There is a raging debate in the developer community: Microsoft's new platform
.NET versus the Sun standard J2EE. J2EE has been around for a few years,
while Microsoft's attempt is decidedly the new kid on the block.
While the comparisons may be defined by some as purely technical, some have
deemed it a battle of corporate cultures. Sun has certainly chosen to
consider that the battle.
During a lunch discussion with my fellow officers in the Tulsa Java User
Group, we explored the issues. We also decided to see if we could get some
vendors to come in and discuss the issues from both perspectives. This
expanded into a formal debate, and thus the .NET vs J2EE Smackdown was born.
Our group started to plan this event; we contacted Microsoft and Sun and both
sides were more th... (more)
Consider if you will a company buys the source code for a large natural
gas operations and accounting application and gives a small team of
developers the job of supporting it. There are 600-plus PB objects, over
1,700 stored procedures, 604 triggers, 179 views and 400-plus tables in this
application.
The team has a short time to get up to speed, but the volume and time
constraints ma... (more)
It may not be economically feasible (or necessary) for you to throw money at
speeding up applications. Spending a certain amount of money on speed may be
expedient and eventually even necessary, but it shouldn't be our first choice
as analysts or managers. Too many hours are spent working up cost
justification analyses and AFEs (Authority for Expenditures) that could have
been spent on a... (more)
Groundbreaking nuclear-geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller said, "Life is a
whole ceaseless change. There is no sign of physical limit yet."
Bearing that in mind, it occurred to me that I should begin to test the
limits of PowerBuilder 8, and see if I could disprove Muller. It seemed to me
the easiest way to go about this heady undertaking was to convert our EMS
natural gas trading and accou... (more)
Why is it that some Web sites are more appealing and seem to work better than
others? It's not always about the speed of the download, although quite often
that can be the problem. Sometimes there are broader issues at hand. Even
with screens that refresh slowly and try our patience, we can't seem to pull
ourselves away as we move from one site to another.
There are some Web sites that we... (more)