Author: OpenETrends

Recently, the analyst firm IDC announced they are forecasting the market for servers running Linux will exceed $9 Billion by 2008. If you think about it, that’s really an amazing statement.

It means that in the next few years, big hardware companies like Sun, IBM and Dell are going to sell literally billions of dollars of servers specifically for Linux. A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, and suddenly we’re talking about serious money. But, Linux is just part of the story. There are literally thousands of others Open Source applications, and their growth is also accelerating — dramatically.

So what new issues or surprises are waiting for us in 2005 with respect to Open Source? Here are a few predictions:

Continue reading “What Execs Want from Open Source in 2005”

The stars are aligning for 2005 to be the “breakout year” for XML’s next wave technologies, including XQuery, according to ISVs and toolsmakers watching the XML space.

Perhaps most bullish among the outlooks comes from DataDirect Technologies, who say that are getting growing interest from architects and devs to learn more about how XML can speed integration for data and documents, and even set up complex, multi-database queries on-the-fly.

“This is the year XQuery is going to happen,” Jerry King, general manager for DataDirect’s XML products told Open Enterprise Trends. “Developers are architects are asking us two questions,” King added:

Continue reading “2005 Will See XML’s Powerful Next Wave”

Controversy may be giving way to simple heads-down hard work when it comes to BPEL4WS, the proposed orchestration standard for web services supported by both Java and .NET vendors. The leading J2EE app sever vendors BEA and IBM have jointly proposed extensions to BPEL (Business Processing Execution Language) to make it more easily implementable within Java/J2EE environments.

Further, a BEA executive close to their BPEL work told Open Enterprise Trends that BEA intends to provide a reference implementation of BPELJ to the Java/J2EE community, and may even provide this royalty-free and as open source.

“BEA will write and provide a reference implementation of BPELJ. Depending on demand and the evolution of the specification, we will also consider making this implementation open source and royalty-free. We’re very serious about it. We want this to be very portable across the Java platform,” said Stephen Hood, BEA product manager for WebLogic Integration.

Continue reading “BEA Eyes Open Source Implementation of BPEL for Java”

PHP is on the march in March.

In a sign that the marketplace sees lots of promise in PHP’s growth prospects, Zend has completed a new venture capital infusion of $6 million. The latest investment, from venture capital fund Index Ventures, together with previous investors Walden Israel and SFK Technologies, brings to $12 million the total of VC investments in Zend in less than six months, since November 2003. Isreali-based news service Globes Online reports that Zend may actually get $2-3 million more in funding before the round closes.

And as if to justify investors’ faith, the long-anticipated PHP5 First Release Candidate is finally for download from Zend. To get a closer look at PHP5, OET spoke with Zend’s co-founder and Zend Engine co-creator Zeev Suraski.

Continue reading “New Money, New Code Keep PHP Marching in March”

A number of enterprise devs had pushed Python’s state-of-the-art in the last few weeks. Notably, Python has a new patch for a particularly sneaky security vulnerability, better support for new logging modules and even an upgraded documentation tool and programmers’ editor.

In this Python wrap, OET provides devs a quick tour, links for code downloads, FAQs and forums.

Security — A buffer overflow in python 2.2’s getaddrinfo() function was discovered earlier this week by Sebastian Schmidt. If python 2.2 is built without IPv6 support, an attacker could configure their name server to let a hostname resolve to a special IPv6 address, which could contain a memory address where shellcode is placed. This problem does not affect python versions prior to 2.2 or versions 2.2.2+, and it also doesn’t exist if IPv6 support is enabled. . Python with the patch is available here. For more background on the problem, go to theMandrakeSoft Security Advisory

Continue reading “Driving Enterprise Python – Patches, Plug-ins, Outlines”

Templating has been gaining in popularity for years among web developers, especially those working on portals or business sites that may have their web pages tied in with complex business rules. Now those same benefits from templating are coming to PHP. This article, originally appearing at DotGeek.org, looks at Smarty, one of the leading PHP templating engines available.

Benefits of PHP Templating
Web design and programming are closely related and yet are very different. Designers speak in such languages as HTML and CSS, and programmers are often heard speaking in the tongues of PHP and SQL. Design focuses primarily on presentation logic, and programming focuses primarily upon business logic. Separating these processes in web development cycles helps to achieve rapid application development goals while providing for website maintainability.

Continue reading “Tips To Using PHP Templates: Inside Smarty”

James Gosling, the renowned creator of Java, now has a new job at Sun: CTO of the Sun Developer Platform. In that role, he gave his first formal briefing to reporters, noting that the push by the Java Tools Committee to create a unified set of APIs for Java tools vendors could take a year or more.

When asked if Java IDEs might align their APIs by next January (2005), Gosling said, “I doubt we’ll have all the work done by next year at this time, but we should have a good road map for what needs to be done…A lot will depend on the consensus. Some of that will be technical and some of that will be political.” Gosling expects some heady issues will affect the timetable, and the outcome, of the push for a common API set for Java IDEs, including UI integration, metadata support and workflow issues — all currently under discussion at the Java Community Process.

Continue reading “Gosling: Unified Java Tool APIs May Take a Year”

Last month, Geekcruises’ Linux Lunacy cruise to Alaska proved that Linux and Open Source are hot enough topics to even warm up Northern waters. The feature of the trip was a candid Q&A; with Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Courtesy of GeekCruises Capt. Neil Bauman and Senior Editor of Linux Journal Doc Searles, OET brings our readers an extended transcript of Linus’ shipboard Q&A;, where he responds to Linux dev questions on the future of Linux, including the status of Linux 2.6, impacts from increasing corporate (and vendor) adoption, an ever-growing kernel, and even on the pending lawsuit from SCO.

Geekcruises Capt. Neil Bauman gets the ball rolling in our extended transcript.

Capt. Neil Bauman: In the last year or so, Linux has been embraced by a large number of established companies. You consider this a good thing, a bad thing? Are you happy? Sad?

Continue reading “Linus Fields Dev Questions On the Future of Linux”

Cocoon 2, part of the Apache XML Project, is a highly flexible web publishing framework built from reusable components. Although reusability is an oft-touted quality of software frameworks, Cocoon stands out because of the simplicity of the interface between the components. Cocoon 2 uses XML documents, via SAX, as its inter-component API. As long as a component accepts and emits XML, it works.

In this Open Enterprise Trends hands-on tutorial on Cocoon 2, developers will get a full package, including:

• (1) a well-versed Cocoon 2 overview,
• (2) simple examples (complete with schematics and figures) on the inner workings of XML and Cocoon;

Continue reading “Tutorial: Apache Cocoon 2 Makes XML Sharing Easy”

A growing number of commercial developers are discovering the merits of using PHP for important data sharing and integration projects. PHP is no longer limited to use on Apache Web servers or other Open Source code projects. It’s finding its way into the core toolkits of high-performance commercial developers.

Jason Sheets, team leader in the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Firmware Development Laboratory, prefers PHP for Web-based technologies.

Why? Sheets says he prefers PHP because it does what he needs “to increase efficiency [and] accountability [and] decrease overhead with performance and usability in mind.” His first try with PHP — the automation of a cumbersome test-reporting procedure — was dramatically successful. His Web-based system slashed hours of daily manual work.

Continue reading “PHP Gaining Momentum Among Commercial Developers”

OASIS has taken on another massive project that could further define the role — and the architecture — of web services, this time in the B2B arena.

A new committee, called the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, has set itself the task of defining a new inter-enterprise protocol that would enable developers and sysadmins to build, monitor and manage web services interactions between companies.

The scope of the project makes this protocol one of the most complicated ever, as committee members intend to empower the protocol to provide views and management controls to the entire life-cycle of a web services transaction or event. Topologically, this means the new protocol will need to provide views into network, application logic and even business logic elements of traffic. Committee members also intend to ensure the protocol supports more than one application model because the protocol is intended to support inter-enterprise (B2B) communications.

Continue reading “OASIS Explores Protocol To Manage B2B Web Services”

Open-source software now plays a crucial role in the majority of large information technology (IT) organizations. It’s not the role you’d think, though, from popular descriptions of Open Source. .

When leaders such as Hostway Corp. and Journyx, Inc. talk about their use of Python, they’re not talking about the virtues of low licensing cost, or waging an ideological battle against Microsoft. Python actually provides them a strategic advantage by providing them a low-cost, easy-to-deploy tool for helping enterprise software systems to talk with one another. In fact, rather than thumbing their nose at Microsoft, these companies use Python to maximize the value of their Windows applications.

Continue reading “Python Power: Growing Respect for an Open Source Integration Tool”

You may know Tcl, and think of it as one of those “toy languages” that teenagers can pick up in less than an hour and make little GUI programs, chat scripts, and primitive Web pages. But Tcl is also finding broadening appeal among enterprise developers facing complex and costly integration projects, as an “industrial strength application glue”.

In the article below, we’ll explain more about Tcl’s use as “industrial-strength application glue,” and show you just how Tcl is becoming a not-so-secret-weapon for developers working on integration projects at such high-profile sites as Oracle, IBM, Cisco, NASA, TiVo, America OnLine, and even the CIA.

We’ll also show you how Tcl can be used by a broad spectrum of developers. Whether you’re working with Java, C#, C++, XML, Fortran or even SQL, Tcl may be able to offer some options because it has been written — and expanded upon — to talk to all these environments already.

Continue reading “Hands-On: Using Tcl as Application Glue for the Enterprise”

The emerging use of Web services could drive some significant changes in the way Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) work, says Robert Berry, a distinguished engineer from IBM’s Hursley Park Java Technology Center.

Berry delivered the keynote address at this month’s Usenix Java Virtual Machine Symposium in San Francisco. He promptly set a futuristic tone by predicting the end of the age where JVMs can focus strictly on performance enhancements. The growing importance of Web services, Berry said, will call for JVMs to get smarter and more manageable.

Continue reading “Usenix Report: Web Services Pushing JVMs into a New Age”