SilkPilot is a tool to test distributed application components. The maker of SilkPilot is Segue, a provider of testing tools for the enterprise. Their family of Silk products includes other testing tools for various areas of Web, Java and distributed development.

Two technologies that have gained widespread interest and support in the past few years are Java and Linux. Until recently, however, the two were separate, although they share similar visions of open, ubiquitous computing. As interest in both Java and Linux solutions increases, developers are naturally looking to combine the two, and want to write applications in Java that run on Linux systems. But they need stable, fast and fully functional JVMs, especially for server solutions that require servlets and support for Java Server Pages.

The distribution of business intelligence through a network of organizations within an enterprise requires the evolution of spontaneous networks, which in turn requires middleware that facilitates intelligent communication of information regardless of platform, device or application. In this context Java provides a natural platform-neutral object-oriented approach that supports a scalable messaging service, JMS (Java Messaging Service), now a standard part of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

Founded in 1996, Visualize, Inc. develops and markets a series of Java-based products for interactive data analysis and visualization. They announced the availability of the latest version of their VantagePoint data visualization class library at JavaOne back in June, and I was recently given the opportunity to test out the new version of the software.

This was actually the first book on Enterprise JavaBeans that came into the market. Enterprise JavaBeans was released in June and made its debut at JavaOne this year. This is a pretty good book for developers who like to see a lot of code. The examples in the book are used to develop a fairly complex application and the code isn't meant for novices. Tom Valesky presents many examples. I like the fact that the book takes an example and builds its complexity in successive chapters. There's good coverage of distributed architectures and transactions. The author has also dedicated a chapter to provide some excellent guidelines for building distributed systems. For readers just starting out in distributed applications, the author provides the appropriate background. This book isn't for everyone, though. Readers already familiar with distributed systems and transactions may not want to go through the tutorial style followed in the book and may find the detailed code discussions irritating.

ParaSoft's Jtest 3.0 is a powerful automated tool for testing Java classes. Developers can unit-test their code for completeness and standards compliance and conduct regression tests to ensure that changes they've made to their code haven't introduced errors.

As Java has evolved from the language of applets and JavaBeans to that of servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans and database stored procedures, a need has developed for a scalable Java platform. No longer are Java applications run only for a single user. Companies are now building enterprise-scale production systems using server-side Java technology, and these systems need to scale to serve tens ... often tens of thousands ... of concurrent users. Although many efforts have been made to enhance the JDK, Sun Microsystems' reference JVM implementation, Oracle pursued a different strategy as it set out in 1996 to develop an enterprise-scale, server-side Java Virtual Machine from the ground up. This effort manifested itself in the recent release of Oracle JServer, a 100% Java-compatible server environment supportive of Enterprise JavaBeans, CORBA servers and database stored procedures.

Pervasive Software has released version 7.5 of its ubiquitous database engine and software development kit. I got the chance to take a look at the database and the various tools using an evaluation copy of the software for Windows NT 4.0.

Cerebellum Software Inc. recently announced the latest release of their innovative data access middleware and query application development environment ­ Cerebellum 1.3, which replaces the tedium of coding SQL queries with a drag-and-drop visual programming approach. Using Cerebellum, queries are saved as agents, which are units of compiled Java code that communicate with data sources in their native tongue. These agents are managed by servers called agencies that mediate between the workstations that run the query­client applications. This middleware approach provides a unified way to access, integrate and manage data from a variety of databases and data sources at different physical locations. Cerebellum is based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition technology and incorporates features from CORBA.

Help has arrived! I've have been using RoboHELP for about four years. I first bought it as a special at a Powersoft trade show in 1995. The price was right, it sounded like a cool product and I didn't know anything about creating help files. I create help files, mostly as technical help documents for the programs I write for my clients, and needed something that was easy to use. It looked like a good place to start. It was, it turned out, a good place to stay.

As the Web grows, a great deal of effort is being made toward writing applications in Java that interact with databases. Fortunately, JDBC provides an easy, databa se-vendor-independent way of writing such applications. While this approach works for a number of applications, there are limitations. For instance, if the application requires execution of a large number of SQL statements, efficiency becomes an issue since round-trips from the application to the database are costly. Also, since these statements aren't precompiled, the database system spends more time executing them than it would have if they were compiled and residing in the database.

Three years ago, Cyrus InterSoft's founder and CEO, Scott Bayless and his team of developers decided to make Java deliver on its promise of platform independent network computing. They recognized the need for a simple, cohesive way to transparently tie together heterogeneous networks and communications systems, providing users with computing access anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Managing information in the enterprise environment is no small task. These days companies are looking to robust and scalable content-publishing technologies to manage and distribute information as quickly and effectively as possible. A number of challenges have to be overcome first, however. Data is often scattered across and outside the enterprise itself ­ in multiple repositories and multiple formats. Additionally, companies today quite simply expect more from their data: many want information to be customized to the user's requirements and delivered on a dynamic, as-needed basis.

Mission-critical Web-based applications ­ customer self-service, distribution channel and supply chain management, online trading and banking ­ must be deployed on a cluster of servers in order to provide scalability and high availability. Scalability means that servers can be dynamically added or removed as needed to meet user demand, and that the overall load of requests is distributed among the servers so that resources remain fully utilized. High availability means that there is no "single point of failure" in either the system or the application, and that requests automatically failover from nonworking components to working components. Ideally, clustering should be transparent to applications: externally, the cluster should present a "single-system image." In addition to simplifying the task of application development, this allows off-the-shelf components to be deployed without modification.

There are nearly 6 million business travelers using the Internet, responsible for more than $30 billion in travel expenses each year. For the Internet-based travel services industry, this is a tremendous revenue opportunity and the competition for this market is very intense.

Recently I had the opportunity to work with Sedona Geoservices' SpatialVision, an end-user application for performing geospatial data querying, data visualization and analysis. SpatialVision is designed to help your organization harvest information from your data using a geospatial focus. Geospatial analysis can be defined as the process of comparing your relational data to location data - for example, where your customers are located on a map. Sedona has targeted applications as diverse as call center management, sales operations and even service dispatching as candidates for such analysis. The company estimates that over 80% of preexisting data archives have at least a portion of their data in an inherently spatial format.

When Novell, a global leader in networking, sought to implement powerful new Java-centric object request broker (ORB) technology in its products, the company forged a strategic partnership with ObjectSpace, Inc.,Êan emerging leader in the distributed computing market. ObjectSpace's Voyager product family is 100% Pure Java and standards-neutral, and enables CORBA and RMI objects to communicate transparently across the wire.

The JavaBean component model presents entirely new ways of developing software. Once a component interface is specified, the actual implementation can be accomplished by another programmer down the hall, across the country or anywhere in the world. This allows outsourcing of software development at the component level.

Your company has grown beyond anyone's expectations. Internet orders have skyrocketed and management is ecstatic. Everyone is as happy as a bug in a rug. Everyone, that is, except the system administrator. This unexpected explosive growth has caused many new headaches. The server can no longer handle the huge number of hits every day. Raw materials must now be purchased, assembled into products and shipped out faster than the current system can keep track of inventory and purchases. New departments have been added, and new employees in these departments need various levels of access to various areas of the system. All in all, it's a nightmare!

Java is growing by leaps and bounds. New extensions for enterprise development, 2D graphics, servlets, speech, etc., are being added to it. This tremendous growth is making it tough for beginners as well as experts to keep themselves up to date.

About two and half years ago our company was hired to write an application that would allow our client, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), to access their financials over the Web. It was our first major push into data access over the Web and we were pretty hyped. GTRI hired us because we were a PowerBuilder shop and all of their applications were written in PowerBuilder. Both Georgia Tech and our company, Sage Software, were excited about using PowerBuilder's new Web.PB. It looked very promising.

To put it bluntly, SilverStream 2.0 sets a new standard for large-scale Web development and deployment. We first looked at the product in June 1997 when they were the newest entrant in the application server market. It lacked many enterprise features such as scalability, fault tolerance and CORBA support. In addition, it only offered advantages in the area of Java client development and deployment. With 2.0, things are quite a bit different.

Spaghetti code, sloppy algorithms, irrelevant code execution, dead code and so on can all lead to poor application performance. No matter how much planning goes into the design of an application, there always seem to be some gray areas where code performance runs slower than expected or doesn't execute at all. If you've ever encountered this, ever wondered how fast your application's functions and events are really executing, or if they are executing at all, then NuMega's DevPartner for Java is a set of tools you should definitely look into.

One of the problems involved with storing Java objects in relational databases is that the objects and their relationships don't usually map directly to relational structures. JdbcStore is a Java framework designed to help you overcome this mismatch and allow you to easily store objects in any JDBC-compatible database. Using the JdbcStore workbench, you can model your persistent objects, their relationships and how their attributes map to database tables and columns. Based on this model, JdbcStore generates Java classes for creating, storing, retrieving and manipulating your objects. An additional collection of classes for handling database connections, transaction processing, SQL queries and object caching round out the product.

All in all, it's been a pretty good year. The hundreds of clients you've developed applications for are all happy. The software development division has grown by leaps and bounds. Then, just when it looks like you've reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, trouble comes calling. It's been brought to your attention that some clients aren't getting the upgraded versions of their orders. Some complain that they're receiving versions that seemed to be fine-tuned for someone else. Still more disturbing is the fact that the documentation enclosed with the software isn't always up to date. When you investigate, you discover a whole new layer of problems. It seems that when changes are made to suit the needs of the customer, not everyone is told about it on time. The software development teams are not "talking" to each other regarding which changes are made to which applications. The technical writers aren't being kept up to speed on what documentation needs to be rewritten. The people in shipping aren't always sure which version is which, and that accounts for the embarrassing problem of wrong software being delivered to customers.

ServletDebugger 2.0 works with your favorite Java development tool to tackle the tough job of debugging and stress testing Servlets. This tool eliminates the usual "code, compile, cross your fingers and test" method of Servlet construction. ServletDebugger is a Java 1.1-based library that works with a simple stub class allowing you to step through your Servlet code one line at a time. Servlets can be tested with GET and POST request types as well as unlimited init parameters, header values and form data. Additionally, ServletDebugger comes complete with a built-in Web server to test and debug your Servlet using your Web browser.

The product was released in September 1998, but based on the information on the Web site, it's still undergoing development iterations.

With its recent announcement of the release of eNetwork On-Demand Server, IBM has raised the stakes in the game of Java development. Now it's possible to personalize, secure, manage and deploy your Java applications from a centralized Web or Web application server. On-Demand Server enables developers and system administrators to customize Java application preferences for individuals, groups or even a specific type of client machine. All IDs, passwords, applications and profiles are stored on the server, which enables the same access policies to apply whether the client is logging on from the next cubicle or from a distant city. All files that are critical to the application are stored on the server, preventing users from corrupting or illegally accessing files and causing a system crash. This is a big advantage over the traditional client/server model.

So you've got a nice Java application in the works. Your team has toiled for weeks to get it just right. Finally, the magic moment arrives. The development team has a meeting, and every part of the code is humming perfectly, doing just what you intended it to do. Now comes that final step, when the code is brought together into one big application. There's just one last detail - it's time to make the program "user friendly," which usually means, among other things, adding a GUI (graphical user interface) so the end users don't have to be programmers or rocket scientists to use it.

Novera Software announced the availability of the most recent release of their application server software at the Java Business Expo in New York in the early part of December. Version 4 of Novera Software's jBusiness application server features a new Component Constructor utility along with a new Management Console and support for Enterprise JavaBeans. The result is a powerful combination that's worth investigating if you are looking to deploy applications using an application server.

Oracle's development team is excited about the news that SQLJ has achieved standard status (ANSI X3.135.10-1998). It will undoubtedly be a catalyst in the adoption of Java by enterprise application developers. SQLJ not only allows SQL to be incorporated into Java programs in a standard way, it paves the way for database and Java tools vendors to bring Java closer to the enterprise environment. Oracle has been a firm supporter of SQLJ right from the early days when it cofounded the SQLJ consortium which submitted the SQLJ proposal to ANSI

I recently had the opportunity to work with the NetBeans Developer IDE 2.0 for Java. Although the marketplace seems to be flooded with application development environments for Java programming, the team at NetBeans is offering a slightly different approach toward Java development. While the vast majority of Java-integrated development environments (IDE) are designed to run primarily under Windows-based operating systems, the NetBeans folks have built their development environment completely within Java itself. The result is a programming environment that runs on any platform that can support a JDK 1.1.5 environment.

Every year, Java Developer's Journal presents two types of awards – the JDJ Editor's Choice Awards and the JDJ Readers' Choice Awards. These awards are designed to honor and recognize the leaders in the Java world – specifically, those companies and products that the editor and readers feel are the best of breed. The Readers' Choice Awards are based on nominations submitted to our Web site and by e-mail. There are a large number of categories for which a product can be nominated, including Best Bean, Best Application Server, Best Development Environment and a host of others (see below). The Readers' Choice Awards are presented to the products that receive the most votes in a particular category, with ties being decided by the editor, who reserves the right to select multiple winners if the situation warrants it.

The Java language removes several problem areas for developers, compared to C++ development, by its elimination of memory allocation and pointer management. While this generally makes Java programs more stable than their C++ brethren, it can often lead to the misconception that Java programs don't need to be optimized or profiled. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially when you consider that Java is being used to build enterprise-class applications, which require high performance. KL Group has built a strong reputation for supplying Java components to many of the leading software vendors, and they have extended their Java presence with JProbe Profiler.

To gain competitive advantage, Global Mobility Systems had to speed its products to market. As the company discovered, this hinged partly on choosing the right Java platform. That is not an easy task because platforms can appear similar - until developers start using them. Global Mobility eventually selected a pure Java platform that readily placed Java's full dynamic power into developers' hands, with remarkable results.

ObjectSpace has made a name for themselves in distributed computing over the past few years. They recently announced that Sun Microsystems had licensed ObjectSpace's JGL technology (a toolkit for building and managing collections) for integration with Sun's own JavaBlend technology. ObjectSpace has followed up with the release of their VoyagerPro 2.0 product, and I had the opportunity to work with a prerelease of the software.

Around the time Java made its mark on the world of programming there came to be another phenomenon, the IDE. Gone were the days of typing code, compiling, wondering what went wrong, typing more code, recompiling and so on. The IDE presented the application builder with an unprecedented tool, useful not only for application building but for learning as well.

I wish I had a nickel for each time I've had to explain to a new vendor or professional acquaintance that, just because I have the word "Bank" in my company's name - NationsBank -I don't spend my time dealing with huge, monolithic, batch-processing systems. (Sure, we have these systems. And yes, they're still in use.) However, there are large groups within our bank whose purpose is to explore the leading edge of technology. Our work centers on incorporating this technology, both tactically and strategically, in production systems. As most of these systems are for internal use, few people see them unless they work with us.

The company has just landed its most important account to date: a big client has signed a contract for the development of a Java program. It's an extensive application, requiring database connectivity and the use of ActiveX controls. You've been chosen to head up the project, which will require a team of developers. It's now time to choose an IDE that combines ease of use, powerful development tools and a team-oriented interface. With the increasing number of IDEs on the market, it could be difficult to choose one that fits this scenario.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what words do you use when the picture is in the wrong format? Not exactly a Zen koan, but a valid question whose answer is JIMI, the Java Image Management Interface from Activated Intelligence.