HTML browser virtualization, not APIs, may be the best way to mobilize existing enterprise applications like SAP ERP, Oracle E-Business Suite or Microsoft Dynamics. At least, that’s the perspective of Capriza, a company offering a SaaS-based mobility platform that uses a cloud-based secure virtualized browser to screen-scrape data and context from the enterprise application’s Web … continue reading
Functional programming is bigger than ever. Between Apple’s new Swift programming language, the availability of F# and Scala on the CLR and JVM respectively, and even the introduction of lambdas to Java, mainstream programmers are increasingly expected to be comfortable not just with object-oriented terminology, but with the jargon and mindset of the functional community. … continue reading
Parallel to the rise in importance of mobile apps comes increased emphasis on certain mobile platform services—geolocation, data service aggregation and home screen widgets, to name a few. Most of these are well understood by both consumers and developers, yet one sticks out as a challenge to both: offline access to app data. Business stakeholders … continue reading
Today’s CIOs are at a crossroads. Bombarded by user requests for sophisticated mobile-friendly business apps, they have a choice to make: be a roadblock and force users to find their own workarounds, or provide a thruway that leads to innovation and enables agility. CIOs who assume an active role in leading their organization down the … continue reading
It’s hard being a female programmer or software engineer. Of course, it’s hard for anyone to be a techie, male or female. You have to master a lot of arcane knowledge, and keep up with new developments. You have to be innately curious and inventive. You have to be driven, you have to be patient, … continue reading
Asset managers and institutional investors all over the world, using different computers and browsers, rely on eVestment’s online data and analytics solutions to capitalize on global investment trends, select and monitor investment managers and enable asset managers to market their funds worldwide. At the beginning of 2012, we acquired two firms with the goal of … continue reading
There are many different ways to determine how “good” a piece of software is. A developer might feel efficient code that’s maintainable and extensible is the most important thing. A product manager might be looking for a rich feature set that delivers more than the competition. A tester might be aiming for a bug-free release. … continue reading
We hear frequent claims about the quality of software produced with Agile methods. Most of the sparse data on the subject come either from case studies, questionnaires, or university-based experiments. We finally have some industrial data comparing the structural quality of Agile and Waterfall methods, and the results are mixed—or rather they support mixed. Every … continue reading
Neil Sedaka insists that breakin’ up is hard to do. Will that apply to the planned split of Hewlett-Packard into two companies? Let’s be clear: This split is a wonderful idea, and it’s long overdue. Once upon a time, HP was in three businesses: Electronics test equipment (like gas spectrometers,) expensive, high-margin data center products … continue reading
What worked in the past may not work in the present. That’s certainly true for how I, and many of my colleagues in the industry, have looked at databases. As a software engineer and database architect by trade, I see clear analogies of how the software and database communities came to realize that traditional approaches … continue reading
Have you ever found yourself sitting at a park, walking through the mall, waiting onboard a plane to takeoff, with a couple annoying three-year-olds nearby that simply won’t cooperate? It seems they have this natural instinct to do all the wrong things. Scream and shout. Whine and cry. Disobey commands. And we’re left wishing they … continue reading
We all remember “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”: the timeless fairy tale in which a little girl stumbles upon the home of three bears while they’re gone. She proceeds to try bowls of porridge, chairs and beds—experiencing too hot, too cold, too lumpy and too soft—until she finds the taste and fit that’s “just right.” … continue reading
Open source has gone not just mainstream but global and prime time, and it is therefore getting harder and harder to grab the focus of developers. They are so swamped by technologies and vendors, all queuing up to entice them with the latest project, that they know they can pick and choose where want to … continue reading
I once wrote a parking sticker application for an East Coast university. If you had a faculty, staff, student or visitor sticker for the campus, it was processed using my green-screen application, which went online in 1983. The university used the mainframe program with minimal changes for about a decade, until a new client/server parking … continue reading
