Breaking DNS with Wildcard records
Posted By Mike Fratto at 10:43 AM

Charter Communication’s wildcard DNS resolution maybe useful to users surfing the web through a browser, but will break all other IP applications. Error handling needs to be performed locally by the application receiving the error. Handling errors in the network for application traffic causes more problems that they solve. Using wildcard domain names to handle unresolved hosts is bad engineering. Period.

Continue reading "Breaking DNS with Wildcard records "


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Interview with Marja Koopmans, Director of Partner Strategy for Microsoft Office Live
Posted By Tom LaSusa at 05:12 PM

NWC contributor Robert Hertzberg talks with Marja Koopmans, the Director of Partner Strategy for Microsoft Office Live talks about the company's ambitious new entry in the area of web hosting and software as a service. | Click to listen

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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 08:55 AM

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is a product that's just been released as a service and provides IT analytic capabilities for free.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:59 AM

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is for the coders out there - an AJAX/JSF open source toolkit that lets you develop cool Web 2.0 applications without JavaScript...

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:17 AM

That's right - freebies for your Friday. You know you missed them.

Today's freebies are all about anti-spyware and online storage...

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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iNetWord
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:19 AM

iNetWord is a free, AJAX-enabled WYSIWYG editor that comes damn close to proving that Web 2.0 can compete with desktop applications.

Continue reading "iNetWord"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:45 AM

Happy Friday!

Today I have three freebies for you: a desktop skinner, a web-based bookmark repository, and a really cool JVM clustering technology from Terracotta.

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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Acquisition of the Week: RightNow and Salesnet
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:39 AM

RightNow has announced its intention to acquire Salesnet for its workflow automation capabilities and, in a surprising show of honesty, its customer base in all all-cash merger of the two companies.

Continue reading "Acquisition of the Week: RightNow and Salesnet"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:16 AM

Happy Friday!

Today I have two freebies for you - one for you fellow developers and one for the videophiles who just have to share their latest reel with the world.

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:57 AM

Happy Friday!

Today we've got two freebies for you: one for Linux fans and one for the gamers.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:46 AM

Happy Friday after Interop!

Today I have a couple of freebies for you, both focused on sharing content on the web.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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ThinkFree Office Online Beta Available
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:12 AM

Another Web 2.0 Office application beta goes live, this one from ThinkFree.

Continue reading "ThinkFree Office Online Beta Available"


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TechQuiz: Web Applications
Posted By Tom LaSusa at 09:47 AM

Having a tough time with our Web Applications TechQuiz (based on our April 27th cover package)? Our answer key is available here -- try not to cheat though!:

Continue reading "TechQuiz: Web Applications"


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Opera 9: The other, other browser
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 01:59 PM

Opera today announced the availability of Beta 1 of version 9 of its browser. New features include AJAX-based components called 'widgets', a BitTorrent search engine, and updated content blocking.

Continue reading "Opera 9: The other, other browser"


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Oracle's In My Google
Posted By at 10:01 AM

Google’s digging deeper into the enterprise, today announcing a new Google Search Appliance. The key new feature on the latest version of the product is what the search giant calls Google OneBox—it’s the same top-of-the-search results you find as a consumer using the Google search engine, only now applied to enterprise applications data.

Continue reading "Oracle's In My Google"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:39 AM

It just wouldn't be Friday without a freebie. This one is a useful set of command line utilities for Windows that makes administration of web, database, and general purpose servers just a bit easier...

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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You'll Have To Do Better Than That
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:54 AM

The explosion of online, AJAX-enabled word processing applications is far from complete. The latest entry is AjaxWrite, offered to you by Michael Robertson (of MP3.com, Linspire, and GizmoProject fame - or is that infamy?).

Continue reading "You'll Have To Do Better Than That"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 12:35 PM

Today's freebie is all about networking and keeping your neighbors off your wireless connection.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:20 AM

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is all about streaming live video.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Deja Vu
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:28 AM

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that browser used to make me smile.
And I knew if it had a chance
That it could make a website dance
And users would be happy for a while.

Continue reading "Deja Vu"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 08:27 AM

Today's freebie is brought to you by the letter "N", for NetJaxer.

NetJaxer integrates Web 2.0 applications like Gmail, iOutliner, TadaList, Digg, Writely (recently acquired by Google), and Meebo with Windows, making them easily accessible via several traditional Windows launch mechanisms.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Borland: The Saga Continues
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 08:56 AM

I had a great chat with Borland last week, and discovered that the death of its IDE business "was greatly exaggerated", in a way.

Continue reading "Borland: The Saga Continues"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:40 AM

Happy Friday!

Today's freebie is a CD/DVD/BD-compliant disc burning utility.

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Standards. Acquisitions. Lunacy.
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 01:14 PM

As seems often to be the case, a few vendors and analysts seem to be having issues understanding an acquisition strategy. This time it the controversy surrounds BEA and BPM vendor Fuego...

Continue reading "Standards. Acquisitions. Lunacy."


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Acquisition of the Week: BEA and Fuego BPM
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:27 AM

BEA announced this week that it had acquired BPM vendor Fuego for $87.5 million in cash.

Continue reading "Acquisition of the Week: BEA and Fuego BPM"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 03:17 PM

Today I actually have something free for you! Woo hoo!

Continue reading "Friday Freebie"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 07:51 AM

Happy Very Snowy Friday!

Today I've got two freebies for you, so sit back and ignore the need to shovel the sidewalk for a while longer and read on...

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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Standards Watch: OASIS WS-Security
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 05:37 PM

OASIS today announced that the WS-Security (WSS) v1.1 specification has been ratified as a standard.

Continue reading "Standards Watch: OASIS WS-Security"


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You Go Girl
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:17 AM

It was a sad statement that a discussion of women who've had an impact in technology, specifically computer science, often results in a discussion of just one woman, Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992).

Continue reading "You Go Girl"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:07 AM

Happy (snowy, at least where I am) Friday!

Today we have two freebies for you...

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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The End of an Era
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 05:49 PM

Today, along with Borland's announcement that it would acquire software testing vendor Segue Software, it also announced its intention to divest itself of its IDE lines.

Continue reading "The End of an Era"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:32 AM

Happy Friday! Today's Friday Freebies are all about rich internet application development, because I'm still a code monkey at heart...

Continue reading "Friday Freebies"


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Which Office Suite Would You Choose?
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 06:52 PM

An IM chat sometimes takes the strangest turns...

Just as Firefox has continued to make inroads in the browser market, so have StarOffice and ThinkFree made strides in gaining at least some mindshare in the market. But if you're the one making the choice - or perhaps more importantly, footing the bill - what are you gonna decide?

Continue reading "Which Office Suite Would You Choose?"


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AJAX Vulnerabilities != Web Services Vulnerabilities
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 04:52 PM

AJAX is in the news. Not for being an exciting "new" (I disagree with this description and anyone who makes such a claim, for the record) technology but for its ability to potentially expose clients (browsers, really) to vulnerabilities.

Continue reading "AJAX Vulnerabilities != Web Services Vulnerabilities"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 07:39 AM

Happy Friday!

Time to celebrate the end of the week with a free toy!

Centennial Software is heralding a new freebie from Sharp Ideas. Abe Usher's Slurp Audit is a free tool that provides information on what files might be at risk for theft on your network. It's designed to run right from a USB stick, and generates reports showing what files could have been downloaded using a USB connected device, effectively being stolen.

This application helps to highlight the threats associated with endpoints and portable storage devices, which is why Centennial (which creates IT asset management and endpoint security products) is "noting" the announcement.

You can get Slurp Audit here.

Get out there and scare your security guys! They love this stuff, really!

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Testing Update: Registry Hacking
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 04:16 PM

I'm really finished testing ESBs, but during the course of writing the article I often need to go back and double check something. I usually don't write at the lab (can't chain smoke around the servers) so I need to take advantage of remote access.

Except I forgot to enable one machine for remote access and I really don't want to run to the lab just to get access. So I did what any good admin does - I hit google.

Sure enough, this great article describes step by step how to remotely modify the registry on a remote machine to enable remote access. A few minutes of playing "find the registry key" and voila!

All Hail Mitch Tulloch and Google. How did we ever do without them?

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Why is Microsoft unique?
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 03:30 PM

I was just reading a ZapThink report on Microsoft's new XAML-extensions for WWF (Windows WorkFlow) and got stuck again on one of Ronald Schmelzer's comments.

Ron is quoted in several publications as saying:

"Microsoft’s use of XAML as a way to specify business processes is unique, Schmelzer said."

Now I don't know what you've been doing lately, Ron, but I just finished writing an entire book on XAML and let me tell you something, there's very little "unique" about XAML. Oh, don't get me wrong - it's cool, it's sexy, it's neato-nifty-keen and there's some new features available that will knock your socks off, but it isn't unique and neither is extending it to incorporate business process specific calls to WWF.

Ever heard of BPEL, Ron? You know, an XML-based specification that describes...

wait for it...

wait for it...

You got it - business processes. Specifically, the activities and steps that make up a business process. Sound familiar?

WWF XAML: <SequenceActivity />
BPEL : <sequence />

Oooohhh.. now that's unique, isn't it?

Yes, there's some differences, but the core terminology - notice the term "sequence", Ron? - and concept is the same. They are both XML-based formats for referencing activities and interacting with a business process. Both are interpreted by a runtime engine. (BPEL -> BPEL Engine. WWF XAML -> WPF + WWF)

The only reason you might (and that's a big might) consider Microsoft unique in this area is because it is embedding activities and steps right in the user interface. That's right, XAML was primarily built for declaring user interfaces, and is being extended to support other Windows specific technologies as we speak. It certainly isn't unique because activity artifacts can be changed on the fly and reinterpreted because BPEL is treated the same way.

Why is using XAML unique? XAML is extensible, all XML is. That's not unique. I point you at WS-Policy as an example, which is being extended to support domain specific policy declarations such as security (WS-SecurityPolicy).

Using XAML - or any other XML - to specify business processes is hardly unique. Unless you're going to fall on your sword and claim that it's unique because it's a) embedded inside a user-interface (which breaks Microsoft's own best practices statement of separating user interface from application logic) or b) because it's a lot neater and cleaner than BPEL, I call horsepuckey.

Well, which is it? I'd really like to know because this quote on the subject is really quite...vague...and quite frankly, I don't see how you can seriously say it's unique.

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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:26 AM

Well, after spending three hectic weeks in the lab testing ESB products, you can imagine that I've had to find a few interesting tools.

Today's freebie is one of them. It's called XMOJO and it's an OSS JMX implementation, supporting both instrumentation and management. XMOJO, aside from having a cool sounding name, is a complete implementation of version 1.0 of the JMX specification. It offers multi-management via RMI and HTTP and has been tested on multiple enterprise service platforms: WebLogic, WebSphere, Oracle9iAS, JBoss, and TIBCO Hawk among them.

XMOJO includes an MBean RMI client for testing developed JMX agents.

You can get XMOJO here.

Go crazy!

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Stop with the e-mailS already!
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 04:05 PM

It has come to my attention - usually painfully - that many people erroneously believe that the plural of e-mail is e-mails.

It is not.

Does the post office deliver mail, or mails? Yeah, exactly. "Hey, look at the mails I got today!" Sounds pretty retarded, doesn't it? So does "Hey, look at the e-mails I got today!"

E-mail is like beer, and deer. You don't have "beers" (unless you're from the UP, eh? Ya!). You don't shoot "deers", and you don't send or receive e-mails.

And yes, as a matter of fact it is a hyphenated word. If you don't like the hyphen, petition Merriam-Webster.

Just like anal-retentive.

Your observations that this last example applies to the author of this blog are unnecessary. She already knows.

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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 05:40 PM

Thought I forgot about you (again), didn't you?

I've got a couple of interesting freebies for you this Friday.

Textmessage.cc is launching its new site for sending text messages free. Everyone gets free access to send text messages from a website to most digital mobile phones that permit the sending of short messages directly from your Blog or website.

Also included in the launch is a free tool for adding code directly to your website to enable this functionality.

Go nuts!

The second freebie is more work oriented and is from IBM. During the course of testing MQ it became necessary to read and write messages from the queue. Enter RFHUTIL, available for free download and use here (IBM Supportpac IH03). This is a pretty cool tool and lets you view messages in just about any conceivable format (including COBOL copybook), so grab it and start reading and writing from those queues!

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Testing Update: Get Outta My (Name)Space!
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:41 PM

So here's a weird one for you. I was testing another ESB today and just finished setting up the classpath to include the OpenJMS jars. After testing connectivity (yeah! it worked) I tried to hit the administrative console for the underlying application server and ... nothing.

The server responded, but no page displayed. Well this is weird...a bit of digging showed that the servlets and portlets responsible for displaying the page were hooked into Log4J. Many Java-based applications are, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Looking at the logs, it appeared that some sort of conflict had arisen in the Log4J system. Some sort of class conflict. Some sort of OpenJMS-is-using-old-libs conflict.

After removing the OpenJMS jars from the classpath - voila! The administrative console returned to normal.

I have seen some strange things while testing, but never something like this. I'd expect the administrative console to not load at all, but given the fact that the proper class exists and is apparently just missing a method (log, believe it or not), I guess it isn't that surprising. Just weird.

Someday I'll get through a product test without anything weird happening. Everything will go smoothly. Everything will work as advertised...

Why yes, I'd love to buy a piece of your bridge. How much?

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Testing Update: Contact Your System Administrator
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 04:51 PM

I started perf testing one of the ESB products today and immediately discovered that it wasn't responding as expected. Okay, no problem, I'll just remove the extra message logging I put it while building an orchestration and restart the test.

Wait...it's still not responding. What is this? 2095 active BPEL processes? Hmmm...okay, there's a delete button. I should just be able to push the button and the process will go away...sure, I have to do it 2095 times but hey, better than nothing.

What's this? A Java exception? On the console? What do you mean, "Contact your system administrator". I am the system administrator and I can assure you I have no idea what this generic exception is trying to say. Maybe the log has more information...ummm, yeah. A stack trace. Oooh, and another copy of the exception message thrown on the admin console. That's nice. But why, exactly, was this exception thrown?

Was it privileges? Is the manager not responding? Solar Flares?? Magnetized shoes??!?! What?

A general exception error that is printed out on the screen with no clue as to what really happened is less useful than just saying "Yo, that didn't work!". Ya gotta give me something more to go on here, people!

Please?

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Acquisition of the Week: Mercury and Systinet
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 04:30 PM

Wow. Well, this one came out of nowhere. Mercury picked up Systinet for a cool $105M in cash today.

Everyone who's reporting on this seems to be focusing on how good a move this is for Mercury; how purchasing the Registry/Repository provider is going to enable Mercury's product lines to continue embracing and extending SOA. What everyone keeps ignoring is what this acquisition might do to the other SOA-based ISV product lines...Come on. When a company tells me about its registry, the conversation is nearly inevitably ended with an admission that the ISV OEM's Systinet's Business Service Registry. BEA. Oracle. Et al...

Nearly every BPM and ESB product out there either OEM's the product or interoperates with it - and makes a point of mentioning that. Why? Because Systinet is, and has been, entrenched in the wider SOA market for about two years now. So why aren't these analysts talking about the impact this acquisition will have on the wider market?

Maybe because right now it looks like nothing. Mercury claims it will run Systinet as a "wholly owned subsidiary" so one hopes that nothing will change with its partners and customers.

But the registry/repository space is a small one, and this acquisition leaves only Infravio and SOA Software as the most well recognized providers of registry/repository solutions in the market. Yes, Software AG has a solution, but its just making its first appearance this year and doesn't have the traction with ISVs that Systinet has. I'm guessing that Infravio and SOA Software are both licking their chops in anticipation that this acquisition will not be viewed positively by Systinet's OEM partners. With all the financial problems Mercury Interactive has had in the past few months - including being delisted from the NASDAQ - you can bet that some of Systinet's old OEM partners - and customers - are likely willing to listen.

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Testing Update: License to Connect
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 12:15 PM

An enterprise service bus (ESB) is essentially an integration technology. It's designed to integrate applications and technology using standards-based protocols. JDBC. JMS. SOAP. FTP.

But it is, at its core, an integration technology. That means adapters. Endpoints. Integration points. Whatever.

Part of testing an ESB must, therefore, be to evaluate the mechanisms provided for connecting to disparate systems, such as NWC Inc.'s Oracle 9i database. That requires a database adapter.

Most vendors I've tested are using DataDirect JDBC drivers as the means by which a database is integrated with the bus. Some, however, use a proprietary adapter. There's no technical issue with this whatsoever. But let's discuss the licensing issue because that is, as it has always been with integration technologies, a problem.

Usually, it's just a painful process of insuring that a single, all encompassing license file includes all the adapters you'll need. But this week I learned a new trick, one I'm going to call a connect license. Usually license files are added to the system through the administrative console and never thought of again. But this product required - yes REQUIRED - that a license key be entered whenever a database connection was configured. Every. Time.

Now you may be thinking "So what? I'm only going to set up maybe 3 or 4 database connections, that's not a big deal!"

Well, yes it is - if the product in question also tightly couples a single database query to a connection. I won't even go into the fact that tightly coupling anything in a product that is allegedly the "underpinnings" or "foundation" of an SOA which is, by necessity, a loosely coupled system, is counter-intuitive and makes no sense. One connection. One SQL statement. One license.

This. Is. Ridiculous. People.

It's one thing to license software, it's another to license particular features of software, it's a whole other ballgame to license connectivity. It's craziness, it's annoying, and it's just plain silly.

I guess at least I should be grateful that the license check is done during configuration. Imagine the impact on performance of a system conducting a license audit at runtime - to make certain the system is actually licensed to connect at runtime.

I think it's time to shut up, before someone decides that's a good idea. You never know with software.

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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 12:01 PM

Welcome back! Hope the holidays were as good to you as they were to me.

Today's Friday Freebie is a video service from DKWare called DKMessenger.

DKMessenger is a free PC-to-PC videophone and messaging service that permits communications via text, video and audio simultaneously. Yeah, kind of like Skype 2.0 (though I doubt they have the cool Wireless Linksys Skype phone that Santa brought Don for Christmas).

DKWare also offers a business edition of DKMessenger that's not free (as in gratis) but includes additional collaborative technologies such as whiteboarding, encryption, virtual meeting rooms, and more.

Have at it, folks!

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When Free Isn't
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:58 AM

I was excited last year when Microsoft announced that it would join the rest of the modern world and offer express versions of its development environment for free, targeting hobbyists and students.

So I went to download Visual C# Express Edition....and discovered a little disclaimed regarding the "freeness" of the Express editions:

Continue reading "When Free Isn't"


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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:26 AM

Two freebies for you today.

The first is a well hidden, undocumented, unsearchable free virtual CD driver from Microsoft. VCdControlTool has no documentation and you'll need to read the readme in order to properly "install" the proggy as it involves copying the driver to the appropriate system directory, but once installed it works as advertised. You can mount ISO images as a "virtual cd" and access them through the drive letter you assign.

Come to think about it, it really acts similar to mounting a remote file system on a *NIX box. In any case, it's pretty simple and easy to use and while it is unsupported by Microsoft, it's a great little tool for mounting images without requiring that you burn them off to a CD/DVD.

The second freebie is from a company called Turbine that has just taken its Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach into beta test. Its looking for beta testers and all you have to do is sign up at FilePlanet to get access to the beta test. Yes, it's binary crack, just like World of Warcraft, but dag nabbit, the screen shots look good and aside from the fact that its staged in the world of Ebberon, it looks appealing. This is your chance to try it out before you spend the cash to buy the GA version, so give it a whirl. Turbine's trying to stress test its servers (the game is online-only) so you'll be doing them, and yourself, a favor by trying it out early.

It looks to have some advantages over WoW, such as private adventures for your party that can't be affected/interrupted by other players/parties, so that's a huge plus considering the amount of PvP action that has marred so many other MMORPGs like WoW and Diablo.

I'll stick to my tabletop games, thanks, but if you like the digital addiction or don't have a DM living with you, this might be for you.

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Business as usual in Redmond
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 12:23 PM

OpenDocument.
Open XML.

Two standards, both open, from two different sets of vendors. Of course you've already gathered that one of the standards is coming from Microsoft who, like the cheese, stands alone.

Continue reading "Business as usual in Redmond"


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The Emergency Email System
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:36 AM

Since today's snowstorm in NE Wisconsin is causing schools to close early, a friend pointed out the existence of the Emergency Email System, which is how he's getting information about what schools are closing and how bad the weather really is.

Pretty cool, and it's free (everyone likes free stuff, right?) You can choose from a lengthy list of alerts covering everything from school closings to severe weather to changes in the homeland security threat level.

This is great, especially when weather turns suddenly and you don't listen to the right radio stations (why are school closings always on the country music or easy listening stations??) or watch the right television station. Or when you're at work and don't have access to either.

Cause everyone has access to their e-mail 24x7, right? Stop looking at me like that - I know darn well I'm not the only one...

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Testing Update: ESB Performance
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 03:42 PM

That's right. We love you so much that we're testing the performance of ESB products so you don't have to.

The things we do to make your lives easier...

Continue reading "Testing Update: ESB Performance"


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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:32 AM

Welcome back! It's been a couple weeks, but you'll like this freebie - I guarantee!

Today's freebie comes from Autodesk. This past week Autodesk, the maker of CAD and GIS software, released its mapping server into the open-source community by joining up with the OSS map server group responsible for MapServer. Autodesk put its server side mapping software, based on a wealth of OSS components, into the hands of a newly created foundation, the MapServer Foundation. Autodesk will continue to provide financial and development support for the project.

Two server side mapping projects are managed by the foundation: MapServer Cheetah (the original MapServer software) and MapServer Enterprise (Autodesk's server side geospatial software). Both are heavily based on open standards, and both are free for download at the MapServer Foundation web site.

While some geospatial data in the free version of MapServer Enterprise is read/write (such as ESRI), some sources are read only. Autodesk will be offering a commericial version of MapServer Enterprise in 2006, which will support read/write capabililties for additional geospatial data sources such as Oracle.

If you need software to provide geospatial capabilities via the web, then check this offering out.

If you find any comments in the MapServer code left by me, well, remember that I was much younger then! :-)

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Testing Update: When Out of the Box Isn't
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:04 AM

Every integration product claims out of the box adapter support for standard enterprise databases: Oracle, IBM, and SQL Server.

Maybe I'm just being pedantic, but "out of the box" means that a feature can be used right away, with no additional software. I should be able to point an Oracle JDBC driver at NWC Inc.'s Oracle 9i database, give it the appropriate credentials and start integrating to my heart's content.

Oracle and Microsoft, however, apparently don't believe in supporting their partners. Or at least that's the ISV's story and they're sticking to it. The first ESB product I started testing provides an adapter for Oracle and SQL Server, but of course the appropriate JAR files must be manually copied to the right location on the server before either adapter will actually work. And that's assuming you can figure out where the JAR files need to reside. Is it in /lib? Is it in /ext? Maybe it's in another subdirectory? Why don't you have more details on this? It's a fairly common process, dag nabbit! Would it be so difficult for you to provide an interface that lets me tell you where the JAR file is and then your software can put it where it wants it? Cause you don't want me to tell you where it can go right now...

That's not out of the box, people. I don't know whether to be irritated at the ESB vendor or Oracle and Microsoft for prohibiting distribution of their JDBC driver JAR files with third-party products. It's easy to find the Oracle drivers, they're on the Oracle database server in the lab. But the Microsoft JDBC drivers - which every last J2EE-based integration product requires - are carefully hidden on Microsoft's site. So carefully hidden that the last time I needed them I stored them on NWC Inc.'s NAS so I wouldn't have to go through the pain of finding it again.

Yeah, it's not that big of a deal, but it's the little things that annoy you when you're doing something that ought to be a hell of a log easier than it is. I don't know which is more annoying - the proprietary "open" JDBC and JMS standards or claiming out-of-the-box support for a feature that isn't.

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Product Announcement: Forum Vantage
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:52 AM

So up until recently there's really only been one external hardware solution for speeding up XML parsing/XSLT processing: DataPower's XA35. Yes, the mean, green XSLT machine.

With IBM's recent acquisition of DataPower there's a hole in the market for this type of technology. Not that IBM/DataPower isn't selling the XA35, but the WebSphere division isn't as good at pushing hardware as it is software and there's quite a few folks who don't want to buy Blue. Yeah, imagine that.

Enter Forum Systems Vantage. A new offering from the security-focused Forum Systems, the Vantage line is a direct competitor to DataPower's XA35 and focuses on accelerating XML parsing/XSLT processing using its customized hardware/software XML parsing and acceleration technologies.

Forum has been a strong player in the security market, and unlike many of its competitors has stayed away from the temptation to move into the SOA management space. This is the first lateral move for Forum into the broader SOA market and it will be interesting to see if its newest product will perform and sell as well as its Sentry and XWall product lines.

With the growing interest in SOA and the number of intermediaries being deployed on commoditized hardware and operating systems, the need for accelerated XML parsing/XSLT processing is coming on fast, so Forum's move into the market is well-timed.

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Acquisition: Intalio and FiveSight Technologies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:56 AM

The Open Source BPMS Company, Intalio, today announced that it has acquired FiveSight Technologies, a privately-held company based in Chicago, Illinois. FiveSight brought to market an open source implementation of the BPEL 2.0 specification, developed to address the growing need for Business Process Management (BPM) as a core competency for companies large and small.

"Intalio was started as an open source company and initiated several major open source projects such as OpenEJB, which served as a foundation for Apache Geronimo," said Ismael Ghalimi, founder and CEO of Intalio. "With this acquisition, we are bringing open source to the world of Business Process Management and have what it takes to change the economics of the BPM industry."

Intalio has incorporated the FiveSight technology within Intalio|BPMS 4.0, which is currently available through an Early Adopter Program and will be released to the public in Q1 2006. Intalio is planning to continue the development of the FiveSight BPEL 2.0 engine under the open source Common Public License, and release its BPMN process designer and BPEL4People workflow suite under similar open source licenses later in 2006.

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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 08:16 AM

Happy Friday!

Today we've got three freebies for you.

The first is an On-Demand office suite, gOffice. This hosted office suite offers you the functionality of a productivity suite in a web browser, with a rich text editor and presentation composition in any browser.

Firefox and Internet Explorer are supported, though some functionality is limited in Firefox. Storage of up to 100 files is free, and you can e-mail,fax, and download PDF versions of your office documents with the click of a button.

The second is an open source collaboration suite from Zimbra. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite provides support for email, contacts, and group calendaring, and consists of a server and client. 3.0 Beta 2 is available now, with GA planned for early 2006. The Zimbra suite offers a plethora of functionality including:
Mail, calendar, contact management, an AJAX user and administrative UI, IMAP4/POP3 support, indexing and search, and single copy message storage.

The beta 2 release adds a delegated calendar, multi-calendar views, calendaring printing, spell checking, an enhanced distribution list, and alias management, among other features.

Zimbra offers both an Open Source edition and a network edition. The latter includes regular updates and support.

The third freebie is from GreenSloth. No, it's not a new creature for Dungeons and Dragons, it's a disposable e-mail service designed to cut down on the amount of SPAM in your inbox.

It's a free, web-based e-mail service that doesn't require registration. You pick a disposable address, like dontspamme@greensloth.com and use that addy whenever you like. Then you hit the homepage at greensloth.com and check "nospam".

You type in the e-mail addy you used and hit "CheckMail". (remember that greensloth.com is case sensitive!). There are no passwords, nothing to remember but the e-mail address you used. Yes, this means other people could read your mail, so choose a unique e-mail address that will be hard for people to figure out.

Greensloth.com keeps the e-mail it receives for only 4 hours, so this really is a disposable service that's best for receiving registration /activation e-mail or signing up for forums, etc... Check it out, it sounds pretty darned cool.

Have a great holiday next week. I'll be out of touch for the holidays so there's no Friday Freebies next week, but I'll try to make up for that upon my return. Eat well, drive safely, and enjoy the break!

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Whoooooooo are you?
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 02:01 PM

You almost need an ID management product to keep track of who acquired who in this space.

Oracle announced its acquisition of ID management vendor Thor Technologies this morning, for an undisclosed sum.

Now, in case you were wondering what happened to the rest of the space, here's a refresher on the timeline:

• September 2002 - IBM acquires Access360


• November 2003 - Sun acquires Waveset


• January 2004 - Netegrity acquires Business Layers


• October 2004 - CA acquires Netegrity


• November 2005 - Oracle acquires Thor Technologies

That leaves Novell with its DirXML product suite and Courion with its IdM suite.

You might say, "Hey! What about Oblix?"

What about them? Oracle acquired them soon after they had acquired Web services management/security vendor, Confluent. So Oracle now has a full portfolio in this space that covers everything from provisioning to Web services security.

This gives Oracle the provisioning and full systems' management it didn't get with the Oblix acquisition, and plays well into its Fusion architecture plans. CA is well positioned in this same space, along with IBM due to its Access360 buy in 2002 and recent acquisition of DataPower.

Joanne over at Secure Enterprise has a great overview of IdM, and you may want to check out our last review of IdM technologies.

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Acquisition of the Week
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 11:56 AM

Ooohhh...fun stuff out there this week. Citrix made another acquisition, this time targeting web appplication firewall vendor Teros.

This coming on the not so distant acquisition of layer 7 load balancer and application acceleration vendor, Netscaler.

The Teros offering will be rebranded as the Citrix NetScaler Application Firewall and we expect to see deeper integration between the NetScaler product line and Teros' technology as a result of the acquisition.

This is definitely a leap frog over competitor F5 Networks, who announced (nearly at the same time, coincidence? We don't think so) its Application Security Module (ASM) for its BIG-IP product line. ASM is the same robust application firewall technology found in F5's standalone TrafficShield appliance but it runs as a software module on the BIG-IP platform.

The difference between the two is that Teros has the added edge of protection for Web Services (SOAP), something that F5 has not yet added into its security module.

This is a good move for Netscaler, though we've seen performance issues with Teros in the lab that will need to be addressed during integration efforts if the application security functions of the Teros product is to keep up with the traditional performance of the Netscaler product line.

Watch closely, we've said for years that application/Web services security and content switches were a natural fit, and we wouldn't be surprised to see more acquisitions by other layer 7 players in the near future.

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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:17 AM

Today's Friday Freebies are kind of fun. Both offer the ability to send yourself an e-mail in the future for whatever reason you'd like.

Want to remind yourself in 2020 what your goals were this year? Send yourself an e-mail to your "future you" today and these organizations will hold your e-mail until the date you specify and then send it out to you.

Sound freaky? Could be, especially if you forget that you did it!

The first one is from FutureMe.org. The cool thing about futureme.org is that you can mark the e-mail as public and other people can see what you're sending to yourself in the future - without your name and e-mail addy, of course. It's amusing to see what people are planning on sending to themselves - everything from high school kids reminding themselves to study hard and pass all their exams to adults exposing their goals for themselves. Even if you don't want to send yourself an e-mail in the future it's an interesting read.

The second organization plugging this service is, believe it or not, Forbes.com. Yes, Forbes.com. Forbes has entered into an agreement with Yahoo and a couple of other internet savvy organizations to provide the same service, but it's done so as a kind of technological survival experiment and the description of how it's planned for loss of services and built redundancy into the system is an interesting read.

So get on out there and send your future self an e-mail.

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Product Announcement: Emic^H^H^H^HContinuent
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:46 AM

Emic Networks has rebranded itself as Continuent and completed its Series B funding this month.

With the rebranding comes some great news for databases, as the previously MySQL focused HA database product line will be expanded to support not only MySQL and PostgreSQL, but commercial databases including SQL Server, Sybase and Oracle in 2006.

Continuent's HA solutions have been completely rearchitected and are transparent to middleware and fully transactional. It runs on any tier and has been enhanced to support heterogeneous databases.

Yup. You can support your mission critical database by providing high availability failover support to a MySQL database. How cool is that?

Way cool. Talk about lowering the cost of redundancy in the data center. Continuent's products also do on the fly conversions of between specific SQL implementations, so the oddities between SQL Server and MySQL or Oracle and SQL Server can be handled transparently by Continuent's products without worrying about recoding.

You've got to check this out. Continuent

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Who's Got Your Back?
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:12 AM

Not Sony, that's for sure.

Mark Russinovich over at Sysinternals discovered Sony BMG's rootkit recently and blogged the process (great reading for anyone who likes nitty gritty, device driver details and hex code dumps).

The fuss was over Sony's unauthorized installation of a rootkit that cloaked files from the system and inserted a driver into the CD device driver stack that, if removed, would break the ability of your PC to play any CDs. The software was installed off of Sony BMG "copy protected CDs" and no mention of it was made in the EULA.

Since then, Sony has altered its EULA to cover its...software and has grudgingly offered instructions on how to safely remove its rootkit without killing your PCs ability to play CDs. Antivirus providers pointed out that such a rootkit could potentially provide a mechanism for virus writers to hijack PCs, and today we learn that this is exactly what has happened with the discovery of a trojan using the Sony DRM rootkit to drop an IRC trojan on user's machines.

A new trojan which uses the cover provided by the Sony DRM component to hide has been detected by BitDefender Labs at 12.15 PM GMT today and is in the wild. This is the first ever observed instance of malware using the Sony DRM rootkit detected and analysed by Mark Russinovich.

***UPDATED (14.02 pm GMT)***

Analysts at the BitDefender Labs have completed a technical description of the threat and published a signature update. A removal tool for the trojan and a detection tool for the Sony DRM component are in preparation at the BitDefender Labs and will be made available to the general public in the following hours.

The full analysis of the trojan is available here

While we understand the desire of music companies (greed) and the (evil) RIAA to protect their copyrighted content from being illegally obtained, it is improper for them to endanger users to protect their own pocketbooks.

This isn't the first time that music companies or the RIAA has utilized questionable tactics to protect their interests (money money money). The RIAA has fought for the right to destroy user's computers in the event that illegally traded music files are discovered, has polluted file sharing networks with virus laden files, and used other underhanded, blatantly illegal tactics to protect its content despite the lack of hard facts to prove that file sharing networks are the cause of the decline in CD sales (crap music would explain the decline just as well).

DRM may sound like the perfect way to protect your content, but if you use techniques that endanger users or destroy their PCs then you are as guilty as virus writers of breaking the law and, my friend, you have become what you claim to despise.

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."
Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of Nations, 1942

Be careful out there...

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Friday Freebie
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 09:34 AM

Today's Friday Freebie comes to you from SpamButcher.

SpamFreeze is a free tool for webmasters, bloggers and anyone else who needs to publish their e-mail address on the web but abhors spam. (Who doesn't?)

SpamFreeze makes your email address invisible to spiders, helping to minimize how much spam you receive. SpamFreeze works by encoding the publisher’s email address within a URL. This URL can be placed on any webpage, blog or online forum where they would like to make their email address available.

When a user clicks the link, they will need to identify a word jumbled within an image to confirm they are not actually a spider collecting addressees for spamming. They are then provided with the publisher’s email address.

SpamFreeze is a completely free service provided by SpamButcher. SpamButcher does not send SpamFreeze users unwanted email, or sell their addresses to third-parties.

Hey, it's free, and it stops spam. What more could you ask for?

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Friday Freebies
Posted By Lori MacVittie at 10:15 AM

We've got two really different freebies for yo