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Methods & Tools - News, Facts & Comments Edition - August 2007
*** News ***************************************************************
* If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them!
August 13th, Borland's subsidiary CodeGear announced JGear, a set of specialised plug-ins for the Eclipse open-source development platform. JGear augments Eclipse in three areas - Java application performance, visual development and team collaboration. According to CodeGear, the top pain points for Java developers using Eclipse stem from the difficulties of application performance tuning, Java code archaeology, coding and configuring Java servers and frameworks, team collaboration.
The new JGear product line includes - JGear Performance for Eclipse, JGear LiveSource for Eclipse, and JGear Team for Eclipse. JGear Performance contains a variety of performance and tuning features such as memory and CPU profiling and debugging. JGear LiveSource includes a graphical EJB workbench and Web services designer; Unified Modelling Language visualisation of code artefacts and design; CodeGear's LiveSource technology that simultaneously replicates changes to models in the code and vice versa; and creation of Enterprise JavaBeans and model relationships. JGear Team offers a team collaboration and development system based on open-source components. JGear Team is both a turnkey server solution and an Eclipse developer client solution. JGear Team Server is a team development server stack based on open-source components such as Subversion, Bugzilla, Continuum, and XPlanner.
This is a normal evolution for CodeGear as the future is difficult in the software development IDE sector if you want to remain the supplier of an isolated solution. Competition is difficult to sustain with open source and free products, like Eclipse or NetBeans. A better strategy is to offer additional services that could be missing in the core open source solution and that developers are ready to pay some dollars to obtain. Acting like this in the Eclipse ecosystem, CodeGear recognises that its survival may depend on its ability to transform itself from software producer to plug-in developer.
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* M&T Industry Press Releases Channel
You can view the last product and company press releases from software development tools vendors on http://www.softdevtools.com/modules/news/
*** Numbers ************************************************************
* A View from the Top on Web 2.0
The recent publications of surveys on Web 2.0 usage by McKinsey, The Economist or Forrester Research present interesting information on how managers and CIO see the new technologies that have conquered the Web these recent years. Let us look at their content before trying to analyse what they could mean.
The McKinsey Quarterly
In January of this year, The McKinsey Quarterly conducted a survey on the usage of Web 2.0 techniques with 2847 participants worldwide. Web 2.0 is defined as a collection of technologies: Web services, collective intelligence, peer-to-peer networking, social networking, RSS, podcast, wiki, blog and mash-up. The most used technology was Web services (80%), followed by collective intelligence and peer-to-peer networking with a percentage close to 50%. Those three technologies were also the one the most cited when participants were asked to identify the three technologies the most important for their business. Few participants say that their companies are using more than two Web 2.0 technologies.
As far as satisfaction is concerned, 16% of the participants said that they were very satisfied of the financial return on their investment in Web 2.0 technologies over the past 5 years and 35% were somewhat satisfied. Only 6% were dissatisfied. For most of the respondents, the Web 2.0 tools were mainly used to manage collaboration internally (75%), then to interface with customers (70%). Interface with suppliers and partners concerns only 51% of the participants. In the discussions with participants included at the end of the paper, blogs and RSS are the most mentioned tools to communicate with customers.
The Economist Intelligence Unit
The report "Serious Business: Web 2.0 Goes Corporate" was produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The survey asked 406 senior executives for their views on Web 2.0. The vast majority of respondents (79%) said they saw potential of blogs and social networks to improve revenues and reduce costs. In spite of this desire to cash in, many businesses cited a lack of understanding of the technology as a barrier to using it. Over a quarter of respondents said their IT departments lacked the competence level to implement Web 2.0 applications effectively. While there may be barriers to embracing Web 2.0, the study found that businesses expect it to play a key role in how they communicate, both internally and externally. The report found that 68% of executives considered it to be the single biggest factor changing the way their company interacts with customers while 49% said it would be the biggest factor affecting how employees interact with each other and the business.
Forrester Research
A majority of IT buyers see Web 2.0 in a positive light, but CIOs would prefer to buy the emerging technologies from larger incumbent vendors. That is the situation according to a recent survey by Forrester Research of 275 IT buyers in June on Web 2.0 technologies. About 16% said they are hearing about Web 2.0 from vendors all the time, and 50% said vendors pitch Web 2.0 technologies to them from time to time. Close to all respondents, 97%, said they were familiar with Web 2.0, which is defined as a category of technologies that includes wiki, blog, RSS, podcast, content tagging and social-networking tools. Forrester says as the market grows it will consolidate, which could please enterprise CIOs. Earlier this year, the poll of about 120 enterprise CIOs on the Web 2.0 market found consolidation is ideal for their plans with the technologies.
"Overall, 61% of respondents indicated that they would prefer both a suite solution and a large incumbent vendor," Forrester concluded. "The deck appears to be stacked against small pure-play vendors. Integration issues, longevity concerns and the occasional lack of polish send CIOs looking for other options." Survey respondents also want the technologies integrated into their back-end systems, which leads them to want to see Web 2.0 suites from incumbent vendors. Forrester found that 93% of the CIOs survey using six Web 2.0 technologies would rather get the products from such vendors as Microsoft, IBM or Oracle than from smaller, pure-play vendors, such as Socialtext, NewsGator or MindTouch.
So what?
Many managers and CIO have a distant view from the Web 2.0 technologies. Some adopted these tools just because it is "cool" or their manager has read in the last edition of "Business Week" that they should do it. These organisations tend to see Web 2.0 as a technological issue, but the real challenge is to provide valuable content and modify interaction with users. Installing a blog or an RSS feed is not really difficult. It is however another aspect when you have to blog regularly, provide interesting content and manage the feedback created by the posts. It is also interesting to see that Web 2.0 is seen by the business as mostly a new way to interact with customers or inside the organisation. It is not yet considered as something that could be used in B2B relationships or in internal business applications. This explains also why you can read about the "technological gap" of traditional IT departments versus these technologies and the fact that buyers will prefer solutions by large vendors. In large IT organisation, there is a hesitation to let developers use "new" technology from new vendors, this can be linked to the time it took to open source technologies to be widely adopted.
Sources:
(March / July 2007 (free access with registration)Web 2.0 baffles businesses, says survey @ theregister.co.uk
IT buyers positive on Web 2.0, survey says / itbusinesss.ca
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* Estimating the maintenance efforts
Our current poll wants to know what percentage of your software development budget is devoted to maintenance. Maintenance is defined as process of correcting, enhancing and optimising deployed software. Go to [poll] to participate and to see intermediate results.
*** Books **************************************************************
If you liked the article of Lisa Crispin, Tom Gilb and Alan Koch in our Summer 2007 issue, find more about their knowledge in the following books:
* Testing Extreme Programming by Lisa Crispin
This practical tutorial for software builders demonstrates how testing is central to the extreme programming (XP) approach and explains what testing should be done and when and how it should be performed. It overviews the XP methodology, defines the roles of XP team members, shows how to write effective tests before coding begins, and sheds light on refactoring and how it relates to testing.
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com click here
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk click here
* Competitive Engineering by Tom Gilb
In a period where the trend is to follow agile approaches with condensed guidance (see the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto for instance), it could seem strange to publish a book on software development with more than 500 dense pages. You should however not be frightened by this book. Beneath the size and the structured form lies an approach based on practical experience that incorporates change and flexibility without abandoning the quest for precision and delivering value.
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com click here
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk click here
* Principles of Software Engineering Management by Tom Gilb
This book is designed to help software engineers and project managers to understand and solve the problems involved in developing complex software systems. It provides practical guidelines and tools for managing the technical and organizational aspects of software engineering projects.
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com click here
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk click here
* Software Inspection by Tom Gilb
Clear guidelines for the introduction and refinement of inspection techniques. Zero-defect software is the Holy Grail of all software developers. It has proved to be an elusive goal - until now. The Inspection techniques illustrated in this book have brought clear benefits in terms of lower (or even zero) defects, higher productivity, better project tracking and improved documentation.
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com click here
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk click here
* Agile Software Development: Evaluating The Methods For Your Organization by Alan Koch
This book reviews the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Agile principles, and discusses in detail each practice of the six most widely recognized Agile methods. Software developers get clear insight into adoption implications, and the benefits that may accrue.
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com click here
To get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk click here
*** Conferences ********************************************************
* International Practical Software Quality and Testing
September 10-14 2007, Minneapolis, USA
If you are looking for a long day filled with dense, scholarly papers on how academics think software quality can be approached, forget about the PSQT conference. On the other hand, if you are looking for two days chock-full of lively and timely information about software quality and testing, presented by nationally known experts who actually practice what they preach, then PSQT is for you.
http://www.psqtconference.com/2007north/
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* RailsConf Europe 2007 September 17-19 2007, Berlin, Germany
Happening 17-19 September in Berlin, Germany, RailsConf Europe will feature the most innovative and successful Rails experts and companies from across the continent and around the world, providing attendees with examples of development paradigms and design strategies to enable businesses and new arrivals to the Web to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities. Use code re07mtl to save 10% off conference fees, visit:
http://www.railsconfeurope.com
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* SDL Forum September 18-21 2007, Paris, France
"The SDL Forum is held every 2 years and is one of the most important events in the calendar for anyone involved in System Design Languages and modelling technologies. It is the primary conference event where the evolution and use of these languages is discussed. The 13th SDL Forum will be held during the third week of September 2007 in Paris."
http://www.pragmadev.com/sdl07------------------------------------------------------------------------
* AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 September 24-26, 2007 Santa Clara CA, USA
On September 24-26, 2007 over 1,000 developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe will be converging in Santa Clara, CA to attend the West coast AJAXWorld Conference & Expo -- the most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent times: AJAX, Rich Internet Apps & Web 2.0. Register Now & Save!
Register as a Methods & Tools reader with coupon code "mtgold" and get a $50 discount on Golden Pass
https://www3.sys-con.com/sep07/registernew.cfm
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* CONQUEST 2007, 10th international Conference on Quality Engineering in Software Technology, September 26-28, 2007, Potsdam, Germany
Join Germany's most important software quality conference! This year's topic is "Business Process Engineering". The program contains more than 50 lectures and discussions. Have a look at the program and register now at:
http://www.conquest-conference.org
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* Agile Business Conference 2007 October 2-3 2007, London, UK
"Agile Works!". The Agile Business Conference 2007. Explore the full range of Agile project management under one roof. Top drawer experiences - AIB, the BBC, Lloyds TSB and British Telecom. Presentations from the leading thinkers in the Agile field. Ken Schwaber, Mary Poppendieck and Chris Avery. A "must" for anyone interested in Agility.
http://www.agileconference.org
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* Software & Systems Quality Conferences 2007 October 2-3, 2007, London, UK
Achieving success with the right software quality requires the best strategies for managing quality and the best techniques for testing.
Visit the largest and most comprehensive conference on Systems and software quality and attend tutorials from the leading thinkers and educators in this field. Software quality is the difference that counts.
http://www.sqs-conferences.com/uk/index.htm
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* Software Test & Performance Conference, October 2-4, 2007, Boston, USA
Join hundreds of other software developers, development managers, test/QA managers and senior test professionals at the Software Test & Performance Conference, October 2-4, 2007 in Boston, MA. Full day tutorials and over 70 classes cover software test/QA and performance issues across the entire application life cycle.
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* Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC)
October 8-10, 2007 Portland, USA
Building for a Better Future and Celebrating 25 Years of Quality with these Invited Speakers: Johanna Rothman, Hugh Thompson, Jennitta Andrea, Lisa Crispin, Dale Emery & Dot Graham. Plus technical papers, networking and panels.
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* Eclipse Summit Europe, October 10-11 2007, Ludwigsburg, Germany
The Eclipse Foundation is hosting the 2nd annual Eclipse Summit Europe on October 10-11, 2007 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. ESE is the Foundation's premier event designed to create opportunities for the European Eclipse community to explore, share and collaborate on the latest ideas and information about Eclipse and its members.
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* Zend/PHP Conference and Expo October 8-11, San Francisco, USA
The 2007 conference will bring together PHP practitioners and business managers from around the world for three days of exceptional presentations and outstanding networking events. Join PHP experts and community members who will share their experiences and best practices in a wide variety of sessions.
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* Ajax Experience October 24-26 2007, Boston, USA
The Ajax Experience-The only Web 2.0 event created by developers. Hear from founders of DWR, Dojo, JQuery, JSON & more. Get insight from the Ajax experts at Yahoo, Amazon, Netflix, Sun, Google & others. Get user interface tips, security & performance best practices, enterprise Ajax pitfalls & more - Register for The Ajax Experience, from Ajaxian.com.
http://ajaxexperience.techtarget.com/east/index.html?Offer=AEmt821
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* VERIFY 2007 October 29-30 2007, Arlington, Virginia, USA
VERIFY addresses technical software testing solutions, i.e. security-, database-, automated-, agile-testing, test modeling, test-driven development, .NET / Java testing, secure software & open source development, SCRUM, SAP testing, web services testing, and test program management. Presentations and tutorials are delivered by industry leaders who daily face real-world challenges, work real-world projects and face difficult implementation timelines. Keynote, feature and track presentations, plus half-day workshops.
We are a sponsor of VERIFY 2007. As our reader you are eligible to receive a VERIFY discount. When registering for the conference, simply select as Registration Type "Sponsor Discount." To Register go to: http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=127756 – and select Registration Type "Sponsor Discount"
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* EclipseWorld 2007 November 6-8 2007, Reston, VA, USA
Whether you’re building Java applications for IBM WebSphere, developing applications using the Eclipse RCP, or collaborating on an open-source project, if you use Eclipse, you should attend EclipseWorld 2007, November 6-8, 2007 in the Washington D.C area. Over 70 technical classes and tutorials focus on techniques and practices to teach you how to build better software using Eclipse. Register Today!
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* International PHP Conference November 4-7 2007, Frankfurt, Germany
PHP experts arriving from more than 20 countries will come together at the International PHP Conference in Frankfurt (Germany) from 4 to 7 November, 2007. Since its inception in 2001, the IPC has made history as one of the elite conferences concerning PHP around the globe. With a sophisticated conference program the IPC provides the ideal platform for endless learning and networking possibilities. JOIN THE COMMUNITY!
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* ProjectWorld & the World Congress for Business Analysts
Flagship
November 13-16, 2007, Anaheim, CA – Disneyland Hotel
Collaborate to Accelerate Organizational Performance and ROI. This event will help you better communicate the significant of building business value and organizational excellence TOGETHER.
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* XP Days Benelux 2007, November 15-16, Mechelen Belgium
In the tradition of the XP Day conferences, XP Day Benelux 2007 is a two day conference on all things agile for business and technical people from all walks of life. This year's edition will be held in Mechelen, Belgium on November 15th and 16th.
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* Agile Development Practices Conference December 3-6 2007, Orlando, USA
New Agile Development Practices Conference - Coming to Orlando Don't miss the chance to attend the first conference for software professionals investigating or implementing agile development practices, processes, technologies, and leadership principles. Explore the latest trends in agile development approaches.
http://www.sqe.com/go?BSADP07M&TE
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* EuroSTAR 2007 3-6 December 2007, Stockholm, Sweden
The 15th EuroSTAR conference on Software Testing Analysis & Review takes place this year during 3-6 December in Stockholm, Sweden. EuroSTAR is Europe's premier software testing conference, bringing together many of the world's greatest testing minds. An action packed four days of professional training awaits you at EuroSTAR 2007.
http://www.qualtechconferences.com/content.asp?id=2*** M&T News ***********************************************************
* The Waterfall Manifesto for Realistic Software Development
Look at this humorous mirror site to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development http://www.waterfallmanifesto.org/
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* Software Development Articles
Some of the last interesting additions to http://www.softdevarticles.com
* AJAX Application Architecture
Whether you're a system administrator, a designer, or a developer, your job will be significantly affected by AJAX. This article shows the Microsoft view of how Ajax works in a .NET architecture.
http://www.softdevarticles.com/modules/weblinks/singlelink.php?lid=771
* Unit testing Ajax applications
You might get a thrill out of writing Ajax applications, but unit testing them is surely painful. This article takes on the downside of Ajax (one of them, anyway), which is the inherent challenge of unit testing asynchronous Web applications. Fortunately, it easier than expected to tame this particular code quality dragon, with the help of the Google Web Toolkit.
http://www.softdevarticles.com/modules/weblinks/singlelink.php?lid=755
* Using the Swing Application Framework
If you've developed many applications using a Swing-based graphical user interface (GUI), you've probably solved some common problems over and over again. To save time and effort, you can develop reusable libraries and small application frameworks to use on each new project. An application framework can provide much of the common infrastructure that most applications share. If you develop Swing applications, you can benefit from the Swing Application Framework, which is currently being developed as part of Java Specification Request (JSR) 296.
http://www.softdevarticles.com/modules/weblinks/singlelink.php?lid=748
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* More than 500 Software Development Tools
The Software Development Tools Directory has just registered its 500th tools. This Web site regroups both open source and commercial tools used to develop software. Companies and open source projects can also post news about their activities. If you are active in the software development tools sector, do not hesitate to register and to contribute.
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* Future Issues of Methods & Tools
In future issues, you will find articles on:
- Software Factories
- Requirements for Outsourcing
- Agile Retrospectives
- Lean Configuration Management
- Earned Value Management for Agile Projects
- Type of Reviews
- Metrics for Code Review
- UML versus Domain Specific Modelling
- Exploratory Testing
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The content of this publication cannot be reproduced without prior
written consent of the publisher
Copyright (C) 2007, Martinig & Associates
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