffers from a troubling architectural defect: application code and deployment features are all mixed together. This is due to the need imposed on developers to code deployment constraints directly into the codebase. There are many instances of this, but few as common as developers’ need to build and manage their own caches.
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Mono Brings Portability to .NET
(Issue 107, August 1, 2004)
Novell has just announced the release of Mono 1.0, its open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET runtime environment. This product comes with a C# compiler, a JIT, a boatload of development tools, and most of the key API sets defined by Microsoft. Certainly, enough of the APIs are implemented to do most everything you’d need.
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Blogs Providing Effective Team Integration
(Issue 106, July 15 , 2004)
As more than one pundit has observed, the Web gives every idiot
a megaphone. If you consider the extremist screeds, bigoted claptrap and misbegotten nonsense posted on the Web, you undoubtedly suffer from the disquieting feeling that there are far more members of the flat-earth society than you ever believed. To this load of pabulum, we can certainly add blogs (or, if you prefer the formal term, Web logs), which in large part consist of self-indulgent narratives of trivial quotidian activities written by people with plenty of time on their hands.
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BEAting a Path to Nowhere?
(Issue 105, July 1 , 2004)
In late May I attended eWorld, BEA’s annual shindig in which it rallies the troops, announces new products and explains strategy. BEA has always been good at presenting these shows. Numerous technical sessions demonstrated the company’s deep understanding of enterprise applications and running them on Java platforms. No doubt about it—BEA has the technical chops. click for full story
The Decline and Fall of the U.S.
(Issue 104, June 15 , 2004)
In mid-May, I attended the World Business Forum in New York City, where I listened to CEOs Jack Welch (formerly of General Electric), Lou Gerstner (formerly of IBM) and Anne Mulcahy (currently of Xerox), in addition to business gurus Jeremy Siegel and Michael Porter. They spoke about many topics, but a recurring theme was the role of outsourcing and offshoring in the current economy. There was a remarkable unanimity of opinion on the topic and also one very scary forecast. click for full story
Spam Threatens the Way We Work
(Issue 103, June 1 , 2004)
Plenty of ink has been spent on what we could or should do about spam. Most of it has been wasted based on the amount of unwanted e-mail in my inbox. The U.S. government’s effort to CAN-SPAM so far has resulted in arrest warrants for four spammers—one of which is in custody. Meanwhile, spam volume has increased by 40 percent. click for full story
JBoss Asserts Itself
(Issue 102, May 15 , 2004)
Over the course of years, I have discussed many times the fate of various J2EE implementations—the early lead by BEA, the astonishing charge into first place by IBM, the lamentable decline of Sun, and the on-again, off-again push by database players such as Oracle and Sybase. In the mix were occasional mentions of other vendors, such as Allaire/Macromedia’s fine JRun product and other lesser-known platforms. Rarely, however, have I mentioned JBoss. The reason, quite frankly, is that for much of that period, JBoss was just another open-source project. click for full story
Not So Extreme Programming
(Issue 101, May 1 , 2004)
After several years of jubilant promotion, Extreme Programming (XP) settled into its anticipated role as an alternative methodology for developing software. Now, several years later, IT sites and ISVs have had a chance to assess the approaches espoused by XP and see just how much value they bring to the problem of software quality and timeliness. The results are not encouraging. click for full story
The Other Side of XML
(Issue 100, April 15, 2004)
One consequence of the popularity of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) is that XML has become a wildly popular data format. Today, it seems, if you’re writing new apps that don’t store data in XML, you’re so far out of the technology mainstream that you might as well be using packed decimals from COBOL. This pervasive adoption of XML, I believe, credits it with too much capability and woefully underestimates how difficult it is to use. click for full story
Helping Java Advance
(Issue 099, April 1, 2004)
One of the perils of designing a language to execute in a runtime environment (such as the Java Virtual Machine or the .NET Framework’s Common Language Runtime) is that from the get-go, you create legacy executable code. The key word here is executable. Any extensions to the language that might require the addition of new bytecodes threaten to upset all previous executable environments. click for full story
The Next Challenge for Open Source
(Issue 098, March 15, 2004)
A widely believed fallacy is that the global population will continue to grow inexorably and that in our children’s lifetime something will have to change if the Earth is ever to feed so many mouths. The reality is that almost all social scientists who study population trends expect global population to peak around 2050, before entering into a long cycle of decline. click for full story
Worming Their Way to the Heart
(Issue 097, March 1, 2004)
With the pandemic spread of the MyDoom virus in January, every IT department in the world is reminded anew that no site can ever consider itself immune from attack. This perception would seem like no big deal. But if we spiral back 12 to 18 months, you might remember how some sites were forcibly closed down by viruses. Today, due to much greater awareness, companies have invested wisely in software and hardware defenses to keep infrastructure safe and humming. But these defenses are inherently time-sensitive: They weaken as time passes if managers and developers do not stay abreast of what crackers are up to. click for full story
Adapting To Offshoring
(Issue 096, February 15, 2004)
In my previous column, I discussed offshoring, which is the growing practice of outsourcing services to offshore companies, especially ones located in India. I projected that this trend will grow at an accelerating pace and it will inexorably move domestic programming jobs from American shores to lower-paying climes. The trend is irreversible, and hence denials and fulminations against it by U.S. programmers are misplaced. click for full story
Don't Deny Offshoring
(Issue 095, February 1, 2004)
An unpopular topic today among U.S.-based programmers is the impact of outsourcing development offshore or what is colloquially termed offshoring. When I speak to developers, I repeatedly hear passionate condemnations or flip dismissals of offshoring—usually articulated in one of the following ways: click for full story
Write to the OS or the JVM?
(Issue 094, January 15, 2004)
In a recent visit to Sun Microsystems Inc., I was regaled for an hour by Jonathan Schwartz, the company’s charismatic executive vice president of software. Among the many messages Schwartz emphasized was the press’s need to urge developers to write applications for the Java Virtual Machine, rather than to the operating system—even if that operating system is Sun’s own Solaris. click for full story
Novell’s Novel: The Next Chapter
(Issue 093, January 1, 2004)
Novell’s announcement that it acquired SUSE Linux AG has been universally described as a masterstroke that will give the company a relevance it has not enjoyed in years. Even Wall Street got caught up in the excitement and immediately ran up the company’s stock price 50 percent. click for full story
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