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SD 2000 |
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| IN THIS ISSUE |
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 CONFERENCE
COVERAGE
UML World grabs center stage June
12 NASA's Tropospheric
Emission Spectrometer, scheduled to launch in 2003, has been under development for nearly
a decade. Initially, the software was modeled in OMT and Booch notation, but after the
Unified Modeling Language was standardized in 1997, the group switched to the new
approach--and learned first-hand the limitations of UML for large-scale systems. Akbar
Thobhani, a software engineer for the spectrometer project at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will present his findings in case-study form at CMP Media's
second annual UML World conference in New York on June 13.
"One of the things that doesn't work in the Unified
Modeling Language is presenting good conceptual-level design to people with different
skills," said Thobhani. "We've had to go to data flow diagrams for our
scientists who have a hard time with the UML."
 Martin
Fowler |
The second annual UML World conference, expected to
attract a small but lively crowd of 450 design enthusiasts, will be held at the Crowne
Plaza Hotel in New York, N.Y. from June 12 through June 15. Among the featured speakers
are Martin Fowler, author of UML Distilled (Addison Wesley, 1999), Steve Larson,
software project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Jim Rumbaugh, one of the
fathers of the Unified Modeling Language.
"I'll give an off-the-cuff talk based on my view of
how the UML should fit into a world of lighter-weight processes, of which Extreme
Programming is the most famous example," Fowler said. "The UML often gets in the
way of development. People put more time and effort into feeding complicated CASE tools
than into running software and seeing what it does."
Larson, a rocket scientist, will discuss "It Ain't
(Just) Rocket Science." Rumbaugh will take a more down-to-earth approach with
"UML Today and Into the Future." And in a forum moderated by Roger Smith,
Technical Editor of Software Development magazine, a select group of industry-respected
methodologists will discuss the UML change mechanism in depth--with such provocative
questions as whether the UML should be in the hands of a "benevolent vendor" and
how effective the Object Management Group's process for UML evolution is. The panel, held
on Thursday, June 15th from noon to 1:00 p.m., will include Fowler, Scott Ambler (Software
Development columnist), Cris Kobryn (co-chair of the OMG UML Revision Task Force) and
Peter Coad (author and methodologist).
The editors of Software Development will be publishing
daily updates of the conference proceedings at www.sdmagazine.com
from June 12 to 15. |
GOT PROTECTION?
Patch for Microsoft
Outlook under fire A
soon-to-be released security update for Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 limits what Microsoft
calls legitimate Outlook functionality that enables document sharing and integration of
hand-held devices with PCs. The company stresses that, while the update provides
unprecedented security protection for Outlook, its release does not imply that "I
LOVE YOU," Melissa and other worms that replicate through the ubiquitous e-mail
address software are capitalizing on a particular flaw in the program. Rather, they are
abusing its strengths--and developers whose products piggyback on Outlook may find
themselves back at the whiteboard, trying to work around the new security limitations.
Some are calling the solution drastic and overly complex.
It requests manual authorization if any external application attempts to use the address
book, and blocks nearly 40 ActiveX, JavaScript, Visual Basic and other executables and
shortcuts. PDA synchronization will be hampered by the update, which--once it's
available--will first require installation of the Office 2000 Service Release 1a.
Nevertheless, the patch is probably a step in the right direction for those who prefer to
keep their love letters private. |
BUSINESS BEAT
Left at the Altar
On May 16, Inprise/Borland
Corp. announced that its merger agreement with Corel Corporation had been terminated by
mutual agreement of the two companies. According to Dale Fuller, interim Inprise/Borland
CEO, "Much has changed since the merger was agreed to more than three months ago, and
our board concluded that it would be best to cancel the merger on an amicable basis."
The reciprocal stock option agreements between the two
companies have also been terminated. Corel stock, which in mid-December of 1999 was
trading around $44 a share, recently closed at a little more than $3 a share on the NASDAQ
exchange. Corel also recently announced the resignations of Sandra Gibson, executive
vice-president of corporate services, and Eric Smith, vice-president, general counsel and
secretary.
To top it all off, a cash-flow crisis, mitigated somewhat
by an influx of $15 million in an unusual financing deal from Canada's Canaccord Capital,
means that the company will have to cut costs by 40 percent and lay off several hundred of
its 1,391 full-time staff. This, in spite of the fact that Corel's Jolt-winning Corel
Linux OS has more than 20% of the Linux market.
Does this news, combined with similar tales of financial
woe at bigger players such as TurboLinux and LinuxCare, mean that interest in the
alternative OS is waning? Not likely, say analysts. Rather, the segment is maturing--and
finally being held to profitability standards. |
IDE ALERT
The promise of
Visual Studio 7 At last
month's Visual C++ Developers Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., Microsoft announced
several key feature enhancements for the next release of Visual Studio that will make the
1.2 million developers using Microsoft Visual C++ happy, including a single unified
development environment, Web Services support and support for attributed programming.
Although the release date of Visual C++ 7 and Visual Studio 7 haven't been announced,
industry scuttlebutt suggests an alpha release will be available this summer, followed by
a beta in the fall.
Microsoft demonstrated a new, unified Visual Studio shell
at the conference that brings together the Visual Basic and Visual C++ development systems
in a common integrated development environment (IDE). The common IDE supports
drag-and-drop visual designers for HTML, XML, data, server-side code, and end-to-end
debugging of Web applications across languages, projects, processes and stored procedures.
Also demonstrated was the ability to use any language in
Visual Studio 7.0 to create Web Services that directly link applications, services and
devices with one another over the Internet using HTTP, Extensible Markup Language (XML)
and SOAP, an XML-based standard for cross-platform object invocation.
Attributed programming is an enhancement to the C++
language aimed at reducing the volume of code programmers must write to develop COM+
components. Attributes provide a simpler way for developers to produce components in a
declarative sense. They can be used from either ATL or Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)
without sacrificing the abilities of either offering. The next generation of Visual C++
will recognize the presence of attributes in a source file, and dynamically parse and
verify them during compilation.
At build time, the compiler will recognize the presence of
attributes in a source file and be able to dynamically parse and verify them. As in VC++
6, when the project is built, the compiler parses each C++ source file, producing an
object file. However, when the new VC++ 7 compiler encounters an attribute, it is parsed
and syntactically verified. The new compiler then dynamically calls an attribute provider
to insert code or make other modifications at compile time. The implementation of the
provider differs depending on the type of attribute. |
FLIP TAKES
Best of the 'love'
virus lines
- If you use other operating systems and aren't privy to the fun of watching simple VB
scripts sent by strangers mutilate your hard drive, a similar e-mail virus, which works on
the honor system, has been proposed. It reads: "For those Unix and Linux fanatics who
are feeling left out, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch
of your files at random."
- Since the outbreak of the "I LOVE YOU" worm, engineers at one company have
started calling the programming language involved "Microsoft Viral Basic."
- Overheard: "Isn't it just my luck. Some stranger tells me 'I LOVE YOU' and the next
thing I know, I've got this virus..."
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