I just finished delivering two developer days in Tel Aviv Israel in cooperation with Ness Technologies, the local Sybase distributor.  Over 70 developers attended.  For over 5 hours I overviewed, described and demo'd lots of PB 12 .NET features.  For the last 1.5 hours of the day I led the groups through a series of hands on exercises to give them a real world flavor of new IDE and platform and their advanced capabilities. Attendee excitement was palpable as I led them through migrating and testing several Classic applications.  They were enthused as I led them through trying out some of .NETs WPF and WCF features inside the latest incarnation of their favorite tool. The Israeli IT industry media stopped by to report on and film a part of the presentation.  Check out the story. Here's the link http://www.pc.co.il/?p=35913 Although the story is in Hebrew, you can w... (more)

SAP to Acquire Sybase for $5.8 Billion

Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer "I think this shows the agility of the new SAP," boasted SAP Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt, in a conference call yesterday as SAP confirmed that it is to buy Sybase for $5.8 Billion. According to SAP spokesman Saswato Das, the acquisition deal includes over $500 million in Sybase debt. New co-CEO Bill McDermott (pictured) called the deal a "game-changing transaction" for SAP and Sybase customers. Writing in his Ulitzer blog, industry veteran and commentator Jnan Dash noted that "With Sybase gone, the era of independent RDBMS vendors seem to h... (more)

The Future of Software Development

"Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over almost everything, except technology." - John Tudor As software developers, our mission is to deliver positive, technology-based solutions - software that provides both the means and the method for working faster, performing better, achieving more. There is little doubt that the technologies we create provide users with the control and functionality needed to be more efficient and productive. However, what happens when the tools we use to produce these solutions get out of control? Evolution in the technology ecosystem... (more)

Colin Clark Launches CEP Topic on Ulitzer

CEP on Ulitzer Colin Clark launched on Wednesday "CEP Complex Event Processing" topic on Ulitzer. "I was recently introduced to Ulitzer. And I like it a lot. You can check out my contributions on Ulitzer by clicking here," he recently wrote in his blog. Colin has been processing events in event processing for over 20 years and has both founded a couple of companies and held executive positions at others in the space. You can follow Colin on Twitter at http:\\twitter.com\CCEPLLC and send topic suggestions to colin@colinclarkeventprocessing.com. "Complex event processing, or CEP,... (more)

Refactoring PowerBuilder Applications

The migration march to PB 12.NET will have many shops revisiting legacy applications. In my previous articles ("Refactoring Is Not an ‘R' Word, [PBDJ, Vol. 16, issue 12] and "Refactoring Classic PowerBuilder Applications Using TDD and pbUnit" [PBDJ, Vol. 12, issue 1) you read why refactoring code before migration helps ensure smooth migration and enterprise integration. You were introduced to Test Driven Development methodology and saw how you can use it to ensure successful refactoring. I introduced you to pbUnit, an open source tool and framework that you can use for both refac... (more)