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Jay Johnson

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Top Stories by Jay Johnson

About five years ago, I worked with a pure XML-embedded database. The advantage of such a database is unmatched flexibility. New definitions of everything can be added or changed on the fly. It was lightweight and useful in tight spots, but of course lacked many of the features of more rigid relational databases. One advantage it had was that it was compatible with everything. At the time it was obvious that an XML-based component integration strategy could be just the thing to quickly glue a system together. Nowadays enterprise server-side technologies abound, but between the J2EE, EJB, Web services, .NET, Domino, zOS, CORBA, etc., paradigms, no grand unified solution has emerged. The EJB paradigm, for example, solves a number of problems common to enterprise applicat... (more)

Product Review: Parasoft WebKing

Quality-conscious developers are familiar with the idea of coding checklists. The code you write must measure up to all the criteria on the checklist, from "no grammatical errors in the comments" to "performs all required functions." Based on these checklists, we have code reviews. A good code review takes time, but is certainly worth the effort. Such reviews can prevent many costly erro... (more)

Borland Together Edition for WebSphere Studio

I have long been a TogetherSoft fan, having used TCC (TogetherSoft Control Center) for several years. It was a great development tool, effortlessly keeping code in sync with diagrams and providing the best reverse-engineering features in the business. TCC had lots of other goodies, such as modeling in color, metrics, and support for patterns, making it more fun to use than Rational's mod... (more)

M7 Application Assembly Suite

Those who have battled J2EE application development with the plethora of WebSphere tools have probably thought that there must be an easier way. Now there is a new breed of software called application assembly platforms (AAP). These toolsets make it possible to visually assemble an enterprise application without getting bogged down in the details. The components can come from multiple so... (more)

Bowstreet Portlet Factory

For years, the holy grail of programming, at least from a CIO point of view, was a magic software tool variously called a "code generator," a "fourth-generation language," or an "autocoder." This tool would generate the correct executable code to fulfill a user's wishes, based on relatively high-level requirements. Such a tool would definitely fulfill a project manager's wishes, since cr... (more)