SD Times Issue 141

3.2 MB·English

by  BZ Media

Sun’s Move
To Free Tools
Complete
BY ALEX HANDY source community, and deliv-
In a move that culminated with ered on that promise late last
last year’s release of an open year by announcing that its Java
Open Office Data Formats
JJAANNUUAARRYY 11,, 22000066 version of Solaris, Sun Micro- Enterprise System, N1 man-
systems has all but completed agement software and all devel-
ISSUE NO. 141
its shift away from selling soft- oper tools will be available free
Macrovision: Could Enable Innovation
ware, electing instead to mone- of charge, along with source
Installation Shouldn’t Be
An Afterthought . . . . . . . . . .5 tize support and service agree- code.
ments. John R. Rymer, vice presi-
But Microsoft must keep its promise and
Sun had long said it would dent of application development
become truly open, says Forrester analyst offer its myriad tools and soft- and infrastructure at Forrester
ware packages to the open- >continued on page 18
BY ANDY PATRIZIO dardize the file formats is a
SUN TIME FOR OPEN SOURCE
News that Microsoft plans to positive move for everyone,
use XML-based file formats in but suggested keeping an eye
Sun has been dabbling in open-source software since 1999. The company
Sony Snafu Brings Office 12 and submit the on Microsoft. “We tell our promises that it will release more of its software to the open-source com-
6
DRM to the Fore . . . . . . . . . . formats to the Ecma Interna- clients, ‘Make sure Microsoft
munity in the coming months.A look at the contributions:
tional vendor consortium to follows through with its com-
Innovations Draws 2006
Visual Rules Road Map . . . . .11 start them on the road to stan- mitment to make it a truly 1(9J9S9P: &T oSmercvalte ts) SJeapvat.H 2e0lp0 3(:S WING) MWaSr Mcha n2a0g0e5m:ent
Speaking Of dardization should be greeted independent, open standard,’ Jan. 1999: Jini Oct. 2003: Java Shared May 2005: Jini again!
with cautious optimism. So says and that would include [that] June 2000: NetBeans Data Toolkit
Languages: Nov. 2005:Sun N1
Q&A With one analyst who has followed there’s no proprietary aspects April 2001: JXTA March 2003–April 2004: management software,
Bruce Tate . . . . .13 the company and its battles to the standard at all,” he said. July 2001: GridEngine Adventure Builder Java Enterprise System,
with the state of Massachusetts. The company first an- June 2003: java.net Feb. 2004: Tonic (Solaris Sun Studio 11
Real Software Makes 14 Kyle McNabb, senior ana- nounced that Office would use July 2003: J2EE operating system parts
Simple Work of SQL Apps . . . lyst at Forrester Research, XML as its data file format at its Aug. 2003: JAXB, & kernel)
WebWork Merges With said Microsoft’s plans to stan- >continued on page 20 JAX-RPC (XML) June 2004: Looking Glass Source: Sun Microsystems
17
Apache Struts Project . . . . .
The Year Told a Tale of Two Platforms
Telerik Aligns ASP.NET plished nothing whatsoever.
Components With The year saw scandal affect-
17
AJAX, VS 2005 . . . . . . . . . . ing the houses of Islandia and
Smartbear Brings BY ALAN ZEICHICK There was a king with a large It was the year two thousand Mercury, even while all and
Collaboration To It was the best of times, it was company, who brought forth and five, being ordered the sundry saw new standards, new
22
Peer Code Review . . . . . . . the worst of times, it was the age Visual Studio 2005 and Team sixth of the new millennium, specifications, new acronyms
of Microsoft, it was the age of System and SQL Server 2005, except for those who insist that bespattered with rustic mire.
TI’s DaVinci Code Does
Heavy Digital Lifting . . . . .24 Eclipse, it was the epoch of Java, and ushered forth collaboration the new millennium started not Yet the Coder and the Tester
it was the epoch of .NET, we had and application life cycle man- in the year 2000. work unceasingly, work silently,
M-Business Anywhere
25 everything before us, we had agement unto the land of Win- Yet not all of that year’s tid- locally, nearshore and offshore,
Gets Web Service-Savvy . .
nothing before us, it was dows, on the throne ings centered around these dis- and no one heard them as they
Consortium Gets Grip the spring of collabo- of Microsoft. There parate, heterogeneous king- went about with muffled tread
On Multicore 25 ration, it was the win- were many princes doms. The Sun King and his to the nearest Starbucks WiFi
Communications . . . . . . . .
ter of outsourcing, we with fair faces who Black Prince advanced in all hotspot.
COLUMNISTS were all going direct to wrought open-source directions at once, embracing Across the land there was
BINSTOCK: service-oriented architectures— technologies, verily stretched AMD, extending and renaming scarcely an amount of order
The Changing Face
28 in short, the period was so far forth from Linux to Macintosh, Java, offering software crown and protection to justify much
Of Open Source . . . . . . . . .
like the present period, that seeing not only a tools frame- jewels as open source, all in the national boasting; daring bur-
O’BRIEN: 28 some of its noisiest authorities work with a plug-in infrastruc- pursuit of subscription revenue glaries by hackers and highway
‘Opening’ Office XML . . . . .
insisted on its being received, for ture but also a rich client plat- streams. The Oracle consumed data-robberies took place in the
HOLUB: good or for evil, in the superla- form, on the board of Eclipse. its archcompetitor, seemingly servers every night; end users
A Bolshevik Take
29 tive degree of comparison only, In both countries it was focused more on applications were publicly cautioned not to
On Computer Security . . . .
except that end-user license clearer than crystal to the lords than on platforms. The Lords of log in without encryption, or to
A PUBLICATION $7.95 agreements precluded the publi- of State, as well as to software Armonk captured the Atlantic, deploy without audit.
www.sdtimes.com cation of benchmarks in those architects, that things in gener- whilst SCO, the Scourge of All these things, and a thou-
comparisons. al were settled forever. Open Source Software, accom- sand like them, came to pass in
THE YEAR IN REVIEW and close upon the dear old year
two thousand and five. Envi-
Java Focused Overdue Updates, Delays roned by them, while the Coder
5 15
On Free and Easy . . . . . . . . Marked Microsoft’s 2005 . . and Tester worked unheeded,
Testing Evolved, Security An Appeal for the king with the large company,
Stayed Specialized . . . . . .8 Embedded Unity . . . . . . . .24 and princes with fair faces, car-
ried their divine rights, and con-
Eclipse Continued RUBINSTEIN:
To Snowball . . . . . . . . . . .12 M&A: Billions Spent . . . . .30 ducted their Greatness along the
z
Vistas that lay before them.

NEWS
55
wwwwww..ssddttiimmeess..ccoomm Software Development Times January 1, 2006
Installation Should Not Be an Afterthought
InstallShield 11.5 helps developers capture target needs as code is being written
BY DAVID RUBINSTEIN
Distributed development, it has
been documented, creates a
number of development prob-
lems—code sharing and test-
ing, requirements understand-
ing and management oversight
among them.
Digital rights management
solution provider Macrovision
would add installation to the list
of things that distributed devel-
opment makes more difficult.
To address the problem, the
company introduced FLEXnet ‘If you’re not thinking
InstallShield Collaboration, an
about how to go to
add-on module released in late
market early in the
November with InstallShield
11.5 that is designed to enable process, you’re going
developers to capture installa- to have problems.’
tion requirements as they write
their code.
—Bob Corrigan, product
Bob Corrigan, product man-
manager for InstallShield
ager for InstallShield, explained
that after InstallShield was
acquired by Macrovision in Tags within FLEXnet Installshield Collaboration allow developers to specify runtime requirements and detail other including the multiplatform
2003, the InstallShield team information needed during the install phase. edition, was simply “to keep
had to work with development pace with Microsoft and Visu-
teams around the globe, and market early in the process, the information about installa- ing more complicated than zip- al Studio 2005,” according to
found that communication you’re going to have problems.” tion should improve the quali- ping [an application] up in a zip Corrigan.
issues increased the amount The Collaboration module, ty of the deliverable software, file and throwing it out there.” The release adds support
of time it took to do a build, and he said, gives developers an whether it’s for sale or for use The module, which begins for .NET Framework 2.0
said there was more back- easy way to record data regard- internally, he added. at US$399 per seat and is and MS Build, and can
and-forth over issues than ing such things as runtime vari- Corrigan asserted that sold in packs of one, five or 10, convert Microsoft’s new Click-
he was used to when dealing ables, registry entries, dynamic developers should run unit tests will work with the company’s Once Installer—a Web-based
with developers all located in links and localization while they on the installation piece of the InstallAnywhere software early installation technology for
one place. are coding. application as they would on in 2006, Corrigan said. users who need more on a
“Most teams think about “It’s all captured into an the rest of the code. “Installa- client than is possible with
installation last instead of first,” XML file which is easy to tion requirements are tricky,” KEEPING PACE pure HTML—to the more
Corrigan said. “If you’re not share,” he noted. Giving he said. “A lot of development The goal of the late November feature-rich MSI installation
thinking about how to go to developers the ability to share teams think installation is noth- release of InstallShield 11.5, engine. z
In 2005, Java Focused on Free and Easy
BY ALEX HANDY JavaOne conference took place in Borland’s fee-based ware more compatible on both distinguished engineer at Sun.
The biggest news for Java in San Francisco. The word on JBuilder IDE, which added sides of the operating system “Something we learned from
developers in 2005 was the the floor was that JCP 2.6 had significant collaboration capa- fence. Sun made a similar Struts was the value of having
unveiling of Mustang, which solidified the process as essen- bilities to make the actual move earlier in the year at an out-of-the-box simple
will add to Java 6.0 early next tial to the continued expansion development process a more JavaOne and Microsoft’s Pro- structure that gets you up and
year such long-awaited features and growth of the language. social experience. fessional Developers Confer- running very quickly. We have
as a new bytecode verifier, With Sun Microsystems’ newly But while the IDEs moved ence, where it announced that to be trying to learn that les-
enhanced support for released J2EE specifi- forward into a brave new it would be working with son. Maybe in the past we
Web services and cations now under world of interpersonal com- Microsoft to better integrate all haven’t learned that. That’s the
greater integration the watchful eye of munication, Extreme Pro- things .NET with all things kind of thing we’re trying to
with XML. Also a the Java Community gramming and lower costs, Java. learn now. It’s always tough to
long time coming was Process, the march JBoss, IBM and Sun spent Playing well with others is find the right balance.”
EJB 3.0, an update to the toward ease of use through much of 2005 locking horns. key for Java as it evolves. And That sentiment was borne
Enterprise JavaBean specifica- intense revision continues. In September, Sun and IBM with Asynchronous JavaScript out by the Java development
tion that cleaned up the clutter Java developers in 2005 saw began to butt heads over Har- and XML, better known as community at large, as many
and tossed out a good deal their art become cheaper and mony, an open-source imple- AJAX, giving JavaScript a new time-saving frameworks ex-
of detritus, such as ejbPasivate() easier to produce. With mentation of J2EE, to which lease on life, Java developers panded throughout the year.
and ejbCreate(). This played well Eclipse and Sun’s Java Studio IBM is contributing code and are now looking for ways to Most notable among these were
with the overarching theme of Enterprise environments both Sun is contributing derisive work with the venerable Spring and Hibernate, both of
Mustang: ease of use. available at no cost, the IDE laughter. At the end of that scripting language instead of which were taken in by BEA
The Java community cele- space for Java is certainly same month, JBoss announced ways to replace it. and IBM, which added support
brated its 10th anniversary in cheaper. that it would be cozying up to This sentiment was echoed for these projects into their
June, a month after the annual The year also saw advances Microsoft to make its middle- by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, a SOA platforms and IDEs. z
NEWS
6
Software Development Times January 1, 2006 www.sdtimes.com
NewsBriefs
NEW PRODUCTS
TimeSys has made available two new LinuxLink subscriptions for
developers creating custom Linux platforms targeting Freescale Semi-
conductor’s ColdFire MCF547x and MCF548x processors. The sub-
scription includes the latest Linux distributions from Freescale; com-
pilers, application and kernel debuggers and platform development
tools; and participation in the online Developer Exchange . . . VA Soft-
ware has launched SourceForge on Demand, a hosted version of
SourceForge Enterprise Edition available on a project basis for small
development teams or workgroups in large enterprises. It costs US$50
per user per month, and additional projects can be purchased for $100 di
. . . WebDesktop.NET, a collection of 12 GUI components for the cre- onar
awtaios nr eolef aWseedb -ibna lsaetde Dapepcelicmabtieorn bs yt aJragkeatritnag, IMndicornoessoifat-’sb aAsSePd. NInEtTe rs2o.0ft, by Mara Le
Solutions. WebDesktop.NET, which is built on
on .NET Framework 2.0 and is tightly inte- ustrati
grated with Visual Studio 2005, also o Ill
introduces technologies such as XmlCompression and CssOptimizer Sony Snafu Brings Phot
for enhancing performance . . . VMware Player, a free release
from VMware, enables the user to run, evaluate and share software in
a virtual machine on a Windows or Linux system. VMware
also announced it has partnered with Mozilla to deliver the Browser DRM to the Fore
Appliance, a free virtual machine for Firefox that allows users to
securely surf the Internet by automatically resetting the environment
after every use, so personal information such as passwords are never
stored permanently.
Sun leads the charge with multiple
UPGRADES
open digital rights management projects
SteelTrace has launched version 4.0 of its SteelTracerequirements
tool, which includes full baseline support with merge-forward and BY ALEX HANDY to also be capable of molesting media and entertainment at
merge-back capability, advanced query creation and filtering, auto- The debate over digital rights non-Windows systems. Sun and director of Sun Labs,
matic suspect trace links and e-mail notifications for review cycles management came to a head in has been working on DReaM,
. . . Dundas Software has released Dundas Diagram 2.0, with new November, thanks to a failed SONY BALONEY an open standards-based DRM
features designed for developers requiring advanced relational chart- attempt by Sony BMG Music As if this weren’t bad enough, implementation. While the idea
ing for Web and Windows form projects. Included in version 2.0 is Visu- Entertainment to prevent the bloggers around the Internet of an open DRM standard may
al Studio 2005 support, layout engines and dynamic scrolling for large piracy of the works of several of began dissecting the XCP be strange, it’s nothing com-
Web diagrams . . .OpenLogic has launched ver- its recording artists. Now, both DRM software, and soon dis- pared with the types of applica-
sion 3.5 of its BlueGlue Open Source Infra- the entertainment industry and covered that it ran home to tions in which Edens sees
structure Management Suite. It includes the the software industry are up in Sony’s headquarters with sur- DReaM being a factor.
ability to add to development projects user- arms over just what went reptitiously captured informa- Edens maintains that an
selected open-source and proprietary software wrong, and are seeking ways to tion on its users. Others looking open-source DRM implementa-
or third-party commercial packages, along with documentation and stop another DRM debacle. at the code also accused Sony tion is no less secure than a
test suites. It costs US$399 per user on an annual subscription basis Sony’s music division had and First 4 Internet of infring- closed one. “The fact is that hav-
. . . GCC version 4.1was released at the beginning of December, with installed the Extended Copy ing on the Lesser GPL by using ing the source code or not hasn’t
numerous optimization features and enhancements to the integrated Protection (XCP) package from code from an open-source MP3 been an obstacle to defeating
vectorization engine . . . BEA Systems has released JRockit 5.0, a British company First 4 Inter- encoding tool. most systems that are out there.
new version of its JVM that now will be the basis for WebLogic Real net onto a number of its audio During November, half a Having your security source
Time. Features include numerous speed optimizations. discs during the summer and million computers around the code open for view has made the
early autumn of 2005, including world were infected with Sony’s software better,” said Edens.
PEOPLE
the latest releases from Celine DRM software, and security Edens sees a bright future
Dion, Ricky Martin and Neil researchers were publishing for DRM, and said that uses
David Barnettjoins Real-Time Innovations as VP of product manage- Diamond. The XCP DRM reports and infection maps that range from personalized man-
ment. With more than 20 years of experience in the real-time software package is designed to prevent frightened businesses, govern- agement to business uses to
industry, Barnett will oversee all product strategy, execution and man- users from ripping the CD’s ments and even the U.S. medical records to Sarbanes-
agement functions for the company’s product lines . . .Scott Miller audio tracks into MP3 format, Department of Justice. The Oxley compliance. Edens hopes
has joined legacy system migration solution provider and to stop the songs from state of Texas went so far as to that his company’s open DRM
Sophisticated Business Systems as CEO and president entering a user’s iTunes library. sue Sony in late November, initiative, embodied in DReaM,
. . . OpenLogic has named Stormy Petersas director Unfortunately, the XCP claiming it secretly embedded spreads to the entertainment
of product management. She will be responsible for software is not exactly subtle in CDs with spyware. By the end industry at large, replacing out-
developing a product strategy and managing the its methodology. The software of the month, even the Penta- dated and invasive systems like
expansion of OpenLogic’s flagship product, BlueGlue, hides all processes beginning gon had been infected by the the one Sony used.
PETERS into the enterprise . . . Exadel, a provider of software, with “$sys$,” a bit of obfusca- so-called Sony DRM spyware. But Ted Schadler, a vice
services and support that enable companies to create mission-critical tion that was, within a fort- Sony managed to make president at Forrester Re-
business applications based on open-source and Java technologies, night, exploited by virus writ- DRM a four-letter word among search, said that no matter how
has announced the appointment of Andrew Komolov, a six-year ers to hide their own trojans on technophiles. But if Sun DRM is implemented, it’s still
Exadel employee, to VP of client solutions . . . George Walsh has Windows systems. Sony subse- Microsystems has its way, it taking something away from
joined BZ Media as special projects editor, and will be working on SD quently recalled its discs, won’t remain so for long. consumers.
Times supplements and other programs. Walsh had been a contribut- though its newer DRM- Glenn Edens, a senior vice “You used to be able to do
ing writer to SD Times. z enabled releases are now said president of communications >continued on page 22
se_sdtimes_1205.qxd 12/6/2005 1:59 PM Page 1
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NEWS
8
Software Development Times January 1, 2006 www.sdtimes.com
Testing Evolved, Security Stayed Specialized
BY ALAN ZEICHICK agile developers, or by a cadre of phases, as the visibility While many companies testing and code coverage.
When you consider the applica- specialized test professionals in of testing and QA con- had long offered soft- That’s not to say that Micro-
tion life cycle, no part may be as distinct phases, as in traditional tinued to increase. ware test tools for soft controlled the testing agen-
controversial as software quality waterfall-related methodologies? This may be most Windows and .NET, da in 2005—far from it. Borland
assurance—or as critical. Should During the past year, the trend exemplified by Micro- Team System presented delivered Core SDP, its much-
tests be performed throughout appeared to be toward integrat- soft’s gradual release of Visual Microsoft’s first steps into code anticipated role-based software
the life cycle, as advocated by ed testing throughout the coding Studio 2005 Team System. profiling, static analysis, unit development platform for ana-
lysts, architects, developers and
testers. The Borland suites,
which are built mainly from its
existing products, offered tighter
integration than previous releas-
es. IBM continued evolving its
bewildering array of develop-
ment tools, some offered under
the Rational brand, and others
under the WebSphere Studio
brand. These included stand-
alone QA tools as well as full
application life-cycle manage-
ment suites with integrated test
functionality.
The open-source Eclipse
platform also made strides in the
area of software testing, as its
Test & Performance Tools Plat-
form project evolved to version
4.0, with improved usability and
features for finding perfor-
mance bottlenecks, but added
no significant new functionality.
As more platform players,
including BEA, Borland, IBM,
Oracle and Sybase, rebuild their
software on Eclipse, the impor-
tance of these core functions will
only increase.
NEW AREA: SOA TESTING
Both traditional and agile devel-
opers found new tools and ser-
vices covering two critical
aspects of quality assurance:
source configuration manage-
ment and build management. A
new area also arose: testing for
service-oriented architectures.
In some cases, this is more of a
branding exercise than a tech-
nology innovation: Parasoft, for
example, renamed its SOAPtest
software, initially created for
measuring message compliance
with the Simple Object Access
Protocol, to SOAtest, and secu-
rity firm Digital Evolution
renamed itself to SOA Software.
As a subset of software quality
assurance, the field of software
security remained dominated
by a small number of mainly
specialized firms. Smaller com-
panies like Agitar, Cenzic,
Compuware, Fortify, Kenai,
Klocwork, Logic Library, NT
Objectives, Ounce Labs, Para-
soft, Pre-Emptive Solutions,
Secure Software, Segue, SOA
Software, SPI Dynamics and
Watchfire control the discussion
and advance the state of the art. z