NEW PRODUCTS
Black Duck Software is starting a certification program for legal professionals with clients involved in acquiring technology companies. The program, open to IP and M&A attorneys with open-source experience, introduces participants to Black Duck code assessment services and tools, walks participants through processes, and provides valuable tips for working with both acquiring clients and target organizations. Certified participants are listed on Black Duck’s website in a directory that can be accessed by clients looking for IP and M&A counsel.

Gemini Mobile Technologies has released Hibari (meaning Cloud Bird in Japanese) as open source. Hibari is a database optimized for the highly reliable, highly available storage of massive data, such as cloud computing applications requiring storage of petabytes of data each day. Hibari was written in Erlang and is released under the Apache license. Its APIs support C++, Erlang, Java, Python and Ruby. Gemini plans to provide Hadoop map/reduce integration, as well as a commercial license that includes updates and support.

McObject is offering eXtremeDB Data Relay, which shares real-time data between embedded applications using its eXtremeDB database and external systems such as enterprise DBMSes. Data Relay maintains a buffer of eXtremeDB database transactions as they occur. For every object affected by a transaction, there is a code within the buffer that indicates whether the operation was an insert, update or delete. Developers can use a database cursor to iterate over objects in the transaction buffer. If the change in eXtremeDB is of interest (by the application’s criteria), the changes can be propagated to an Oracle, SQL Server or other back-end DBMS.

ESRI is offering ArcGIS for iOS, which gives users access to mapping tools directly on an Apple iOS device, such as iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The ArcGIS app uses ESRI’s ArcGIS API for iOS, which is available to all iOS developers for building custom mapping applications.

SUSE Gallery is an app store that lets Linux developers publish and license their appliances and cloud-based applications. SUSE Gallery builds on Novell’s SUSE Appliance Program, which helps ISVs simplify appliance creation, reduce development and support costs, and extend applications to the cloud. Applications are built using SUSE Studio, a Web-based appliance creation tool.

SQL Source Control is a new tool from Red Gate that lets developers source-control a database from within SQL Server Management Studio. SQL Source Control connects users’ databases to either Subversion or Team Foundation Server, and shows exactly what changes were made to databases, when and by whom, making conflicts easier to find and resolve, and isolating changes for rollback if necessary. It also reduces change-management overhead by eliminating extra code, securing database code history, and automatically versioning the database. SQL Source Control has been added to Red Gate’s SQL Developer Bundle.

UPDATES
WSO2 has updated its open-source middleware stack, which includes a business processor server, data services server, business activity monitor, gadget server and mashup server. These are based on WSO2 Carbon 3.0, the company’s Web service platform. New functionality includes a component manager, which provides the first interface that lets developers simply point-and-click to extend the capabilities of the middleware. It then acquires, installs and provisions the runtime automatically. Web Services Dynamic Discovery support is included to automate the detection and configuration of Web service endpoints, and enhanced integration with the WSO2 Governance Registry has also been added, facilitating large clustered deployments and cloud implementations.

Developers can now tie the PureCM software configuration management system to SQL Server. Previously, the SCM system worked exclusively with SQLite and the company’s own native database, but the latest release, PureCM 2010-1, adds the new database option. The update also improves progress reporting and a new released-tasks finder, and it offers merging and shared component wizards from the Projects view.

Solid Framework .NET SDK version 7.0 now works with Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2, and all x64 variants. It also lets developers work in a 64-bit native development environment, as the DLL is built as an “AnyCPU” Framework and automatically runs x86 or x64 native, depending on the process that loads it. It can also function as a native C++ API. The Solid Framework, from Solid Documents, lets applications convert PDF files to Microsoft Office and XML documents, render PDF files as bitmaps, create PDF files from Windows apps, and browse the content of PDF files.

PEOPLE
Douglas Schmidt has been named as the new deputy director and CTO of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute. He reports to Paul Neilsen, director and CEO of the SEI. Before joining the SEI, Schmidt was a tenured professor and associate chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He was previously a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Washington University in St. Louis. He also served as CTO for Zircon Computing and Prism Technologies.