IBM Opens Jazz.net to All Developers
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On Monday, IBM opened its Jazz.net development platform to the open-source community to encourage collaboration.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has developed software interfaces that will make it easier for assistive technologies to provide those with disabilities access to advanced features in software programs -- such as editing functions, hyperlinks, charts and menus.
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InfoWorld - IBM&#39;s Rational Software unit is considering putting parts of its&#160;Jazz collaboration framework&#160;into open source, according to an executive of the company.
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In a sign of the growing movement for alternatives to the industry-dominating Microsoft Office suite, IBM said Wednesday that more than 100,000 registered users downloaded the beta of its free office productivity software, Lotus Symphony, in its first week.
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The resources IBM will provide include articles to help Java developers use the Cloudscape database in custom application development.
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(InfoWorld) - JavaScript and .Net developers are getting helping hands in application-building efforts, through separate projects intended to make it easier to use JavaScript and to document .Net projects. Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, is looking for developer input into the next release of its tool for C, C++, and Fortran development. In the JavaScript arena, the open source jQuery project provides developers with a JavaScript library to improve the quality of Web applications. JQuery makes it easier to write JavaScript and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), said John Resig, lead developer of jQuery and also an author. "The big thing that makes it different form other JavaScript libraries is it doesn't really try to impose itself on you," Resig said. Developers should be able to write shorter code than before while still getting equal if not better functionality, he said. The technology addresses the issue of browsers each offering different levels of support for JavaScript; jQuery fixes browser issues, said Resig. In addition to working with XML, jQuery also can function with other data formats and frameworks such as HTML or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Also, jQuery provides benefits in developing animation applications and has a footprint of only 15KB. "That's one of the big selling points, is that it encompasses so much but it is fantastically small," Resig said. Version 1.0 of jQuery is now available under either an MIT or GPL open source license. Resig did not have an exact figure on how many people have been using jQuery, which has been available in a pre-release format for several months. But the jQuery home page receives about 3 million page views per month, Resig said. Microsoft, meanwhile, is offering a Community Technology Preview Â (CTP) of Sandcastle, which enables managed class library developers worldwide to develop documentation with a common look and feel that resembles MSDN (Microsoft Development Network) documents. An August CTP was made available this week. Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN-style comprehensive documentation, according to Microsoft. Part of the Visual Studio software development kit, Sandcastle works with or without authored comments and supports generics and .Net Framework 2.0. Although primarily targeted at ISVs, corporate developers also could use Sandcastle. Also in the development tools arena, Sun Microsystems on Thursday said it has launched its Sun Studio Express program, which enables C, C++, and Fortran developers to preview features intended for future releases of Sun Studio. The company said it has had 50,000 downloads of the free Sun Studio 11 tool in six months. With the Express program, developers receive monthly builds of the next release of Sun Studio, which is due in 2007. "[Developers] can help influence the next version of the product," said Tom Gryder, Sun product line manager for Sun Studio. Thus far, early builds have focused on addressing data race bugs and performance on Linux. Sun Studio enables development of C, C++, and Fortran applications to run on Solaris or Linux on Sparc, x64, and x86 systems.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Hoping to add some momentum to its Workplace platform strategy IBM has launched an online developer resource center that gives software developers ready access to tools to help create products and services that will exploit the platform.
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IBM boosted its software portfolio for small and medium-size businesses with plans announced Friday to acquire Net Integration Technologies, a software vendor in Markham, Canada.Net Integration Technologies, which offers business management tools, will become part of IBM&#39;s Lotus division when the deal closes, which is expected to occur this quarter. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.&quot;We plan to use the technology to go after Microsoft in the small business server market,&quot; said Michael Rhodin, general manager at IBM&#39;s Lotus Software division during a conference call about the acquisition. IBM could use the technology to compete with Microsoft&#39;s Windows Small Business Server, which provides collaboration, e-mail, and communication tools.Founded in 1997, Net Integration Technologies&#39; tools include NitixBlue server software, which the company offers bundled with IBM Lotus Notes client software. The company also builds custom hardware and the Nitix Operating System, which is based on Linux and bundles system management, networking, security, and storage services.When Lotus was acquired by IBM in 1995, it was a great channel company in touch with SMBs, Rhodin said. &quot;Somewhere along the lines, we lost touch with the roots,&quot; he said.The Net Integration Technologies acquisition is also in line with IBM&#39;s process of realigning operations to better define and serve customers. The company recently restructured sales operations and is lining up offerings to match those changes, Rhodin said.IBM did not comment on any potential layoffs or relocation of Net Integration Technologies employees.
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Big Blue's Open Client Offering spans Windows, Mac and Linux by combining Notes, Sametime, OpenOffice and Eclipse software.
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IBM Corp. is enhancing its software developer&#39;s support program by creating a software code exchange.
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InfoWorld - IBM is working on a project to enable agile development of Web 2.0 applications, but the effort has drawn criticism because it is not an open source endeavor.
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Students at North Carolina State University are learning to build business applications in the Web 2.0 mold using&#160;an IBM incubator project called Project Zero.Announced last year, Project Zero is a programming framework for rapidly building Web applications. Its pieces include a scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP (hypertext preprocessor), two hot dynamic languages, along with APIs (application programming interfaces) for creating REST (representational state transfer) Web services, user interfaces, and mashups, according to IBM. It is available as a plug-in for the Eclipse integrated development environment, as well as in a version for developers who prefer to work from the command line.However, the project has faced some criticism, because although its community-driven model echoes open source, it is not an open-source project. Mark Hanny, vice president of strategic partnerships at IBM, said a commercial version of Project Zero could surface soon.James Governor, an analyst with Redmonk, suggested it makes sense for IBM to embrace newer development methods in its work with schools.&quot;IBM doesn&#39;t want to be your father&#39;s IBM, it wants to be your son&#39;s,&quot; he said.There is significant demand in the job market for such skills, according to IBM. Citing statistics from Skillproof, a research firm in Connecticut, IBM said the number of U.S. job openings for IT professionals grew 45.2 percent between 2004 and the end of last year. Knowledge of open standards and Web 2.0 development skills were in particularly high demand, according to IBM.NCSU Professor Munindar Singh said Project Zero&#39;s rapid development framework has helped students focus on higher-level issues around application development, rather than trudge at length through the deep weeds.His students generally enter the courses having learned some Java, created Web pages and done some scripting, but usually lack experience at the plumbing level, the professor said.&quot;Spending a lot of time just trying to configure an application server to do stuff for them is such a waste of time,&quot; he said. &quot;That&#39;s something the tool should be doing for them. ... The higher up they are in the food chain, the more creative they&#39;re going to be.&quot;According to Hanny, the IT world&#39;s needs are changing.&quot;Professors are spending a lot more time helping people at a higher level to be the architect, to be the project managers,&quot; he said. &quot;These are the jobs that are in great demand.&quot;&quot;IT is much broader. It&#39;s pervasive,&quot; he added. &quot;Some of the training is not even going on in computer science; some of it is going on in business schools.&quot;Meanwhile, IBM and the University of California-Los Angeles previously created a program within one computer science course that sees students choose their own Web 2.0 project and then work with IBM mentors to complete it.Jeffrey Tan, a UCLA senior from Palo Alto, California, built a mashup called Bounce along with two classmates. It leveraged the Facebook API along with listings from the Eventful event aggregator and maps from Google Maps. Tan&#39;s contributions focused on the application&#39;s front end.IBM officials served more as sounding boards than as direct teachers, he said. For example, the students would write a specification document for a Web site and send it to technical staffers at IBM, who would provide advice and feedback, such as what APIs to use, he said.Tan hopes to find a career building Web sites and &quot;managing back-end, server-side stuff.&quot;&quot;I just interviewed for a job, and almost all I talked about are these major Web 2.0 technologies,&quot; he said. &quot;Basically, Web 2.0 is replacing the old Web.&quot;&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - IBM is working on a project to enable agile development of Web 2.0 applications, but the effort has drawn criticism because it is not an open source endeavor. Called Project Zero, it offers an environment for building applications based on popular Web technologies. Included is a scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Also featured are APIs for developing REST-style (Representational State Transfer) services and capabilities for mashups and rich Web interfaces. REST and Atom form the basis of the service invocation model while JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML provide for data interchange. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is the model for a rich client in Zero. Extensive scripting is supported. "The name Zero is a reminder of the project's aspirations: Zero unnecessary overhead and complexity. Zero barriers to success. Zero of what you don't need," the Project Zero Web site states. "Project Zero is designed to enable faster, more productive development and deployment of Web applications and Web-based services. It sets out to allow developers to spend more time writing actual code instead of complex configuration files," according to the site. A goal of Project Zero is enabling development of Web 2.0-type applications, featuring user-contributed content. "IBM's Project Zero can be thought of as something of an application server for Groovy and PHP code bases," says Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk. "I think that from a technology standpoint Project Zero is a good step in the right direction," says analyst Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research. "REST-based Web services and dynamic languages like PHP and JavaScript are gaining increased momentum in the market because they make it simpler to build and consume services." The project's Web site features an online community and infrastructure used to develop Zero. Rather than leveraging open source, Zero follows what IBM calls "a community-driven commercial development process," in which contributions in the form of feedback are welcomed. IBM sees benefits of this format as being centered on real-time communication with users.Â  An IBM official defended the company's stance. "There are currently no plans to release Project Zero under an open source license. While the community-driven commercial development process shares many of the benefits of open source projects, Project Zero is a commercial endeavor, and write access is restricted to IBM-approved committers," says Jason McGee, the IBM Distinguished Engineer responsible for the project, in a statement released by the company. But he emphasized that IBM is in open source's corner. "IBM remains committed to open source. Project Zero follows a commercial software development effort, in much the same way as other commercial offerings from IBM. [The] fact that Project Zero is based on a number of open source technologies and that it represents such a significant investment on top of these technologies speaks to IBM's commitment," McGee says. IBM's strategy has fomented objections in places such as TheServerSide online community. Analysts also were displeased. "Of note also is the development model, which while borrowing its transparency from open source, imposes significant restrictions on consumption and deployment. While this is an improvement on traditional closed-source development practices, it is not in fact open source and will suffer when compared to it," O'Grady says. "I have to wonder what the motivation is for an external party to contribute code to this particular project when there is no guarantee that they would be able to use it long-term due to the restricted licensing terms," says Hammond. Product plans for Project Zero depend upon community feedback and alignment with product development efforts, an IBM representative said. In time, there will be a facility to share reusable components, such as widgets and services, developed as part of the project, IBM said.
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IBM on Thursday will announce the release of a free tools bundle for Eclipse to make it easier to deploy Java applications on Linux.
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Looking to outdo rival Microsoft, IBM plans to ship a new bundle of development tools that can simplify how software gets built.
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IBM today joined the OpenOffice.org open-source community and will contribute code to the office suite that serves as an alternative to Microsoft's Office software.
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(InfoWorld) - Mainsoft on Wednesday released a technology preview of Grasshopper 2.0, which lets developers leverage Microsoft Windows development skills to run applications on Linux and Java platforms. Grasshopper 2.0 enables deployment of applications on the Apache Tomcat Java servlet container; Mainsoft's Visual MainWin provides the same functionality for deploying applications with commercial application servers. New features in version 2.0 include support of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE and the .Net Framework 2.0. Also, C# developers can use the new IDE as well as C# 2.0 features and ASP.Net controls to develop Web applications. The free Grasshopper 2.0 Technology Preview also can be used to port the Microsoft Personal Web Site Starter Kit to run on Tomcat. "[Developers] can keep programming in VB.Net, C# [and] ASP.Net from Visual Studio and create applications which will run cross-platform on Linux, and we do that by using the open source .Net Framework," which is Mono, said Yaacov Cohen, president and CEO of Mainsoft. With Grasshopper, the Microsoft intermediate language is compiled to Java byte code. Mono, meanwhile, features compiler tools and class libraries as well as a runtime engine for executing .Net applications. A user and reseller of Mainsoft's technology cited its use in an application that required integration between Java and .Net systems. The software enabled Segway Software to write code in C# and reference Java Archive files and byte code inside a .Net environment, said Jon Taylor, CEO at Segway. "It allowed us to basically write in one language that was familiar to us and then port the Web service to a J2EE Web server that we could then use to run it on," Taylor said. Although he has not yet used Grasshopper 2.0, Taylor said he looked forward to being able to leverage .Net Framework 2.0. The general release of Grasshopper 2.0 is planned for the end of the first quarter of 2007. The preview is available online. Visual Studio 2005 integration and .Net 2.0 functionality will be added to Visual MainWin early in 2007. In another integration-related announcement in the tools arena, Sun Microsystems has announced availability of an installation program bundling the NetBeans IDE and the JBoss application server. NetBeans is an open source tools project championed by Sun. âNetBeans and JBoss work well together out of the box for creating Java EE (Enterprise Edition) apps," said Judith Lilenfeld, a product engineering manager at NetBeans. "[The bundle] registers the app server with the IDE so the user can do their start, stop, deploy," functions from within the IDE to the application server, Lilenfeld said. "The integration of JBoss Application Server with NetBeans is about simplifying enterprise Java development and giving developers choice when it comes to their development environment. In addition, this partnership with Sun underscores JBossâ longstanding commitment to supporting multiple hardware, software, and tools platforms,â said Ram Venkataraman, JBoss director of product management, in a prepared statement released by JBoss. The package features the JBoss 4.0.4 application server, which is J2EE 1.4-compatible rather than Java EE 5-compataible. Future releases of the bundle will round out the features of the application server as JBoss moves closer to being Java EE 5 compatible. The NetBeans platform supported in the package is the NetBeans 5.5 Beta 2 release. The final version of NetBeans 5.5 is due by October or November. Developers can download the bundle here. Also, JetBrains on Thursday is announcing JetBrains dotTrace 2.0 beta, which is a tool for profiling .Net applications. Memory profiling is featured, as is integration with the Visual Studio IDE. Windows services in the new release can be profiled in the same way as Web applications, the company said.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.