Software estimation is a famously inexact business. Web-hosted software provider
Planix hopes to change that with its Planix estimation solution, which draws
on established best practices and proprietary methodologies to refine build-and-test
phase project planning and estimation.
The tool lets users generate outcome scenarios, ranging from worst and best
cases to most likely. Managers can also craft what-if scenarios. As a hosted
app, Planix doesn't impose the usual up-front deployment and licensing costs,
which means busy dev shops can immediately benefit.
"Stakeholders are notoriously visionary and optimistic," says Planix
CEO Sunjay Pandey. "That's great...and you want to keep that vision for
the business, but Planix lets you put it all down in black and white."
You can work with a "Solo" edition of Planix for free, but it's limited
to a single active project. There are five other services levels that scale
up to enterprise levels, supporting numerous projects and managers. The mid-range
"Project Manager" edition, which allows three active projects and
five versions per project, costs $25.95 per month. For more information, check
out Planix's Web site here. -- Chris Kanaracus, News Editor, Redmond Developer News
Posted on 02/28/20070 comments
Everyone knows that an MSDN subscription can slash licensing costs and provide
discounted access to Microsoft support. But Microsoft provides a host of other
services and avenues for getting enhanced support, services and insight. Whether
it's signing up for beta and other pre-release product programs, tapping into
partnership programs that nurture fledgling ISVs, or working to obtain certification
for your firm or MVP status for a key employee, there are plenty of ways to
get more out of Microsoft.
We want to hear from you. Have you managed to obtain enhanced service and support
by participating in a Microsoft program? If so, we want to hear your story.
Tell us how you found the program, why you joined it and what benefits you got
from it. And if you have advice for readers, please let us know. We may publish
your input in our next issue of Redmond Developer News. E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/21/20070 comments
It wasn't so long ago that a lot of folks were wondering if the Borland Developer
Tools Group had any future at all. After all, Borland was unable to meet its self-imposed
Q3 deadline for announcing a buyer for its tools group. Instead, in November,
Borland opted to spin the group out as a wholly owned subsidiary, called
CodeGear.
Now the firm is delivering its first new products as an independent entity.
And the releases follow through on earlier promises by CodeGear CEO Ben Smith
to make an entrance into the hyperactive arena of dynamic languages.
Delphi for PHP is a component-based rapid application development (RAD) IDE
that promises to boost the productivity of PHP Web developers by letting them
work within the mature toolsets encompassed by Delphi. The IDE goes beyond basic
editing and debugging, enabling a visual programming environment that supports
reuse of components. Also launched is the VCL for PHP, an open source visual
component library tuned for PHP development.
"As CodeGear, this is really one of the first new products we've come
out with and really demonstrates where we are going," says CodeGear Vice
President Michael Swindell. "We are going to go into new language areas,
and we've said that from the very beginning. This [launch] is proof of that."
CodeGear has also firmed up its base, announcing the release of Delphi 2007
for Win32, which adds support for Windows Vista and AJAX Web development. The
IDE incorporates CodeGear's DBX 4 database architecture, which provides a unified
data access architecture for Win32 and .NET development.
Swindell says Delphi 2007 for Win32 will appeal to CodeGear's base of ISVs,
system integrators, VARs and small to medium enterprises, which typically seek
to craft performance-optimized code.
Are you a Borland tool shop, and if so, do you plan to deploy CodeGear products
down the road? We want to know your thoughts on the new company and what it
must do to succeed in a marketplace dominated by Visual Studio and Eclipse.
E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/21/20070 comments
Every April, millions of Americans show up late for work, late for church and
late for life. That's because Daylight Saving Time (DST) moves the clock forward
at 2 a.m. Now, thanks to the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, that dislocation
is going to happen several weeks earlier than normal -- on March 11, to be exact.
Intended to help conserve energy by reducing nighttime use of lighting and
other energy resources, the policy also impacts
applications and software that employ date and time stamps or otherwise
track, manipulate or act upon data based on the time of day.
At Microsoft, both Office 2007 and Windows Vista are tuned for the new schedule
out of the box, but Windows XP requires an update (which went live yesterday)
to get its clocks in order. Other affected products are getting tweaked via
Microsoft Customer Service and Support, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows
Server Update Services (WSUS) and the Microsoft Download Center.
The new DST policy has also spurred Microsoft to make a change to the next
version of Visual Studio, known as "Orcas," writes a Microsoft spokesperson: "In Visual Studio code name 'Orcas' we're fixing this by creating
a new TimeZone2 class that supports multiple DST adjustments."
The change, of course, reaches beyond Microsoft packaged applications, and
therein lies the challenge, the company writes: "While the Visual Studio IDE is
not directly affected by this, applications built using Visual Studio and the
.NET Framework may be. Additionally, other products may be sensitive to the
date time changes."
Applications built using Microsoft's System.TimeZone class will conform to
the underlying OS; however, time-sensitive custom apps with hard-coded DST values
could end up an hour behind for four weeks. Previously, the DST switchover date
was the first Sunday of April, or April 1 this year.
The "Preparing
for Daylight Saving Time changes in 2007" page warns that: "In some
cases, systems and applications may need to be updated directly, while in others,
the application may simply inherit or "read" the date and time information
from the underlying system that it resides on, so the changes need only be made
to that underlying system. Given the broad range of technology in use today
-- and the integration of systems between customers, vendors and partners --
business and IT managers should determine what actions should be taken to mitigate
the effects of DST 2007 on their organizations."
In other words, check your code!
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/14/20070 comments
Everyone likes to tease Microsoft for its painful product branding practices,
especially when you get late-inning name changes
like
those to SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition.
In his blog Capricious Optimism, Microsoft Software Design Engineer Chris Smith
wrote about some of the best
Microsoft code names, and we can't help but think there might be an inverse
relationship at work here. The more dramatic the code name, quite often, the
more opaque the final product name. So the menacing and exotic Tarantula becomes
Internet Information Server, the playful Zamboni becomes C++ v4.1, and the promising
Nemesis ends up as Windows Media Encoder 7.0. More recently, Windows Presentation
Foundation was Avalon, Windows Communication Foundation was Indigo and the euphonious
.NET 3.0 Framework was WinFX.
What are your thoughts on code names? Do you have any favorites you'd like
to share? And what advice might you give to Microsoft's branding politburo as
they struggle and strive to name a host of products? E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/07/20070 comments
A rebranding will happen soon, but for now Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere
(WPF/E, for short) remains the most awkwardly named, anxiously awaited technology
since Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition (VSTO 2005
SE). I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
The future Adobe Flash killer and Web-savvy platform for slick 3D, video and
vector graphics got a fresh debut earlier this week, with the CTP release of
the WPF/E software development kit. The SDK lets developers build animation,
video and audio-laced content for the Web, using standard AJAX and XAML. The
SDK includes documentation, code samples and tools for getting down to work.
You can download it here.
We're seeing some early stabs at rich WPF/E sites, including one that lets
you drag
and drop accessories onto the image of a dog. The same folks also offer
a useful breakout of all the new APIs in the latest CTP. You can find that here.
Have you worked with the new WPF/E CTP or tried any of the demos? Tell us your
experiences and we may publish them in a future issue of Redmond Developer
News. E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/07/20070 comments
Microsoft announced last Tuesday that it has shipped the ASP.NET AJAX development
tools. The toolkit, codenamed "Atlas," consists of a server-side framework,
a client-side JavaScript library and a controls toolkit. The package adds AJAX
(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) support to ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
Microsoft had originally planned to ship the software with Visual Studio "Orcas"
later this year. The runaway success of AJAX development, however, left Microsoft
little choice but to get the tools out to developers right away. AJAX began
beta testing in late October after several community technology preview (CTP)
releases.
In an e-mail interview
with Redmond Contributing News Editor Stuart Johnston, a company spokesman
wrote: "This tool provides Web developers with the essential tools to simplify
building next-generation, AJAX-style Web applications through seamless integration
with the .NET Framework and Microsoft platform."
ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions will be available under the Microsoft
Reference License (Ms-RL), which will enable developers to view the ASP.NET
2.0 AJAX Extensions code, thus aiding in application debugging, maintenance
and interoperability, the spokesperson's e-mail said.
The ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX tools is available for download
here.
Have you kicked the tires on the ASP.NET AJAX tools? What are your impressions
and what could Microsoft do better? E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/31/20070 comments
Microsoft research fellow Jim Gray has been a major player in the area of database
development and transaction processing. A Turing Award winner who helped create
many of the foundation technologies at the heart of modern database and transaction
processing systems, Gray founded and managed the Microsoft Bay Area Research
Center.
Now it appears that Jim Gray, 63, may have been lost at sea during a solo day
trip he took from a San Francisco marina on Sunday morning.
Gray was last heard from at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, when he made a cell phone call
from his 40-foot yacht "Tenacious" to tell a family member that he
was passing out of service range. Gray's wife reported him missing at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday evening, after Gray failed to return from his trip.
California Coast Guard units have been searching the area off the Farallon
Islands, 27 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, without success.
Gray joined Microsoft in 1995 and holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science
from the University of California, Berkeley. An expert in the area of database
and transaction processing systems, Gray worked at Digital, Tandem, IBM and
AT&T before joining Microsoft. You can learn more about Jim
Gray, his fields of research and interests here.
Jim Gray's efforts recently earned coverage in Redmond Developer News. The
December cover story, "The
Science of Software," explores some of the exciting research that has
come out of Gray's group in Microsoft.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/31/20078 comments
Question: When is an OS launch not an OS launch? Answer: When the retail launch
of Microsoft Windows Vista occurs a full two months after code had shipped to
volume license customers.
That detail didn't prevent Microsoft from pulling out the stops in New York
City on Monday, as it unveiled the long-awaited client operating system to the
public. Redmond Channel Partner Editor in Chief Scott Bekker was in New York
and describes
the "orchestrated hoopla," including billboards sporting Vista
and Office logos and staged live outdoor events. Further afield, Bekker writes
that Microsoft "held a beach festival in Brazil, fireworks at the Eiffel
Tower in Paris and arranged for ice sculpture displays in Sweden and Canada."
For development managers, the real question is how long it will take for Vista
-- and its underlying foundation technologies in Windows Presentation Foundation,
Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow -- to reach critical mass.
While new consumer PC shipments are switching to Vista right away, IDC Research
Vice President Al Gillen told Bekker that enterprises will take their time.
He expects many corporate IT departments to exercise downgrade right options
on their Vista-ready contracts and load Windows XP on new systems instead. Gillen
says it will be 2008 before new systems sales of Vista outpace those of Windows
XP.
What is your company planning to do with Vista? Is a migration to the new OS
in the works, and are your development plans changing to meet Vista? If your
decision is to wait, tell us why! E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/31/20070 comments
Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that Microsoft has been working
overtime to position its Office OpenXML (OOXML) file format specification as
a standard document format. Much of this activity has been spurred by the OpenDocument
Format (ODF) promoted by the open source OpenOffice suite and its commercial
branches like Sun StarOffice.
How high are the stakes? In Massachusetts, a years-long effort to require that
all documents be stored in an open, industry-standard format resulted in intense
lobbying and opposition from Microsoft. It also helped drive the activity around
OOXML as a viable standards-based alternative to ODF.
OOXML has already earned the imprimatur of Ecma International, a European standards-making
body. Now Microsoft has OOXML before the International Standards Organization
(ISO), the same body that put the gold stamp on ODF. The problem is a lot of
folks are complaining that the spec is too heavy (at 6,000 pages of documentation)
and burdened by dependencies within Windows to be a viable open standard.
We're planning to look into this effort in our next issue and would love to
hear your thoughts. E-mail me at [email protected]
and we may include your insights into Microsoft's file format push.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/24/20070 comments
First there was the Notebooks for Bloggers imbroglio, where Microsoft gifted
prominent bloggers with tasty Windows Vista-based laptops. Now the company has
been
caught
in a dust-up with Wikipedia.
The whole thing centers around Microsoft's effort to hire a technical writer
to review and edit a pair of Wikipedia entries. One titled "OpenDocument"
about the OpenDocument File format standard, and the other titled "ECMA
Office Open XML" about Microsoft's competing standard file format.
While Wikipedia is famously open to edits and contributions from individuals,
the organization is adamantly opposed to any sort of pay-for-play activity on
the site.
Microsoft says it explored paying a contributor to review and tweak entries
to help counter what it described as inaccuracies in the online content. No
money ever changed hands and no for-fee changes were made to the Wikipedia entries.
But the contretemps reveal growing fault lines as developer relations and communications
become increasingly diverse.
Microsoft, of course, is a leader in this arena. The company has long boasted
superior documentation and support for its platforms and APIs -- an effort that
has helped it outdistance rivals like Netscape and IBM, among others. More recently,
Microsoft has opened a series of alternative channels, including hundreds of
Microsoft employee-based blogs, information-heavy video sites like Channel 9
and the creation of MSDN wikis.
But the company seems to struggle with how to manage the wild Web of communications
on the greater Internet. For instance, in the case of Wikipedia, Microsoft says
it tried to get Wikipedia editors to address the alleged mistakes without success,
before turning to the idea of paying someone to edit the content.
What are your thoughts? Did Microsoft cross a line? And should it even be considering
these kinds of activities when its internal resources or so vast and capable?
E-mail me at [email protected],
and we may publish your advice to Microsoft.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/24/20070 comments
The context-sensitive UI of Microsoft Office 2007 got a name the other day, and
developers got a deal in the process. The
newly
minted Fluent UI boasts all the bells and whistles that garnered Office 2007
so much attention last fall, including the innovative ribbon interface and context-aware
controls.
More important, Microsoft is making the Fluent UI available for developers
to use in their applications, royalty free. The licensing program will let developers
build applications that boast the look and feel of Office 2007 applications,
including the context-aware ribbon controls. A Design Guidelines document provides
what Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft general manager of the Office Client, describes
as "a roadmap for developers implementing the UI."
Among those likely to adopt the program are component and software tool vendors,
commercial application ISVs and developers of complex enterprise-level systems.
"The license is available for applications on any platform, except for
applications that compete directly with the five Office applications that currently
have the new UI (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access),"
states Numoto in a press
release. "We wanted to make the IP available broadly to partners because
it has benefits to Microsoft and the Office Ecosystem. At the same time, we
wanted to preserve the uniqueness of the Office UI for the core Office productivity
components.
Do you plan to work the Fluent UI into your applications? Let me know what
you think of this news at [email protected],
and we may publish your responses!
Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/24/20071 comments