John Walker

Anyone who has used the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) has to be impressed with how quickly it’s matured and become a robust programming model. Besides the ability to build new applications, developers can use J2EE to connect to third-party software, legacy systems, and Java-based e-business application engines and deploy them across a distributed computing environment. As powerful as the various technologies supporting this platform are, efficiently managing and using them all in a development environment can be problematic. Providing an IDE to manage this complexity is what Oracle has set out to accomplish – and in my opinion, has very successfully – with its new Oracle9 i JDeveloper product. Oracle9i JDeveloper allows developers to take advantage of the power and flexibility of J2EE to create applications with the highest level of scalability and per... (more)

Breeze XML Binder 3.0

While XML is universally hailed as the most open methodology for describing and declaring data, technologists and vendors are still trying to find the means to implement the data the standard provides - particularly as the standard has continued to evolve and become more powerful. Two years ago the power and scalability of XML schema files wasn't even being discussed; DTD files were the standard. It's as if the rule should be changed now to say that the code managing the data has to be flexible enough to incorporate the changes that the data and the data's supporting technology p... (more)

Weblogic Portal 4.0 by BEA

The appeal of Web portal applications relies on how conveniently they provide a coherent and unified gateway to dynamic content and applications that are tailored to users' needs and interests. The goal of portal applications for the enterprise is to attract users with specialized content and services, and then retain these users by personalizing their experiences. To accomplish this, expertise in a variety of areas is required from different groups that support the application. Java programmers can create components using a variety of technologies to implement the content and s... (more)

PopChart Server 4.0

Developers, and users, generally agree that the easiest medium through which to digest data is a graphical one. This rule is particularly true now, considering the volume of data that can be more easily obtained from various distributed data sources using either SQL or XML as a conduit. Requesting and presenting data in a graphical format, however, has traditionally come at the expense of performance and complexity. Besides the cost of marshaling the data from the disparate sources in order to convert it into a graphical format, image files take a great deal of time to transport ... (more)