Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Monday 19 November 2007, 6:17 PM
Buy it, install it, deploy it, forget it…
I never envy that division of the marketing fraternity whose job it is to sex up the technology infrastructure layer. As much as storage, networking, configuration management and (today’s chosen subject) software asset management (SAM) are fundamentally important to the daily workings of your average IT mega-structure, they’ll never be quite as easy to get excited about as more front end services.
Nevertheless, buy it, install it, deploy it, forget it – is the attitude of many a feckless IT manager. As for ongoing tracking and management those assets, all too often it’s a case of ‘no thanks – I’m off to the pub’. SAM vendors are of course keen to popularise the oft-touted fact that more than two-thirds of organisations have a discrepancy of up to 30 per cent between expected and actual inventories.
This devil may care approach is not without related factors that can lead to further problems. If you don’t know how much IT ‘stuff’ you have, how can you budget and plan? How can you help the business function eliminate waste and control costs? What about security and corporate governance, how do you lay down those ground rules? Simply put, umm, you can’t really. Well if you do, it’s a reckless methodology.
SAM vendors will tell you that it’s not as hard as it looks and that discovery and license management are comparatively straightforward. “Many businesses still view SAM as a hindrance that is confusing and time-consuming, rather than as a project that is easy to deploy and can bring many rewards. Taken together, discovery and license compliance form the basis of successful SAM best practises, providing a rapid return and a less complex implementation than deployment or patch management,” said Matt Fisher, VP of marketing for Centennial Software.
So should we sex up SAM? Perhaps that’s going too far. But should IT managers think about the volume license discounts, accurate asset depreciation, the importance of corporate governance and everything else they ‘might’ be missing out on? I’ll go with an enthusiastic definitely maybe.
Wednesday 14 November 2007, 3:33 PM
Google Dalvik Virtual Machine Goes Head to Head With Java & .NET
Google’s Android software ‘stack’ for mobile devices appears to be underpinned by a more substantially game-changing technology than at first thought in the form of the Google Dalvik virtual machine. Android includes an operating system, middleware and a set of core applications with reusable components and on the surface is billed as being capable of running Java applications on mobile phones under the Apache Licence 2. Below this however is Dalvik, Google’s own virtual machine that compiles Java applications into Dalvik bytecode rather than Java bytecode.
In the fight for total application development ownership, this puts Google more firmly in the driving seat than may have been inferred by the company’s initial official positioning on Android. At its launch, Google stated that its reason for developing Android was to enable the company to scoop up advertising revenue from mobile Internet and online Java application usage. Closer inspection suggests that Google has in fact made efforts to distance itself from the Java (ME) Micro Edition.
To achieve this autonomy, Android employs the syntax of the Java language and presents developers with a structure and IDE that they will be comfortable with. Android’s next trick is to side-step SUN’s Java SE class library and instead use Apache’s Harmony. This unshackles Google from the responsibility of having to adhere to the Java Community Process for any changes to the Java ME standard.
“Google's use of its own code is no secret. I was at Google on Monday with Android co-founder Andy Rubin and he freely explained this without prompting. It means a two-step compile but when converted to Google byte code, which is ARM-oriented, the code will run ten times faster. Java byte code is not optimised for a particular processor but in the phone world everything is ARM-based. It's a bit inconvenient on the compile side but you can still use Java,” said Ken Dulaney, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner.
Buying itself so much extra freedom to breathe arguably allows Google to win more hearts and minds within the developer community and potentially seeds its own technology more deeply into a market segment set to expand exponentially. For developers, there is the opportunity to access what is said to be a more modern class library with support for OpenGL, Bluetooth, USB in the 3G space.
Monday 12 November 2007, 7:55 PM
Modelling is changing
The last time I talked about Borland, the ‘Open ALM Company’ (its words, not mine) was when the company’s Pete Derry gave the keynote speech at the Agile Conference 2007, alongside its partner in agile crime, BT.
Now they are showing developers how to be agile with the launch of Borland Together 2007, a new release of its modelling product that (allegedly) will help companies increase business agility and lower application maintenance costs. So says Borland, and in particular the chief scientist there, Richard Gronback, “Modelling is changing - it’s moving from traditional architect and developer-focused tools to more business-centric activity.”
So what does Together 2007 actually do? Without getting too techy, it provides support for UML, ER modelling, BPMN and DSLs within a single tool. So rather than having multiple tools doing similar jobs and getting in each other’s way, everything is integrated together, neatly simplifying the software delivery lifecycle. This all fits in nicely with Borland’s so-called holistic approach to software development. As to whether the purported advantages manifest themselves in said fashion after implementation remains to be seen, but one imagines that this kind of product is well tested before roll out.
The key to all of this and in particular the saving money and being better for the business bit (as good software development should be), is the DSL toolkit. Enabling customers to create all those diverse domain-specific languages, to cut a long story short, produces a modelling solution ‘that aligns with the exact needs of [the] business.’
Now here’s the science: Together 2007’s capabilities include .NET support with C# code generation, a visual brainstorming notation capacity, extended QVT features (queries, views and transformations) and BIRT reporting (IT’s addiction with acronyms strikes again).
The suggestion here that we may possibly infer is that more corporate IT vendors have realised that development is not about IT. It’s about business. Together 2007 may just be a small tool in a big tool box, but it’s one that supports this growing trend.
Sunday 11 November 2007, 3:55 PM
Hotmail hodgepodge
Am I the only one frustrated by the new ‘enhancements’ to Hotmail under Windows Live?
I’m sure I’m not mentioning all the bizarre new functions, but here’s what’s really got me tearing (the rest of) my hair out.
Safari users will know that even with Leopard installed, Hotmail replies jumble the recipients’ original message into a liquidised mess of garbled text. It’s fine in Firefox and I haven’t tried it in Explorer as I’m a Mac user, but I imagine it works. Trouble is, us Mac converts like Safari.
The auto spell check is American English and even with an American other half I find this frustrating. Under OPTIONS / LANGUAGE I can only find one version of English. But Portuguese speakers get the option of saying whether they are from Brazil or Portugal. All this despite the fact that the home page knows I am in the UK and gives me the correct weather for London, England.
You had better not be an atheist and try and spell Christianity with a lower caps ‘c’ either! Personal protest or not - spell check will say you are wrong.
-- and don’t even go there with that scrolling advertisement that you have to try and beat before it covers up the SEND button. I won’t mention the advertiser by name, by after having been redirected to their web site countless times, I would never never never subscribe to their phone services.
Spleen vented.
Almost forgot – the new colour themes option is nice.
Friday 9 November 2007, 9:12 AM
ALM for the web: coincidence or not?
It’s rare that I get two completely unconnected (yet connected) technology publicity streams on the same day that aren’t making headlines in their own right. Let me explain.
OK, official launch of Apple iPhone, Larry Ellison lawsuit, Microsoft anti-trust etc… no surprise if every PR person on the planet sends me a press release, interview opportunity, t-shirt, commemorative mug etc. on the subject.
But ALM (application lifecycle management) extending to the Internet and in particular Web 2.0 mash-ups - that’s quite specific isn’t it?
Aldon and Serena are the ‘Usual Suspects’ in this case. Both ALM players in their own right. I happen to find myself never having particularly thought about this discipline before and suddenly working on interviews with one company and news stories with another.
Is this on your radar? I’d love to know.
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