I was at a presentation today of the new AppServer and
also about the 'new' company, Inprise, which they are
reintroducing in my parts of the world (Scandinavia). It
was lead by Rick Lefaivre which is vice president of R&D
at Inprise.
Among some things said:
* JBuilder is now the leading Java environment in the
world (according to IDC)
* Delphi is 2nd of '4GL' environment (Visual Basic ahead)
* C++ Builder is 2nd of C++ environments (Visual C++ ahead)
* VisiBroker is the 'most deployed' ORB in the world (they
changed from 'copies sold' to 'deployed' there...)
What really blew me away was the demo of the integration
between JBuilder and the Application Server -- it was awesome!
This wasn't the JBuilder 2.01 release but a specific version
of JBuilder for Application Server which had excellent
integration and also the most advanced, configurable, code
generation I have ever seen. The also showed the new AppServer
console for deployment of applications, and the AppCenter
which also was fantastic easy to use to administrate and
supervise your server architecture. He also said there were
more announcements due in a couple of months concerning new
integration solutions and services, but wouldn't go into detail.
Also due out shortly (there wasn't any non-disclosure
agreement so this isn't secret material), which all will
go into AppServer:
* VisiBroker 4.0 (also as separate product of course)
* Inprise EJB Container 4.0 (for managing Enterprise JavaBeans)
* Support for CORBABeans (the CORBA mapping of JavaBeans)
Having seen all this, there's no way Orbix (IONA) with Visual
Cafe (SYMANTEC) can compete in productivity and ease of use,
nor can Microsoft with their hopeless COM+ architecture. I
haven't worked with the Oracle environments, but since they
license both VisiBroker and JBuilder from Inprise they are
not a threat.
I know the best technology doesn't always win, and this stock
sure has been boring for a long while. Having seen this,
I am staying long though.
Best regards,
/Hans-Erik
P.S. Also very interesting is that a company such as Ericsson
(ERICY) is planning to use Inprise technology in their new
development projects. Ericsson is a large company and has to
my knowledge not used Borland or Visigenic products before. |
