Peter Coffee

I heard the other day from a user of a highly reliable software development tool set. One of the .exe files in that product was being falsely flagged as bearing a virus and was being automatically deleted from workstations at the users site. This was not OK because local site policies required double-secret-divinity-super-user status to […]

The service-oriented architecture, or SOA, has become a lucrative reality for two quite different companies that both understand the distinction between mere Web services technology and a more general services model of IT. Con-Way Transportation Services Inc. is a $2.6 billion transportation and logistics company based in Ann Arbor, Mich. The companys focus on “less-than-truckload” […]

The tools available to developers for building and deploying Web services can easily lead to the wrong kind of success. Its easy for individual application developers or business units to use new tools and standards to define a function and expose it in the form of a service; its harder to make services talk to […]

In the current issue of eWEEK, I report on a conversation that I moderated late last month among players on the field of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The group included representatives from several vendors of SOA technologies and services, plus an enterprise IT buyer to keep those vendors focused on reality. It seemed to me that […]

Microsoft Corp.s planned integration of database-oriented programming tools pays belated homage, one might say, to computer scientist Niklaus Wirths famous assertion that “Algorithms plus data structures equal programs.” Wirths 1975 book by that title immediately followed his invention of the Pascal programming language, which raised the bar for data-structure support in programmers tool sets. Developers […]

By most measures, it might seem that Microsofts crucial customers are the PC builders who license Windows for bundling on new machines. Those hardware original-equipment makers, though, are not the companys most critical constituency—and Microsoft knows it. Yes, PC OEMs depend on Microsoft to support new hardware features and to generate customer demand for more […]

Theres nothing more credible than the real-world validation of past eWEEK Excellence Awards winners in the marketplace of mergers and acquisitions. When we look back at the record of our past selections for Excellence honors, we find a rewarding list of choices that have earned the kind of recognition measured in companies assimilated, not just […]

WINNER Citadel Security Software Inc. Hercules 3.5 Designed to cope with voluminous security updates and intermittently connected mobile devices, Hercules 3.5 assists enterprise IT managers in doing something useful with the floods of vulnerability data that flow from the assessment tools already in place at many sites. /zimages/1/28571.gifFor a list of all the winners and […]

WINNER Sun Microsystems Inc.Java Studio Enterprise 7 Visual aids to application development are useful only if they fully support and complement the source code view, instead of forcing developers to divide their attention among incomplete or even inconsistent perspectives on a project in progress. When reviewed earlier this year by eWEEK Labs, Suns Java Studio […]

Simulations are notorious for what they leave out, at least as much as theyre valued for what they include. Knowing what can be safely omitted is perhaps the critical difference that marks a real guru in the field: one whos capable of turning out work that leads to unexpected insight, rather than merely (or even […]

In a November 1999 column, I chastised the compilers of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for what I considered the misguided decision to put Microsoft and Intel on that list. Since that change was made, Intel (after adjusting for a stock split in July 2000) is down 39 percent. Microsoft (adjusted for a split in […]

The past week at eWEEK Labs has focused on assembling our forthcoming report, to be published a week from today, on the winners and finalists in our Fifth Annual Excellence Awards (for which we briefly announced the names of the finalists last week). As I said here a week ago, this years contenders are an […]