SD Times Issue 213

4.9 MB·English

by  BZ Media

A BZMediaPublication
SPECIAL REPORT
JANUARY 1, 2009 • ISSUE NO. 213 www.sdtimes.com • $9.95
The demo that
Economy aside, ’08
was year of cloud
changed the world
BY ALAN ZEICHICK and that our laid-off colleagues
Writing in December about find new employment.
Mouse, GUI, NLS debuted 40 years ago
2008, it’s hard to think of a better Beyond the economy, there
beginning than the are five 2008 trends
BY ALEX HANDY macroeconomic cli- that we’ve chosen
OnDec. 9, 1968, computing was mate. The causes of to highlight:
changed forever. At the Fall the world financial
Joint Computer Conference in crises were many and the effects 1. The increased profile of
San Francisco, Dr. Douglas C. widespread. Software develop- the cloud. One might credit
Engelbart and his team of ers, as with all workers, are see- Amazon.com for pushing cloud-
researchers in Menlo Park ing uncertainty. While it’s true based computing as an enter-
dtrDigcneeoretemfanmrempfor eohdror(nieusceNsd,can t mLtlrct iaooiSautn n)erasg.k des ,et rcoTtd hto hhitetlnlhhee atM eeeb Oreopomfvruantaehcobltnieeuliniv,trsc e,e e ’o sv ,e fi nSfd dtioAyrheisswtloe--tl Dtdwheooemur lg4odl0n atstsoht Cr taa.htneEino nGingvU,ee Ilwr bsahaanirrcdtyh tw oihnafe tsh r mioosond l uuehscgaeeen.dnd dt thaoery c elebrate Engelbart photo by Veronica Sutter hctiictnnheooaggsamsnt t eso sjpoumrop,alsfeanatatrw tnryabic yoatheh irnoeoaei tnsnr e gaa scflaslhoat n cuiraodio t zr tsa iootatmtsfso if,o l a—d tndnfhosoeaoao rvgartr ’e erssrwe.lreso hdmwspoueehasecrloe--l, pjGTicbonlarhoiocisnesoureee egddd arl. e e srb,aeae TypSsds ohcpao nolelueism cprs acfoapaotefpiarrf,oeun cinn elibeasi.mt cursy iotafat omnysor tyd of ai dsnovfeoecafdr rrly vo sS ieuttucih hdtean’eess--.
ing, and the tunneling interfaces coworker moused his own cursor sary of Engelbart’s famous We can all hope that the oriented applications was imme-
through the then-fledgling around the screen simultaneous- demo, SRI (now an indepen- economy begins recovering soon continued on page 17 >
Internet. ly. While Engelbart was in San dent non-profit research firm)
WEB SERVICE SOFTWARE MAKERS
Engelbart’s work on the NLS Francisco, his comrade in Menlo and Stanford University held
began at the Stanford Research Park worked on the same docu- two days of talks and collabora-
Institute (SRI) in April of 1964. ment on the same screen during tive thinking sessions, called ALLY FOR INTEROPERABILITY
There he formed a lab known as the demonstration. The team Program for the Future. Many
the Augmentation Research used ARPAnet to send the inter- in attendance praised Engel-
Center (ARC). The lab’s goal face information to and from San bart’s work and its influence on BY DAVID WORTHINGTON Software AG, Teamlog and TIB-
would be to create tools that Francisco in what was a glimpse modern society. Politics and software sales make CO. Standards, including WS-
would enhance human intellect into the future built upon Peter Norvig, director of strange bedfellows. Competing Addressing, WS-ReliableMessag-
and productivity, primarily telecommuting and telecollabo- research at Google, said that the Web service infrastructure soft- ing, WS-Security and WS-
through novel new computer and ration. paradigms developed at ARC are ware makers, along with some of Transactions, are being validated
software designs. But ARC also To accomplish these many still ahead of their time. “Intel their clients, have formed a busi- by members’ products, and the
focused on using the tools it cre- software and hardware feats, was able to push forward contin- ness alliance to test standards- organization has indicated that it
ated to build even better Engelbart’s team ual improvement in terms of based integrations through inter- intends to work with standards
tools, establishing the ENHANCING designed everything from processors, but there’s not been operability scenarios. bodies to accelerate the adoption
COLLECTIVE
blueprints for an evolu- the ground up. Their continuous improvement of the The Web Services Test of emerging standards.
INTELLIGENCE
tionary work environ- work forced ARC mem- [user interface],” said Norvig. Forum (WSTF) recently went “As business demands for mul-
PAGE 13
ment. bers to build tools, then public with its work, which tests ti-enterprise process automation
THE TOOLS OF EVOLUTION
Engelbart and his team creat- use them on a daily basis. In such customer-based scenarios in accelerates, the need to test com-
ed the world’s first graphical user an environment, these tools At the Program for the Future, which services must function in munity-based integrations built on
interface. It was just one of many would constantly be revised or former members of Engelbart’s multivendor environments. standards is critical,” said Mau-
firsts demonstrated that day. thrown out in favor of new ones. team spoke about their work on The WSTF roster includes reen Fleming, program director of
During the presentation, Engel- It was the world’s first evolution- the NLS and their participation Active Endpoints, AIAG, Axway, Business Process Automation and
bart edited a text file with a ary development system. in the Mother of All Demos. Cisco, Eviware, Ford, Fujitsu, Deployment at IDC. “The WSTF
mouse and keyboard, while a In honor of the 40th anniver- continued on page 21 > Hitachi, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, continued on page 17 >
IN THIS ISSUE
Python 3 makes clean break with past . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Google, Salesforce cooperate in cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
BizTalk 2009 beta brings ALM support . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Windmill promises dedicated support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Microsoft . . . .page 5 Security . . . .page 10
O’BRIEN: Restful nights and carefree weekends . . . . . .31 Java . . . . . . . .page 5 Open Source . .page 15
RUBINSTEIN: 2008 was still a buyer’s market . . . . . . .33 ALM . . . . . . . .page 7 Test/QA . . . . .page 15

Visualize YOUR DATA
Associating your organizational data with location is the foundation for making critical
strategic and operational decisions that improve performance, competitiveness,
efficiency, responsiveness and effectiveness.
PITNEY BOWES MAPINFO enables organizations to leverage Java, .NET or Web Services to build custom location intelligence
solutions or add location to existing systems. Through this customization, organizations can:
• Improve asset management by optimizing asset location
• View key performance indicators such as revenue by sales territory
• Improve fleet productivity and customer service by determining the best path for multi-point deliveries or routes
Industry examples of location intelligence in action:
• Telecommunications: strategically locate cell towers for maximum coverage and market penetration or identify
new revenue through build-out opportunities
• Insurance: lower aggregated risk to natural disasters by visualizing existing customers along with flood,
hurricane and other relevant data
• Government: create e-government, citizen self-service web portals
• Retail: understand your true trade area for site selection and target marketing opportunities
• Banking: optimize branch and ATM networks, improve sales performance and target marketing efforts
Visit www.mapinfo.com/sdtimes to download whitepapers on deployment and uses of location intelligence,
view streaming media pieces, download free SDK’s and register for upcoming webinars.
NEWS
5
www.sdtimes.com Software Development Times January 1, 2009
Redmond’s yearlong race
Microsoft delivers platforms, open source
BY DAVID WORTHINGTON Beijing Summer Olympics allelism and horizontal scale.
For Microsoft, 2008 began with website while still in beta. In 2008, developers gained a
a triple-play development plat- With its 2008 development greater understanding of the
form launch, sped wave shipped, Mi- inner workings of Microsoft’s
to the introduction crosoft forged products. The company pub-
of Silverlight 2 and ahead with the next lished documentation for its
ended with a pre- generation. In high-volume business product
view of the company’s next-gen- April, it divulged details of its APIs and for its Windows client
eration development platform. Oslo initiative, a multiproduct, and server protocols. It vowed
The company also made strides multiyear project to bring mod- to abide by self-imposed inter-
in its interoperability work and eling to the mainstream of appli- operability principles.
even embraced some open- cation development. Communi- The company also became
source projects. ty Technology Previews rolled at more engaged with standards
The arrival of the 2008 wave the Professional Developers bodies and the open-source
Python 3.0 makes
of Microsoft’s development Conference (PDC) in October. community.
platform was marred by repeat- At PDC, Microsoft intro- On the standards front,
ed delays and false starts, but duced its “M” modeling lan- Microsoft accepted an invitation
clean break with past the waiting game ended in guage and showed off Visual to join the Advanced Message
February. The final editions of Studio 2010. M is a low-level Queuing Protocol and joined
Windows Server 2008, SQL XML-based language that is the Object Modeling Group.
Server 2008 and Visual Studio designed to let developers use It also became a sponsor of
BY ALEX HANDY by neophytes learning how to 2008 have been in customers’ domain-specific languages. It’s the Apache Software Founda-
Python 3.0 has arrived, bringing program, Print is typically hands for nearly a year now, covered by the company’s Open tion, donated technical assis-
sweeping changes. The over- used for debugging purposes. and Microsoft’s partners have Specification Promise. Visual tance to Mono’s Moonlight pro-
haul of the popular dynamic That meant a number of hacks delivered products—from Studio 2010 has tooling for ject for creating an open-source
scripting language even breaks had to be concocted over the components to ALM and test- modeling in M and will provide implementation of Silverlight
“Hello, World!” But it’s all in years to output program errors ing tools—that leverage those new ALM capabilities. that runs on Linux and
the name of purging special to log files. releases. Microsoft also used the PDC announced its intention to ship
cases, outliers and inconsisten- As a function, Print can han- Silverlight 2 shipped in spotlight to unveil an early ver- the jQuery JavaScript library
cies from the language. dle such needs with more ele- October, bringing the subset of sion of its platform for cloud- with Visual Studio.
The update was a long time gance, said Hettinger. The the .NET Common Language based services. While Azure “Open source made more
coming, said Raymond Het- Python 3.0 team even piped in Runtime to bear on rich Inter- leverages developers’ existing strides this year [at Microsoft]
tinger, member of the Python log functionality with a specific net application development. .NET programming skills, it than any other year,” said Robert
Software Foundation board and Print modifier. Silverlight 2 had a trial by fire requires an understanding of Duffner, director of platform
a core developer of the language. Other changes include the when it was deployed on the new development patterns, par- strategy at the company. z
“It had to be done,” he said. integration of Python’s two inte- Java now more accessible
“Python has gone through a ger types. “Every time long
number of evolutions. Initially, integers printed, they had an ‘L’
it was not an object-oriented on the end of them. For several
OpenJDK advances, so do programming layers
language. Later, object orienta- years, we’ve been trying to uni-
tion was added on top. Then fy integers and long integers.
there was a change in how They’re a single entity in 3.0,” BY ALEX HANDY aging the Java cation eliminates many of the
objects were implemented. Hettinger said. For many, 2008 infrastructure to arguments against using Python
“The challenge for develop- “One of the nicest differ- had been expected get websites up in an enterprise environment.
ers, for the past few years, was, ences [in feel] between 3.0 and to be the year a and running quick- Java itself expanded its
‘This works with a new style 2.x Python is that [3.0 is] clean- true open-source Java arrived. ly, Grails is, for the Groovy set, capabilities. Under its new
class, this works with the old er all across the board,” he Apache Harmony aside, the the fastest way to mount a Web- chairman, Patrick Curran, the
style class.’ [Now] you no longer added. “Python used to be filled OpenJDK did make great head- based charge atop a Java-based Java Community Process has
need to know the differences. with little special-case rules. way toward its goal of comple- back end. begun to work on greater
The new language is just a little We’ve always had complaints tion this year: Those pesky Of course, to use Grails, you transparency, with wikis gain-
more beautiful in that regard.” about the standard library. encumbered segments of code have to know Groovy. It’s been ing favor over the private mail-
The changes in 3.0 are so far- There [were] some early Inter- in the font rasterization and said that the language is quick ing lists of the past. To Java,
reaching that even the humble net RFC modules that were encryption routines, among oth- and easy to learn for Java devel- the group added support for
Print statement has been trans- obsolete. We had a ton of mod- ers, were finally replaced with opers, but those who have long RESTful Web services.
formed: It’s now a full-blown ules that were obsolete. But we open alternatives. But with the feared the language of the bean Java ME saw many additions
function. Said Hettinger, “One couldn’t take them out, because OpenJDK now expected to can still join in the Java fun via last year. The mobile platform
of my issues with changing the people were relying on them. arrive sometime around JavaOne Jython and JRuby. Both of those now supports more-robust loca-
Print statement that made me “For the most part, those are this June, the most significant projects are now backed by cor- tion-based triggers and has
step back was, you know, on [now] gone. So 3.0 is easier to thing about Java in 2008 was, porate sponsorship, most added a host of features for han-
your first day learning to pro- learn, and cleaner.” perhaps, not actually Java. notably Sun's support of JRuby. dling multimedia, digital rights
gram, you write ‘Hello, World!’ Python 3.0 is available from Rather, it was the year of the For the Ruby crowd, 2008 management and telematics.
We just broke ‘Hello, World!’” Python.org. Users looking to programming layer on top of was a year of discovering just The Java ME platform as a
The problem with the Print transition from older editions Java. Groovy made its way into how mature Java’s database whole is expected to change
statement, he said, was that it are advised to move their appli- developers’ hands, and as the access libraries had become. more significantly this year, as
was continually being shoe- cations to Python 2.6 first, since year passed, new projects put For the Python programmers the JavaFX presentation-layer
horned into odd behaviors it the earlier release is a transition the scripting language to good out there, working up a domain- language makes its way into the
was incapable of performing version that includes tools for use. Not the least of those was specific language or testing lay- specification for use on mobile
on its own. Aside from its use bringing old code into 3.0. z Groovy on Rails (Grails). Lever- er on top of a legacy Java appli- devices. z
NEWS
6
Software Development Times January 1, 2009 www.sdtimes.com
Google, Salesforce cooperate in cloud
APIs based on Web standards
such as SOAP can interoperate
without vendor cooperation,
Free Python library integrates Google App Engine with Force.com hybrid solutions make it easier to
do, said Parker Harris, Sales-
BY DAVID WORTHINGTON applications that combine companies announced Force Force.com Web application force co-founder and executive
A deepening partnership CRM business applications .com for App Engine, a free platform. Documentation, best vice president.
between Google and Sales- with consumer Web services. Python library that installs into practices, sample code and test Specifically, Force.com for
force.com has made it easier for At the recent Dreamforce Google App Engine, providing cases are included. App Engine permits Google App
developers to create hybrid conference in New York, the integration with Salesforce’s While cloud services with Engine applications to read and
write to data from Force.com. It
can also access Salesforce ser-
vices through native calls to
Salesforce’s APIs without requir-
ing developers to create their
libraries using API callouts, Har-
ris said. Those services include
Salesforce’s database, logic and
Why is Amyuni PDF workflow capabilities.
Likewise, Force.com devel-
opers may write applications
that incorporate Google’s Web
so interesting? services with business data.
TRACKING HIGH ROLLERS
Cloud-computing solution
startup Appirio collaborated
with Harrah’s Casino Hotels to
develop a Web application that
connects a slot machine Web
service, hosted on Google App
Engine, with CRM data from
Force.com. The composite
application tracks gameplay and
issues reward points to the
chain’s VIP customers.
Appirio has also created a
Proven High-Performance Rapid Integration
calendar synchronization utility
that connects Salesforce to
Choose a PDF technology that is Develop with the fastest PDF Integrate PDFconversion,creation Google Calendar, said Harris.
integrated into thousands of conversion on the market,designed and editing into your .NET and The companies began work-
ing together in 2003 to create
applications behind millions of to perform in multithreaded and ActiveX applications with just a few
mashups, resulting in products
desktops worldwide. 64-bit Windows environments. lines of code.
such as Salesforce for Google
AdWords and Salesforce for
Google Apps, among others.
Expertise OEM Licenses Customization
While Salesforce customers
may negotiate service-level
Produce accurate and stable PDF License and distribute products Let our experienced consultants
agreements directly with the
documents using reliable tools quickly and easily with a PDF help you turn your software company, there are no SLAs
built by experts with over ten years technology that does not rely on requirements into customized available for services that cut
of experience. external open-source libraries. PDF solutions. across cloud-computing pro-
viders, Harris told SDTimes.
The company might consider
offering joint SLAs with its part-
We understand the challenges that come with PDF integration.
ners if customers ask for them,
From research and development, through design and
he said, adding that the Google
implementation,we work with you every step of the way. and Salesforce already share
information about their respec-
Get 30 days of FREE technical support with your trial download! tive networks’ health.
Salesforce’s interoperability
work is not limited to Google. In
www.amyuni.com
November, it announced a part-
nership with Amazon to deliver
Force.com tools for Amazon’s
Elastic Compute Cloud and
Simple Storage Service.
All trademarks are property of their respective owners. © 1999-2009 AMYUNI Technologies. All rights reserved. Cloud-computing providers
USA and Canada Europe that work together on interop-
Toll Free: 1 866 926 9864 Sales: ([phone] erability have the right attitude;
Support: [phone] Support: ([phone] siloed systems would be a com-
Info: [email protected] Customizations: [email protected] petitive barrier to market entry,
said Beagle Research managing
principal Denis Pombriant. z
NEWS
7
www.sdtimes.com Software Development Times January 1, 2009
Updates dominate in wake of ALM 2.0
BY JEFF FEINMAN year by creating suite. The company then creat- development projects, without help developers employ such
While ALM 2.0 SaaS versions of its ed what it calls Rich Interface having to write code. methodologies as Scrum; fea-
had the market Business Mashups Mashups, which tie widgets, TechExcel made a midyear ture-driven development, cham-
abuzz in 2007, last suite, which lets RSS feeds and Flash compo- addition to its DevSuite, add- pioned by the Agile Alliance;
year was quieter, marked by developers automate business nents into Serena mashups to ing the DevSpec requirements and iterative development,
updates to established tools. processes, and its Mariner proj- let users coordinate activities manager. The new version also which separates system func-
Embarcadero Technologies ect- and portfolio-management such as business meetings and brought a library of guides to tionality into iterations. z
gave the market something to
talk about in May when it
acquired Borland’s CodeGear
division for US$23 million.
Gartner analyst Jim Duggan
said in the wake of the sale that
there had been some friction
between Borland’s ALM and
CodeGear IDE groups, noting
that while ALM is a high-cost,
low-volume market, Code-
Gear’s IDEs were low-cost and
high-volume.
YourPartnerinCreatingCustomDigitalDashboards
Early in the year, CollabNet
rolled out a new version of its
CUBiT build, integration and
testing software. The release
added support for mixed-mode
deployment, which chunks
infrastructure so it can be used
for various needs, including
development, testing and QA,
staging, and production.
CollabNet also released
SourceForge Enterprise 5.0,
offering new project page fea-
tures—such as nested pages and
dynamic, portlet-like compo-
nents—that let developers
model and document their
process phases.
MKS Software revamped its
integration with Eclipse, adding
the ability to refactor opera-
tions, a common activity in agile Choose Dundas Consulting for the creation and optimization of digital dashboard applications. Our team of
development. The improved highly specialized software consultants will deliver custom dashboards to meet your organization’s unique needs.
integration also brought change
Dundas can assist you with:
packages that connect change
management workflows to
Jump Starting Dashboard Initiatives Dashboard System Development Dashboard Advisory
source code, letting developers
Let us work with your development Join the list of discerning organizations Bring Dundas on board in an
switch easily among tasks.
team to leverage our technology that have harnessed our enterprise- advisory role to empower your IT
Perforce Software focused
expertise in the design & development development capabilities to deliver assets and bring your dashboard
on visual differencing function-
of complete dashboards from start to robust, multi-tiered dashboard systems. system to life.
ality this year in an update of its
finish.
software configuration manager.
An image diffing feature that
works on multiple platforms lets
users compare a changed image
side by side with an unchanged
image via the Perforce Visual VViissiittwww.dundasconsulting.com/method
Client. ttoo rreeaadd oouurr ddaasshhbbooaarrdd--bbuuiillddiinngg mmeetthhooddoollooggy
Seapine Software updated
Surround SCM; the software
configuration manager now
includes integration with
Eclipse 3.3, JetBrains’ IntelliJ
IDEA 6.0 and 7.0, and Sun
Microsystems’ NetBeans. The
revision’s Visual Studio integra- [email protected] [phone] x139 [phone] x139
tion added the ability to create
www.dundasconsulting.com
labels, merge files and set the
file workflow state from within
the shortcut menu. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Serena Software began the
NEWS
8
Software Development Times January 1, 2009 www.sdtimes.com
HP targets cohesion in
COMPANIES Quality Center update
Software development and outsourcing company Murano Software
has created G1MobileSoft.com, an offshore development company
devoted to the creation of mobile applications. The company said that BY ALEX HANDY trol those projects in a more col- goal is to give developers and
G1MobileSoft.com helps companies create applications for the Android Hewlett-Packard will release laborative way and to extend business intelligence workers a
mobile phone or the iPhone . . .Open-source software provider Open- version 10 of Quality Center them out to users who would single place to deal with all of
Logic is launching open-source training services that the company this month, the company normally live within the walls of their software creation needs,
said will provide expert advice based on best practices and experience reported at its annual user con- their own projects, he said. yet still allow the individual
from working with mid- and large-sized companies. OpenLogic said it ference in Vienna, Austria. Previous versions of QC, tools of development, such as
will have seminars along with hands-on training and workshops. The biggest change for users said Sarbiewski, focused on bug tracking and repository
of the existing quality assurance handling development in a pro- controls, to be interchangeable.
NEW PRODUCTS
suite will be the more cohesive ject-specific fashion. With ver- As such, QC 10 is available a
package around the testing, sion 10, subprojects and indi- la carte. Existing customers may
iRise has created a set of visualization templates for SAP applications life-cycle management and vidual components are no qualify for 0% lease financing.
that the company said can be used as an alternative to writing code requirements gathering tools longer isolated islands; connec- HP sees a need to make its soft-
for proposed changes in SAP environments. iRise for SAPis a special that make up HP QC 10. tions among requirements, ware more enticing to cash-
version of iRise Enterprise Edition, and its page templates and styles QC 10 will use Web-based issue tracking and testing per- strapped organizations, and it
are aimed at accelerating the creation of SAP extensions and screens portals to coordinate all of the sist across project boundaries. hopes that the financing effort
. . .JetBrains released a beta version of Meta Programming System work around software projects This time out of the gate, will drive sales, said Sarbiewski.
(MPS), an environment that uses language-oriented programming for inside of an enterprise, said requirements can be tied to QC 10 will also available as a
building specialized languages for software development. Domain-spe- Mark Sarbiewski, senior director bugs, and managers can analyze software-as-a-service offering
cific languages and applications can be built and existing languages of products at HP Software. The workflow without extra modifi- directly from HP, starting this
can be extended with MPS. The 1.0 release of MPS is planned for ear- revision brings the ability to con- cations or customizations. The month, he said. z
ly 2009. It will be free, with a major part of its code being open source,
Visualization tools play with
according to JetBrains . . .Mobile application company Everypoint has
created the Nemomobile application platform, which provides what
the company calls high-performance vector graphics and direct-to-
consumer distribution of applications. Nemo has a database for real- Requirements Composer
time replication and synchronization of all content types, along with
usage analytics and single sign-on access to an application directory.
UPDATES
BY JEFF FEINMAN
Two companies are riding shot-
DataDirect Technologies has added the DataDirect Bulk Load feature gun with IBM’s release of Ratio-
to the newest release of its Connect for ADO.NETdata connectivity nal Requirements Composer,
product. The new feature brings bulk load functionality for the .NET separately offering software that
platform to provide consistent semantics across all databases, the adds visual capabilities to IBM’s
company said . . .Netikus.net released a new version of EventSentry, requirements definition tool set.
its Windows event log, compliance reporting and network monitoring A version of iRise’s Connect
suite. Event Sentry 2.9 brings improved open-source Web reporting visualization software for Re-
and new compliance reporting, as well as file access tracking and quirements Composer lets
uptime monitoring . . .Embedded Linux company MontaVista Soft- developers experiment with
ware has added the ability for MontaVista Linuxto work with ARM’s requirement scenarios, while a
ARM1176JZ-S and ARM1176JZF-S processors. The company said this new release of Ravenflow’s
gives consumer device manufacturers a commercial-quality Linux Raven requirements definition
implementation . . . Open-source database management software software automatically generates
provider Ingres has integrated Ingres Database 9.2 with SAP’s visual models from use cases.
NetWeaver platform. As a result, SAP applications can access the iRise Connect, announced Using Raven 5.0 alongside IBM’s Requirements Composer lets developers
database through an Ingres database. Ingres executives said this lets last month, lets developers automatically generate visual models from use cases.
its customers do things like complement business intelligence embed live software prototype
processes from NetWeaver with data from Ingres products . . .Origi- visualizations into Requirements ers and business stakeholders ware project delays and cancel-
nal Software released a new version of its TestDrive software test Composer via iRise’s SmartView can offer feedback early in the lations,” said Adam Frankl,
automation product, adding interoperability with Java and Oracle wrapper. The developer can tin- software life cycle, Bishop said. Ravenflow’s vice president of
Forms. Company executives said many business-critical applications ker with the visualizations to try In a similar vein, Ravenflow’s marketing.
are built in Oracle Forms, and TestDrive can intelligently understand out requirements scenarios new version of Raven, also Raven 5.0 parses English
and monitor these applications. within the IBM tool. The visual- released last month, adds visual text and generates visual mod-
izations are published in real validation to Requirements els and specification documents
PEOPLE
time and can be linked into Composer. Using the IBM tool, that can be viewed and under-
requirements artifacts to help developers and analysts can stood by nontechnical stake-
Steve Messickhas been named chief information officer of Instanti- developers determine what to select requirements and auto- holders.
ations, a provider of Eclipse-based commercial software. Messick is a build, according to iRise. matically generate visual models IBM released Requirements
co-founder of Instantiations and was previously its principal engineer. “Think of visualizations the from use cases. A feature called Composer in early December.
Prior to helping start the company in 1997, Messick was a senior engi- same way you might think of 3D Specification Checker can scan Based on IBM’s Jazz platform,
neer at Tektronix and also worked at Digitalk. In his new role, he will simulations of airplanes, cars or software specs for missing the tool set takes IBM’s require-
be responsible for overseeing strategic direction of the company’s buildings, only this time you’re requirements, identifying pro- ments solution a step earlier in
product growth . . .Mike Seashols has been named executive chair- experiencing proposed software cess flow gaps, missing alterna- the life cycle than the company’s
man of the board for VirtualLogix, a real-time virtualization software before it is built,” said iRise chief tive flows and unspecified data RequisitePro requirements
technology company for computing devices. Seashols has served as marketing officer Mitch Bishop. transfers. manager, helping software devel-
CEO object-oriented database company Versant and content man- The visualizations behave like “Missing requirements are opers draft and define require-
agement software company Documentum. z the final application, so develop- the most common cause of soft- ments from the start of a project. z

NEWS
10
Software Development Times January 1, 2009 www.sdtimes.com
Government, industry mobilize on vulnerabilities
BY DAVID WORTHINGTON act as vulnerabilities (DNS), which translates domain their operating systems and tially harmful resources that
It’s an unfortunate in some of the Web’s names into IP addresses that are servers to protect against a vul- would appear to be legitimate.
fact that rapid inno- underlying protocols meaningful to machines, was nerability in DNS software. It Likewise, a flaw was discov-
vation in software were revealed. designed for trust, not security. was discovered that malicious ered in a core e-mail protocol,
has come at the expense of secu- Domain names make it easy That oversight became an users could “poison” DNS Simple Network Management
rity. In 2008, government and to access resources on the Web. acute threat last year as soft- caches with incorrect informa- Protocol version 3, that permit-
industry leaders were moved to But the Domain Name System ware makers scrambled to patch tion, redirecting users to poten- ted attackers to bypass authen-
tication on devices.
Those vulnerabilities were
not the first incidents that put
end users at risk, nor will they be
faster
thanaspeedingbullet,
the last. Security flaws are
endemic to software. Indeed, so
morepowerfulthanalocomotive, many vulnerabilities are exposed
annually that the Computer
Emergency Response Team
abletosimplifyconnectivitywithasinglecomponent.
acknowledged last summer that
systems administrators are hard
pressed to keep track.
Software security vulnerabil-
ities are nonetheless perceived
to be so great a threat that at
the RSA Conference in April,
Michael Chertoff, secretary of
the U.S. Department of Home-
land Security, announced an
initiative calling for a “Manhat-
tan Project” to secure the
nation’s virtualinfrastructure.
The industry has also
acknowledged that security is
critical, and software makers
are doing their part. Microsoft
announced in September that it
would take its security develop-
ment life-cycle experience to its
customers, offering tooling and
guidance to help organizations
review the design and imple-
The Professional Developer’s #1 Choice for Communications, Security, & E-Business Components mentation of their software in
order to determine security-
feature requirements.
InternetCommunications InternetBusiness EnterpriseAdapters
In November, embedded
software developer Green Hills
Software announced that its
IP*Works! Products IBiz Integrator Products BizTalk & SQL Server Adapters Integrity-178B operating sys-
tem had obtained a Common
TCP/IP SecureSNMP QuickBooks FirstData AS2/EDI-INT GISB/NAESB
Criteria Evaluation Assurance
SSL Zip E-Payment USPS SFTP/FTPS OFTP
Level 6+ certification from the
S/MIME EDIAS2 E-Banking FedEx XMPP(Jabber) SecureShell
National Security Agency after
S/Shell Vital/TSYS Amazon SMSPaging SecureEmail having undergone an intensive,
Paymentech PayPal AWSIntegration
multiyear review.
Our flagship product line. The result The IBiz product line provides small The /n software Adapters extend Meanwhile, the Internation-
of more than a decade of research and medium-sized companies with Microsoft BizTalk and SQL Server with al Information Systems Securi-
and development in building Internet enterprise-class software components advanced Internet communications, ty Certification Consortium
connectivity tools for professional for Internet business integration. Built security, and e-business capabilities, pushed for coders to be trained
software developers. on top of our award winning IP*Works! including robust, highly scalable, fully and certified in security.
tools, these easy-to-use components integrated implementations of B2B Indeed, more widespread
Components for: Web and Web enable developers to rapidly integrate messaging and secure communica- knowledge about security could
Services, Email and News, File Transfer,
common business processes. tions protocols. not come quickly enough. Two
Sockets and Streaming, Remote Access,
Instant Messaging, SSL and Secure surveys published in 2008 iden-
Shell Security, Certificate Management Components for: Accounting Integration Components for: EDI-INT AS2 Integration, tified end users as the greatest
& Creation, S/Mime Encryption, SNMP (QuickBooks), Credit Card Processing, Secure File Transfer, Secure Shell Remote security threat.
Network Management, File & Streaming ACH / E-Check Processing, Shipping and Execution, Secure Email, RosettaNet
Compression, and E-Business (B2B). Tracking, Banking &Financial Transac- Connectivity, OFTP Integration, NAESB / One report found that many
tions, and Services Integration. GISB Messaging, and more. end users lack basic security
awareness, and the other
reported that millions leave
their systems unpatched but
still regularly surf the Web.
WWW.NSOFTWARE.COM - [ASK ABOUT OUR MSDN-STYLE ALL INCLUSIVE RED CARPET SUBSCRIPTIONS] Google and IBM sponsored the
latter report. z