EXE articles from May 2000

EXE archives from May 2000

Wacko world wide web wizardry.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... Next time you go into a bookstore, wander over to the children's section. Take a good look around and note what's available, especially technology-wise. Note those books with the little pads that you press and - lo! - a cow moos, a dog barks or...

A black box for bypassed bugs.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... The bug trapping continues with MuTek Solution's BugTrapper v3.0. Analogous to a 'black box' aircraft flight recorder, it helps trap bugs by generating a trace of how and where bugs occurred, providing a path back to the cause of the problem...

Demo, package, patch.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... What's the collective noun for upgrades - an 'installation'? Well, the folks at InstallShield have been busy of late, with three updates to the range: DemoShield 6.5, RTPatch for InstallShield Professional and PackageForTheWeb 3.0. ...

XML made easy.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... Easy XML 1.0 is an editor for the building of XML-based apps. You can create, validate and transform XML structures from ODBC data sources or from URLs and local files. A simple user interface gives two views of the data: text view and...

Digests.
May 1, 2000... Oracle JDeveloper 3.1, with Business Components for Java, features 'end-to-end' XML support. The development tool supports the drag-and-drop building and deployment of Java- and XML-based systems. It supports the J2EE Debugging Interface (JDI)....

Putting Linux into JBuilder 3.5.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... As very briefly previewed last month, Borland has released a new version of its Java Development tool: JBuilder 3.5, the first major release since the merger with Corel. Supporting Linux as well as Windows and Solaris, the other main feature of...

Reverse that code, my son.(Headway Software re-View C++)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... Understand that code my son, and all the project will be yours. These could be the words of Headway Software, which describes its re-View C++ as a 'visually interactive reverse engineering tool'. It's aimed at those dealing with dauntingly...

Integrity.(MKS Change Integrity)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... A platform independent change management system is provided by MKS Change Integrity. It's a customisable, 100% Java system for software development teams. Designed for the Web, it runs on any platform running a JVE 1.2 . Workflows can be...

Digests.
May 1, 2000... Delphi Developers should be heading to Reading, June 19 and 20: the UK BUG is running Delphi Developers Conference 2000 (DCON). Leading-edge technical excellence at an affordable price is the avowed intent. Three session tracks will be running....

Linux for real.(Product Information)(Column)
May 1, 2000... Dear Sir, I am writing to express my concern at the Linux advocacy in last month's Soapflakes (Linux for e-commerce, Dave Fisher, April 2000). Dave claims that his company's decision to abandon Windows and switch to Linux is based purely...

Other words... On the Microsoft court ruling.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... 'In short, the proof of Microsoft's dominant, persistent market share protected by a substantial barrier to entry, together with Microsoft's failure to rebut that prima facie showing effectively and the additional indicia of monopoly power,...

Ickey and bash.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2000... [Re: An ickey interface (Letters, EXE, April 2000)] Dear Sir, I just checked out the bash command completion option (the reason I didn't know about it is a combination of N years of MS-DOS and, probably, that the HP-UX workstation I...

Your type of wealth; Just where do you stand in terms of your professional circumstances? Without reference to your peers, you will be unable to know. That's why - established for its third year - the EXE Salary Survey helps you get a clearer picture of your situation.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... The headline story of this year's salary survey is that salaries are increasing, seemingly well beyond inflation, again. But as well as the purely monetary aspects of life in IT (after all, only 14% of respondents cite earnings potential as the...

Linux revisited; Peter Collinson revisits the Corel OS and asks what's next?(Product Information)(Column)
May 1, 2000... Most of my articles, and probably the best ones, are written from direct experience. I generally try to write about something that I am working on, or something that I've done in the past. However, I also write a proportion of reviews for EXE,...

Tower of Babel; Francis Glassborow warns that overloading existing words with subtly different meanings can only lead to a Tower of Babel.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... Most people when they first read the story of the Tower of Babel assume that it is about the confusion caused by co-workers using different languages. I think otherwise. It is about the disaster that comes about when people use the same words...

The joy of SAX; There are times when an event-driven interface to an XML parser is preferable to the pre-built, tree-based view of DOM. John Wilson highlights the Saxon tool in particular.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... 'XML gives Java something to chew on.' [Tim Bray, hypertext evangelist, member of the W3C XML Working Group and co-editor of the XML specifications] W hile XML is supported by a large range of general purpose programming languages...

Alex Homer's XML in IE5 Programmer's Reference; reviewed by Alun Williams.(Review)
May 1, 2000... I won't be an evangelist for learning about XML - the ability to personalise data, the promise of a universal data format, a lingua franca for e-commerce systems, etc - enough marketing men are already on that particular task. Nonetheless, this...

Obvious to you.(Column)
May 1, 2000... Beep Intent Attract operator's or user's attention to the machine by making some sort of noise. (Some sort of noise. What might be appropriate here I wonder? Oh yes. I remember. Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!) Also known as Ping, Bell...

It's exploded!; An exploding computer prompts Jules to think about the future of laptops.(Technology Information)(Column)
May 1, 2000... My print server blew up last week. There is nothing particularly remarkable or surprising about that - it was an ancient Dell 486, creaking along on worn-out disks, and sitting among a stack of machinery in the airing cupboard because the...

The Document Object Model; XML could be a great boon for developers. With its flexibility and standardisation, you can easily transfer and convert data in a uniform way, and even configure applications. Dave Sussman shows the way.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... Unless you've been living under a rock in the Gobi desert, it's probably a safe bet to say that you've at least heard of XML. You may not have used it yet and, like many people, you could well be wondering what you could use it for, and how....

Window hooks; Or how to convince Windows to do things it doesn't want to. Gavin Smyth plays with Winamp for some Windows subclassing.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... I'm sure a lot of you have made use of Nullsoft's Winamp, a very nice audio playback tool for Win32 that can be found at www.winamp.com. One minor irritation I have with Winamp is that the controls for skipping tracks, etc, are available either...

Non-adulterous relationships; Continuing his look at business objects, Philip Brown takes the OO moral high ground about adulterating public interfaces.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... Last month we looked at how the classic Stock, Order and Customer requirement could be modelled as three separate business objects, each exposing its state through well-defined properties. Although these objects could now be used as-is...

Browsing the next generation; Visual Basic developers will soon need to start calling themselves Visual Studio developers. Jon Perkins explains why.(Product Development)
May 1, 2000... Once again, my theme is keeping skills up to date while also keeping an eye on what lies ahead. To start with I'll cover the main points from a keynote speech given by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft president and CEO, in which he outlined the next...

James Coplien; James Coplien known simply as 'Cope', James Coplien is a Distinguished Member of Tenchnical staff with Bell Laboratories. He is a pioneer of the use of software patterns. He is the author of 'Advanced C++. Programming Styles andIdioms' and 'Multi-Paradigm Design for C++' and co editor of 'Pattern Languages of Program Design'.
May 1, 2000... What was the first computer you worked on? The Burroughs B5500, which we accessed with an ASR 33 console over phone lines to the computer 50 miles away. What was the first computer language you worked in? WIPL: the Wisconsin...