Do we need programming languages? You may think that the answer is no. But, if you go by the recent trend you may need to change your mind. Consider for example the following questions: Why is Google working two (GO, DART) new programming languages? Why has IBM (X10), Cray (Chapel) and Red Hat (Ceylon) working on creating a new programming language of its own? Why did the attendees of a recent conference in London select 5 (HTML5, DART, Scala, Clojure, Node.js) new languages as the most important software development trends for 2012? What does Neil McAllister mean when he says that these 10 (DART, Ceylon, GO, F#, OPA, Fantom, Zimbu, X10, Haxe, Chapel) programming languages that could shake up IT? Why did Anders Hejlsberg of Microsoft, the creator of Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C# launch TypeScript? Are new programming languages getting created just to satisfy the creativ... (more)

Identifying and Brokering Mathematical Web Services

An important part of the Web service vision being promoted by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and others is that of automated service discovery, the idea being that when we need a particular kind of service we will no longer have to go out and search for it manually; our computer will do it for us. Nowhere is this more necessary than in scientific computation. International collaboration here is already the norm and is increasingly being supported by the Grid, where specialized resources are connected by high-speed, high-bandwidth networks. To realize this vision requires mechanisms for describing what services actually do, and for reasoning about those descriptions in the presence of a user's problem. MONET: Mathematics on the NET The MONET project is a two-year investigation into how service discovery can be performed for mathematical Web services, funded by the ... (more)

Layered Technologies Named “Silver Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2011 New York

Cloud Expo NewYork $500 Savings here! SYS-CON Events announced today that Layered Technologies, a leading worldwide provider of on-demand and cloud computing IT infrastructure, has been named "Silver Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 8th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6-9, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ! Layered Technologies is a leading global provider of managed dedicated hosting and on-demand virtualization/cloud computing services. By providing high-quality technology, infrastructure and support, Layered Tech enables clients to eliminate capital expenses and save on operating costs while focusing on core business issues. Layered Tech's scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and Internet-enabled applications including e-commerce and software as a service (SaaS).... (more)

Web Application Lifecycle Maintenance

Like an automobile, a web application needs occasional maintenance and management over its life cycle. Although it doesn't need oil changes, it will probably need version upgrades. There may not be manufacturer recalls, but sometimes servers fail or hang. An application doesn't need to be washed and detailed, but it does need to be backed up. And both cars and applications need occasional performance tuning. This article provides a complete list of the system management functions that need to be performed on a standard architecture web application, with a particular emphasis on doing so in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service environment. 1. Evaluation Anyone who has implemented an application without sufficient evaluation, only to realize too late that it does not solve the business problem, will understand why evaluation is part of the application lifecycle. Evaluatio... (more)

Cloud Expo New York Preview: The Economic Impact of GovCloud on IT

Cloud Expo 2011 New York $500 Savings here! In December 2010, the U.S. Federal government awarded cloud computing contracts that totaled over $2B in value. It also announced a mandatory "cloud first" policy, requiring every agency to deploy at least three of its services to the cloud. This transition represents a monumental change in Federal IT strategy. It may also threaten the business model of some of the world's largest IT providers. In his session at the 8th International Cloud Expo, Kevin Jackson, Engineering Fellow with NJVC, will explore the economic impact of GovCloud from the position of the information technology and professional services industries. He will also explore the new business strategies for this new environment. Speaker Bio: Kevin Jackson is an Engineering Fellow with NJVC, one of the largest information technology solutions providers suppor... (more)

Web Services and SOA

People sometimes ask what a service-oriented architecture enables today that could not have been done with the older, proprietary integration stacks of the past 5 to 15 years, such as those from Tibco, IBM, or Vitria. One such ability is the greater degree of interoperability between heterogeneous technology stacks that is made possible by the standards SOA is built on, such as Web services and BPEL. Although interoperability is only one facet of the SOA value proposition, it is one that has become increasingly more important, due in large part to the evolving IT environment, merger and acquisition activity, and increased partner connectivity. Building business solutions for SOA requires the ability to secure data exchanged over a network, and control access to services in an environment where long-running business processes and asynchronous services are increasing... (more)

The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing

Cloud Expo Early Bird Savings A robust ecosystem of solutions providers is emerging around cloud computing. Here, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal expands its list of most active players in the fast-emerging Cloud Ecosystem, from the 'mere' 100 we identified back in January of this year, to half as many again - testimony, if any further were needed, to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites cited. As ever we encourage software engineers, developers, IT operations managers, and new/growing companies in every case to "suck it and see" by downloading or otherwise sampling the offering in question for themselves. (Omissions to this Top 150 list sh... (more)

It’s All About the Relationships

Over the past few years I’ve been helping a lot of government clients design and implement architectures for information-sharing.  When it comes to information-sharing one of the most important aspects is the relationships in the data being shared because it’s those relationships that provide the context to help you understand and utilize the information better.  Within an enterprise, key data types are often dispersed across multiple systems so a lot of the things we did included implementing data services (i.e. SOAP/WSDL-based Web Services) on top of each of these systems to provide shared access to the underlying data.  While this approach does help share the systems’ underlying data with the rest of the enterprise, you still end up with these web services providing “islands of information”.  I.e. the relationships across the data being shared were not exposed an... (more)

Commentary: Sun’s Oracle Merger

Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer With only the ‘you may now kiss the bride’ custom to follow, the Oracle/Sun marriage (or dare I say Sun/Oracle) is now finally complete. After months of legal wrangling which has caused nothing but embarrassment and dwindled Sun’s stature within the market sphere, reports also came out that half of Sun's 27,000 staff will be made redundant. Thus initial indications are clear that Oracle, known for its past agnosticism to open source has an eye for the merger being based on maximizing profit. In the meantime Sun’s competitors are probably smiling wryly as the delay of the merger played into their immediate interests but what threats and challenges does this partnership now pose to the once great open source vendor which did so much for developing the tech and e-commerce industry. One thing which Oracle will most probably do is addres... (more)

Cloud Database – Are You Prepared?

The ongoing saga of everything cloud is entertaining, if nothing else. I have a couple of areas of interest that aren’t really burning up the electrons, one of them is cloud databases. Let’s face it, while “the cloud” is interesting in an application sense, for IT it is relatively useless without the ability to access databases. Normally databases housed in your internal IT department. Of course internal “private” clouds will address much  of this issue, until they are readily available, we are faced with the reality that we have to find a solution we can trust to house data that is essential to our organization’s well being. There are a lot of issues around data in the cloud, I’m going to focus in on a couple that IT departments are trying to figure out – or should be. Security – data access control and standards compliance Security – physical/network control Late... (more)

Java EE PaaS and Application Server Interoperability

Java EE PaaS Growth & Interoperability Concerns As observed in my earlier articles, the Java EE PaaS portfolio is gaining in strength each day, with support from major players such as IBM, Oracle, VMWare, Redhat , Google and Amazon. However unlike the Microsoft > .NET Framework > Azure PaaS equation where there is just one version of the framework from one vendor, the openness of Java EE led to several implementations of application server-specific implementations. As Java EE standards define a core set of API, frame works and features as part of its implementation, an application server is the container that executes these instructions and provides a development and runtime platform for Java EE applications. While application servers are expected to implement the Java EE specifications & technologies like (SERVLETS, JAVA SERVER FACES, ENTERPRISE JAVA BEANS, PERSI... (more)