Dr. Dobb's Journal June 2006
NuSphere's PhpED 4.5 is a complete IDE for PHP developers. Not just syntax highlighting, but syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Smarty templates, with automatic switching based on content. (Yes, I realize all those can appear in one file, but PhpED does its switching based on where you are in the file!) Not just a database connection wizard, but one that lets you browse tables and drag-and-drop everything from table columns to triggers and stored procedures onto your PHP forms, for MySQL, PostgreSQL, UltraSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Firebird, SQLite, or Interbase. Not just a debugger, but a debugger accessible from a browser toolbar button—one click and you've got a session running. There's a wizard for consuming SOAP services, code insight/autocompletion, and a built-in profiler.
NuSphere, 465 S. Meadows Parkway # 20-154, Reno, NV, 89521, Tel: (859) 288-4505, Fax: (267) 590-8538, www.nusphere.com
Think you're stuck with staid Web 1.0 tech because you're working in Java Server Faces? With Exadel Visual Component Platform 1.0, you can build JSF applications that incorporate Ajax technology without delving into the minutiae of XmlHttpRequest. (Although the components do include a debugging panel for use on the client side, so that if you want to see the XML flying back and forth...have at it!)
Anyone can build rich web user interfaces, given enough developer time invested. The key to the Visual Component Platform is that the advanced functionality is packaged so that developers can drag-and-drop them onto their JSF apps. Along with Ajax support, the platform features customizable themes and skins and a 3D look. If you're keen on the component library, Exadel has an IDE for you, too: Exadel Studio Pro, which provides a rich toolset for JSF, Struts, Spring, and Hibernate, including visual page editors for JSF and Struts and mapping tools for Hibernate.
Exadel, 1850 Gateway Boulevard, #1080, Concord, CA, 94520, Tel: (888) 439-2335, Fax: (925) 363-9509, www.exadel.com
Today's code checkers aren't just compilers—they're more like lint on steroids, scouring code for deviations from style standards, subtle errors, even security problems. Headway Software's Structure101 application analyzes codebases to elicit the kind of information that good developers hold in their head for small projects, great ones juggle for large projects, and only the likes of Richard Stallman and Bill Joy can master for enterprise-scale projects. Structure101 traverses multiple levels of abstraction (methods, classes, packages) to reveal compositions and dependencies at each level, without submerging you in the flood of detail that the source provides.
Headway Software, Two Newton Place, 255 Washington Street, Suite 340, Newton, MA, 02458, Tel: (877) 432-3929, Fax: (419) 793-1007, www.headwaysoftware.com
There's an old saw about management, leadership, and scaling walls. Management is indispensable, and is all about how your team uses its ladders and the people erecting them, and how to get over the wall in the most efficient way possible. But leadership keeps you from climbing the wrong wall in the first place.
Today's development teams have an awesome array of tools at their disposal, enabling them to scale "walls" with efficiency—high-level languages, ever higher-level abstractions, powerful environments like Visual Studio and Eclipse, source configuration management integrated with issue trackers. Yet a shockingly high percentage of our projects continue to fail. Why?
Ravenflow thinks it's because we're too busy scaling the wrong walls—that we're doing a great job building software, but we're building it to requirements that are vague, inconsistent, or flat-out wrong. Every thinking programmer knows that requirements capture is hard, that spoken language is notoriously slippery, and that domain experts and programmers don't speak the same language to begin with. Even if you get requirements compiled in English, no one really wants to wade through the inches-thick stack of paper. Oh, you'll find the errors and inconsistencies, alright—far down the lifecycle track, where it's killingly expensive to fix them.
So Raven Software built RAVEN, short for "Requirements Authoring and Validation Environment," which takes requirements specs written in ordinary English, parses them, analyzes them, and builds an internal model from them. That's been done before. But RAVEN Professional builds that model fast enough to be useful, and expresses it in UML diagrams, giving both programmers and domain experts a fast way to check both overall sanity and gritty details.
For instance, if one domain expert uses "nurses" and another "care staff," this system helps catch it. If a sequence contains a conditional but fails to specify the "else" case, you'll see it in the diagram. When the spec is right, RAVEN lets you publish with customizable templates, or plug into Microsoft Visual Team Foundation as well as IBM's Rational Requisite Pro or RUP.
Ravenflow, 1900 Powell Street, Suite 500, Emeryville, CA, 94608, Tel: (510) 285-4600, www.ravenflow.com