OpenETrends

Yay! We Want Another Bubble Bath!

The big story lately is how tech investment and business is fixing to blow up another bubble, right up to where we were at the turn-of-the-century. Can somebody find that Pets.com dog puppet again? He’s the web-bubble mascot now.

Our latest hand-wringer is Techi.com, saying the tech 2.0 bubble is here. And you know what? Bring it on! Now, why do we say that?

As any economics student can tell you, bubbles and busts are part of any business. One growth and shrinkage doesn’t make an industry very legitimate, but now that the web business world is old enough to start showing some patterns, that tells us that it’s a little more predictable than anybody thought. It’s only the first fall that hurts you.

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The 4Chan | Reddit Dogs of War

We love a good Internet investigation, so we got a real kick out of Gawker’s look inside a smear campaign. Things we learned this time around:

4channers don’t all like electro-pop. Apparently they’re 50/50 split heavy metal and indie.
4chan got their site’s founder voted Time magazine’s most influential person.
On a related note, Time thinks 4chan invented LOLCats. There’s published books of cat pictures with funny captions from the 1960s, at least.
There’s a website called ‘refreshthing’ that automates Google-bombing. Or at least (if you’re reading this a few days from now), there was.
4channers can’t hack for a damn.

This is a good time to look at web culture. It’s the street we do business in; being streetwise is a good thing. It’s important because we’ve seen this scary glimpse into Internet mob mentality, and what basically amounts to Internet street gangs, and that tells us things about the future. It tells us that even greater control of the web frontier is in the future.

As always happens, the hooligans of today will age into the uptight, conservative nannies of tomorrow. Coupled together with the moral panic over Internet bullying, we’re going to see a future where the overkill of the cure is worse than the disease.

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Wannabes Are The Cancer That Kills Everything

Our favorite blogger who specializes in the human side of technology, Jeff Atwood, has brought to light the distressing story of how many candidates who show up for programming job interviews can’t program. He, and many of the comments appended, marvel at this phenomena. But it’s not so surprising, when you stop and think about it. They’re wannabe “hackers”.

Nobody wanted to be a hacker at first. Then trashy movies like “War Games” and “Hackers” came out, and people got the idea that hackers get to have sex with Angelina Jolie and start their own nuclear wars, so hence must be “cool.”

It’s a phenomenon older than civilization itself. It’s the same mentality that leads people to call themselves “geek” because they saw “Star Wars,” or call themselves “gangsta” because they wear their baseball cap backwards, or call themselves “bikers” because they wear a leather jacket, or call themselves “bi,” “poly,” or “kinky” because that’s the kind of porn they download.

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Why The 17-Year Flaw in Microsoft Windows Is Dead Serious

In case you didn’t catch the buzz going around, the story of how an ancient Microsoft Windows flaw was found after 17 years is pretty-well explained at the Inquirer. The news was particularly shocking because it was a simple hole that has been in existence since Windows 3.1 all the way up to the latest Windows 7! That’s a serious bug.

Quite a few commenters on that site and others have down-played the vulnerability, saying things like “Meh, who uses 16-bit anyway?” Which goes to show that the home user doesn’t think like a hacker. Guess what? Most of the programs to exploit Windows security holes are 17 years old, too! In fact, if you were a hacker (we know, the correct word is “cracker,” but English is changing) downloading security-cracking software, you’d have more of a real problem getting updated software than you would getting legacy software.

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Will We Ever Fix the Weak Password Problem?

Any website developer knows the drill: you put up anything requiring a login, and people are usually going to pick the laziest possible weak password. As documented in Ars Technica’s lament on the failure of the password model, this problem has existed unabated for 30 years. Users are still just as sloppy about password security as ever.

Future web application designers might need to start thinking beyond the password. For instance, what if we tried some other methods of user authentication along with the password:

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ISV Learns Open Source Lessons To Meet User Needs

manageStar, a business software firm in Walnut Creek, Calif. is among a growing number of commercial software firms looking to blend its commercial software with Open Source practices to better meet customer needs.

manageStar’s flagship software suite, Harmony, is comprised of modules that help businesses automate some key internal and B2B processes, including asset management, employee services, contract management, lease management and facilities management. Automating these types of practices in software can often require manageStar to customize the base modules, as one might expect.

To help contain costs and speed deployment of these customized solutions, manageStar engineers in 2001 hit on the concept of bring Open Source principals to their software — and their customer base. The ability to let customers “tweak” its core Harmony package is supported by the manageStar’s Equal Source Initiative, which execs say simply boils down to a simple idea — a balancing act between commercial and Open Source offerings that lets the customer use the right tools for the job.

In an interview with OET, Jason Henriksen, server technologies lead at manageStar, describes the balancing act at manageStar this way: “I’m responsible for code that is useful in a variety of software applications. However,” he added, “I am also responsible for the implementation of very client-specific solutions. Equal Source helps my team gain the advantages of Open Source for generic libraries, while maintaining tight control over the work that our clients would like to remain private.”

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Using Open Source To Secure Online Purchases

Lokitech Inc., a small software security firm in suburban Washington, D.C., has crafted an Open Source-based security solution for credit card processing that will run with .NET and Java enterprise systems.

Lokitech’s approach allows a business to store encrypted credit card lists and other sensitive information, says the company’s CEO, Serge Knystautas. Lokitech developed the encryption solution for an Internet-based casino project, involving teams in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Costa Rica, but the resultant easy-to-deploy two-way encryption platform is finding a larger audience, taking the risk out of using Open Source solutions for securing mission-critical data.

“We needed a way to store credit card numbers and account information without making the integration between different teams overly complicated. The technique we came up with allowed us to ensure that backups and communication were secure without adding significant costs or complexity,” Knystautas added.

Lokitech also needed to find a method that would help eliminate developer error. Company engineers hit on a solution that, with a little re-engineering and some Open Source libraries, moved the encryption function from the application layer to the data layer.

The encryption/decryption libraries are available as Crytpo++, an Open Source (and free) C++ Class library for encryption. To make the transfer of the encryption logic to the database layer, Lokitech wrapped the C++ encryption code inside extended stored procedures of an off-the-shelf SQL database (in this case, the casino used Microsoft SQL Server). Using the .NET Framework Class Library, Lokitech took advantage of many encryption APIs that can be called from any .NET-capable language, such as VB .NET, VC++ or C#

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IBM Applies Open Source Lessons to Commercial Apps

IBM is borrowing some important pages from the Open Source playbook in its pushes to re-architect its most valuable software assets, including Websphere and Tivoli.

OET speaks with Doug Heintzman, head of IBM’s Community Source program, to learn more about what Open Source approaches Big Blue finds the most valuable as they move from tightly-coupled to component-based appdev.

IBM software execs have aggressive goals in place to convert many of their core software products, including Websphere and Tivoli, from tightly-coupled offerings to a collection of integratable loosely-coupled component-based apps.

To get their software inventory to that destination, IBM managers have invoked some tried-and-true software development practices from the Open Source arena. The result: IBM’s aptly-dubbed “Community Source” Program. Doug Heintzman, director of Technical Strategy for IBM Software Group, said Community Source has been in existence for more than 2 years and now involves just over 10% of IBM’s 25,000 in-house developers, and involves more than 100 projects.

How Open Source is Helping IBM’s SOA Sea Change
Heintzman conceded that Community Source has been “like turning a big boat,” as far as getting long-time IBM programmers to update how the think about, design and do appdev. But, with the “sea change” coming from SOA and composite apps, it’s an important turn for Big Blue’s boat to make.

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NetBeans Adds Features, Helps Eclipse with GUI

Sun Microsystems continues to push capabilities for its Open Source NetBeans IDE, expanding web services support, and adding support C, C++ and Mac devs. Far from feeling crunched by Eclipse’s continuing progress, NetBeans execs claim Eclipse’ success is just making NetBeans better. In fact, Sun is working with an Eclipse member to optimize Project Matisse for Eclipse.

OET runs through the highlights of the news, and gets comments and perspective from Dan Roberts, , Sun’s director of developer tools marketing.

- NetBeans Gains C/C++ Source Code Plug-in Support — Sun released a preview version of the NetBeans C/C++ Development Pack, which allows devs to edit, compile, and build C and C++ applications on multiple operating systems, including Solaris, Linux, and Windows. The preview Pack includes a variety of features to support the C and C++ developer, including editor syntax highlighting, easier code browsing via hyperlinks between invocation and declaration, a makefile wizard, and templates for building C/C++ libraries and applications. The Pack also extends the Netbeans project system to support C and C++ projects and support for multiple project configurations. This plug-in is supported in NetBeans 5.0 and preview versions of NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5 across common platforms, including Solaris10, Linux, and Microsoft Windows Operating Systems.OET: What about broadening NetBeans to the C and C++ worlds, what is that about?

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Despite Storms, ODF Push Steady as She Goes

Despite recent storms over the resignation of Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn, prospects are bright that state MIS execs in 2007 will adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a way to “open up” Microsoft Office documents. So says Sun Microsystems’ standards manager Doug Johnson.

Johnson told OET the ODF effort remains “steady as she goes,” despite Quinn’s resignation, who was one of ODF’s most high-level and high-visibility supporters. “I am feeling optimistic,” Johnson told OET. “For the first time in a long-time, Massachusetts is not on fire anymore.”

Johnson admits that Quinn’s resignation initially raise storm clouds throughout the pro-ODF community. “Everyone we look at as our natural allies might look at this [resignation] and say, ‘This is kind of nasty. Peter explicitly said he left because of the huge political controversy that surrounded this ODF decision,” Johnson told OET

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EnterpriseDB, JasperSoft Ships DBA Dashboard to PostgreSQL

EnterpriseDB, a commercial distributor of Open Source PostgreSQL database for enterprise use, has developed a DBA dashboard in partnership with the commercial Open Source reporting firm JasperSoft.

The idea behind the dashboard is to provide DBA critical database performance and configuration information for any EnterpriseDB or PostgreSQL environment, Astor said. The JasperReports DBA Dashboard for EnterpriseDB, will enable EnterpriseDB admins to monitor database performance, and to identify configuration issues across an unlimited number of servers.

EnterpriseDB CEO Andy Astor told Open Enterprise Trends that his company’s work with JasperSoft underscores an important factor in enterprise acceptance of Open Source: visibility and manageability of Open Source software needs to be easier.

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Survey Finds ‘XML Devs’ Flocking to XQuery

More than half of all XML developers are working with XQuery, and another sizeable group expects to start before the end of the year.

That’s according to a DataDirect Technologies survey just released of some 550 “XML developers,” (which DataDirect defines as including a wide range of XML and database professionals). Specifically, the survey found 52% of XML developers have already started working with XQuery in the last 12 months and another 33% have plans to start using XQuery before years’ end.

“That one number was of the most dramatic findings for me – that XQuery is already happening, and in a much bigger way that I would have expected,” Larry Kim, DataDirect’s XML Programs Manager told Open Enterprise Trends. The survey interviewed some 550 developers and other IT professionals across a number of different industries. “The survey data confirmed what we’ve known all along – that there’s a tremendous interest for an alternative to the tedious, low-level methods presently employed for querying, manipulating and transforming XML data,” Kim added.

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What Execs Want from Open Source in 2005

Recently, the analyst firm IDC announced they are forecasting the market for servers running Linux will exceed $9 Billion by 2008. If you think about it, that’s really an amazing statement.

It means that in the next few years, big hardware companies like Sun, IBM and Dell are going to sell literally billions of dollars of servers specifically for Linux. A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, and suddenly we’re talking about serious money. But, Linux is just part of the story. There are literally thousands of others Open Source applications, and their growth is also accelerating — dramatically.

So what new issues or surprises are waiting for us in 2005 with respect to Open Source? Here are a few predictions:

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2005 Will See XML’s Powerful Next Wave

The stars are aligning for 2005 to be the “breakout year” for XML’s next wave technologies, including XQuery, according to ISVs and toolsmakers watching the XML space.

Perhaps most bullish among the outlooks comes from DataDirect Technologies, who say that are getting growing interest from architects and devs to learn more about how XML can speed integration for data and documents, and even set up complex, multi-database queries on-the-fly.

“This is the year XQuery is going to happen,” Jerry King, general manager for DataDirect’s XML products told Open Enterprise Trends. “Developers are architects are asking us two questions,” King added:

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BEA Eyes Open Source Implementation of BPEL for Java

Controversy may be giving way to simple heads-down hard work when it comes to BPEL4WS, the proposed orchestration standard for web services supported by both Java and .NET vendors. The leading J2EE app sever vendors BEA and IBM have jointly proposed extensions to BPEL (Business Processing Execution Language) to make it more easily implementable within Java/J2EE environments.

Further, a BEA executive close to their BPEL work told Open Enterprise Trends that BEA intends to provide a reference implementation of BPELJ to the Java/J2EE community, and may even provide this royalty-free and as open source.

“BEA will write and provide a reference implementation of BPELJ. Depending on demand and the evolution of the specification, we will also consider making this implementation open source and royalty-free. We’re very serious about it. We want this to be very portable across the Java platform,” said Stephen Hood, BEA product manager for WebLogic Integration.

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New Money, New Code Keep PHP Marching in March

PHP is on the march in March.

In a sign that the marketplace sees lots of promise in PHP’s growth prospects, Zend has completed a new venture capital infusion of $6 million. The latest investment, from venture capital fund Index Ventures, together with previous investors Walden Israel and SFK Technologies, brings to $12 million the total of VC investments in Zend in less than six months, since November 2003. Isreali-based news service Globes Online reports that Zend may actually get $2-3 million more in funding before the round closes.

And as if to justify investors’ faith, the long-anticipated PHP5 First Release Candidate is finally for download from Zend. To get a closer look at PHP5, OET spoke with Zend’s co-founder and Zend Engine co-creator Zeev Suraski.

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Driving Enterprise Python – Patches, Plug-ins, Outlines

A number of enterprise devs had pushed Python’s state-of-the-art in the last few weeks. Notably, Python has a new patch for a particularly sneaky security vulnerability, better support for new logging modules and even an upgraded documentation tool and programmers’ editor.

In this Python wrap, OET provides devs a quick tour, links for code downloads, FAQs and forums.

Security — A buffer overflow in python 2.2’s getaddrinfo() function was discovered earlier this week by Sebastian Schmidt. If python 2.2 is built without IPv6 support, an attacker could configure their name server to let a hostname resolve to a special IPv6 address, which could contain a memory address where shellcode is placed. This problem does not affect python versions prior to 2.2 or versions 2.2.2+, and it also doesn’t exist if IPv6 support is enabled. . Python with the patch is available here. For more background on the problem, go to theMandrakeSoft Security Advisory

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Tips To Using PHP Templates: Inside Smarty

Templating has been gaining in popularity for years among web developers, especially those working on portals or business sites that may have their web pages tied in with complex business rules. Now those same benefits from templating are coming to PHP. This article, originally appearing at DotGeek.org, looks at Smarty, one of the leading PHP templating engines available.

Benefits of PHP Templating
Web design and programming are closely related and yet are very different. Designers speak in such languages as HTML and CSS, and programmers are often heard speaking in the tongues of PHP and SQL. Design focuses primarily on presentation logic, and programming focuses primarily upon business logic. Separating these processes in web development cycles helps to achieve rapid application development goals while providing for website maintainability.

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Gosling: Unified Java Tool APIs May Take a Year

James Gosling, the renowned creator of Java, now has a new job at Sun: CTO of the Sun Developer Platform. In that role, he gave his first formal briefing to reporters, noting that the push by the Java Tools Committee to create a unified set of APIs for Java tools vendors could take a year or more.

When asked if Java IDEs might align their APIs by next January (2005), Gosling said, “I doubt we’ll have all the work done by next year at this time, but we should have a good road map for what needs to be done…A lot will depend on the consensus. Some of that will be technical and some of that will be political.” Gosling expects some heady issues will affect the timetable, and the outcome, of the push for a common API set for Java IDEs, including UI integration, metadata support and workflow issues — all currently under discussion at the Java Community Process.

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Linus Fields Dev Questions On the Future of Linux

Last month, Geekcruises’ Linux Lunacy cruise to Alaska proved that Linux and Open Source are hot enough topics to even warm up Northern waters. The feature of the trip was a candid Q&A; with Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Courtesy of GeekCruises Capt. Neil Bauman and Senior Editor of Linux Journal Doc Searles, OET brings our readers an extended transcript of Linus’ shipboard Q&A;, where he responds to Linux dev questions on the future of Linux, including the status of Linux 2.6, impacts from increasing corporate (and vendor) adoption, an ever-growing kernel, and even on the pending lawsuit from SCO.

Geekcruises Capt. Neil Bauman gets the ball rolling in our extended transcript.

Capt. Neil Bauman: In the last year or so, Linux has been embraced by a large number of established companies. You consider this a good thing, a bad thing? Are you happy? Sad?

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Open Source vs. Shared Source – Hunt for Value

Vendors are beginning to take a few pages from the Open Source playbook, offering devs more access to code and community for paid software. OET takes a look at the back-and-forth over the question of how much value “Shared Source” truly offers,

Microsoft is one of the more visible of a number of vendors (including Oracle, Sun, Macromedia, SAP, among others) that has emerged with a variant on the traditional tight-gripped license on software source code. These new “Shared Source” licenses for commercial products give developers much more access to code than ever before.

But, despite the move to adopt some Open Source principals of sharing and community, some core Open Source devs are speaking out against the moves as half-measures. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is aggressively defending its approach as a realistic balance between “free software” and “the need to protect intellectual property”.

Meanwhile, the average commercial developer working for a commercial company is stuck somewhere in the middle, wondering what is the real truth (or the real hype) behind the emerging Shared Source saga. OET takes a look at the concerns Open Source devs have over Shared Source, and how Microsoft is responding to criticisms, and in some areas, adjusting its program.

In a nutshell, shared source is a take-off on the open source model without all the benefits that open source offers. Shared source licenses do not allow developers to modify the source code and certain portions of the source code remain hidden and it cannot be redistributed.

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Tutorial: Apache Cocoon 2 Makes XML Sharing Easy

Cocoon 2, part of the Apache XML Project, is a highly flexible web publishing framework built from reusable components. Although reusability is an oft-touted quality of software frameworks, Cocoon stands out because of the simplicity of the interface between the components. Cocoon 2 uses XML documents, via SAX, as its inter-component API. As long as a component accepts and emits XML, it works.

In this Open Enterprise Trends hands-on tutorial on Cocoon 2, developers will get a full package, including:

(1) a well-versed Cocoon 2 overview,
(2) simple examples (complete with schematics and figures) on the inner workings of XML and Cocoon;

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PHP Gaining Momentum Among Commercial Developers

A growing number of commercial developers are discovering the merits of using PHP for important data sharing and integration projects. PHP is no longer limited to use on Apache Web servers or other Open Source code projects. It’s finding its way into the core toolkits of high-performance commercial developers.

Jason Sheets, team leader in the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Firmware Development Laboratory, prefers PHP for Web-based technologies.

Why? Sheets says he prefers PHP because it does what he needs “to increase efficiency [and] accountability [and] decrease overhead with performance and usability in mind.” His first try with PHP — the automation of a cumbersome test-reporting procedure — was dramatically successful. His Web-based system slashed hours of daily manual work.

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OASIS Explores Protocol To Manage B2B Web Services

OASIS has taken on another massive project that could further define the role — and the architecture — of web services, this time in the B2B arena.

A new committee, called the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, has set itself the task of defining a new inter-enterprise protocol that would enable developers and sysadmins to build, monitor and manage web services interactions between companies.

The scope of the project makes this protocol one of the most complicated ever, as committee members intend to empower the protocol to provide views and management controls to the entire life-cycle of a web services transaction or event. Topologically, this means the new protocol will need to provide views into network, application logic and even business logic elements of traffic. Committee members also intend to ensure the protocol supports more than one application model because the protocol is intended to support inter-enterprise (B2B) communications.

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Python Power: Growing Respect for an Open Source Integration Tool

Open-source software now plays a crucial role in the majority of large information technology (IT) organizations. It’s not the role you’d think, though, from popular descriptions of Open Source. .

When leaders such as Hostway Corp. and Journyx, Inc. talk about their use of Python, they’re not talking about the virtues of low licensing cost, or waging an ideological battle against Microsoft. Python actually provides them a strategic advantage by providing them a low-cost, easy-to-deploy tool for helping enterprise software systems to talk with one another. In fact, rather than thumbing their nose at Microsoft, these companies use Python to maximize the value of their Windows applications.

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