Shortly after issuing our press release for the Inc. 5,000, I received a call from Reprint Management Services, a company engaged by Inc. to license stuff relating to the Inc. 5,000 award. Why? We had pasted the Inc. 5,000 logo on our BZ Media home page, and on our press release page. We were politely instructed to either take the logo down or license it.

License? That’s right: Inc. charges $990 per company to license one version of the logo for one year, or $1,450 to license a whole package of logo versions. If every Inc. 5,000 winner chose to license just one logo version, that’s worth $4,950,000 — which is pure profit for Inc., less a sales commission due to RMS. Not bad work if you can get it.

That prompted me to look at all the cool stuff we could license. We could get a Platinum Package with lots of reprints, logo usage for a year, promotional postcards, 500 commemorative issues and a bunch of little statuettes, all for only $8,500. There are posters, suitable for framing, for $590 each. Lots of things.

We took down the logo from BZMedia.com.

By the way, BZ Media produces two awards which have logos: the SD Times 100 and the Testers Choice (from Software Test & Performance Magazine). We don’t charge any fee whatsoever for winners to use our award logos.

Sun Microsystems is changing its stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA.

The symbol has been SUNW (reflecting Sun workstations, the company’s original product line) every since the company went public in 1986.

Why is Sun doing this? Because Java is a popular brand. According to CEO Jonathan Schwartz, on his blog last Thursday,

As I said, the number of people who know Java swamps the number of people who know Sun. Or SUNW, the symbol under which Sun Microsystems, Inc. equity is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. SUNW certainly has some nostalgic value – it stands for “Stanford University Network Workstation,” and heralds back to Sun’s cherished roots (in academia). Granted, lots of folks on Wall Street know SUNW, given its status as among the most highly traded stocks in the world (the SUNW symbol shows up daily in the listings of most highly traded securities).

But SUNW represents the past, and its not without a nostalgic nod that we’ve decided to look ahead.

JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that’s inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). And so next week, we’re going to embrace that reality by changing our trading symbol, from SUNW to JAVA. This is a big change for us, capitalizing on the extraordinary affinity our teams have invested to build, introducing Sun to new investors, developers and consumers. Most know Java, few know Sun – we can bring the two one step closer.

I disagree with Jonathan about this. Branding is good, but there’s a difference between a brand and a company. The company is Sun. One of the company’s most popular and powerful brands is indeed Java. But there’s a difference.

• If I want to know how Java is doing, I look at Java.
• If I want to know how Sun is doing, I look at Sun.

You’re not going to ask, “How’s Java doing on the market today?” or “I’d like to buy 200 shares of Java,” though perhaps that’s what Jonathan wants you to do.

What does the stock ticker JAVA has to do with Sun’s other software brands, like OpenOffice/StarOffice, Solaris, NetBeans or SPARC? Nothing. It has even less to do with Sun’s hardware brands. Java is only one part of Sun, albeit a very success one. It seems that Jonathan wants investors to forget his other products, and just focus on the Java brand.

Imagine if Apple were to change its stock ticker from AAPL to IFON (iPhone). Or Ford went from F to MSTG (Mustang). Or Microsoft changed from MSFT to WNDW or WDWS (for Windows). Or Motorola changed from MOT to RAZR. Or Proctor & Gamble went from PG to PMPR (Pampers). Silly, eh? So is changing SUNW to JAVA.

A stock ticker should represent the company, not just one of its more popular brands, because investors are investing in the company, not in just a brand.

Jonathan continues,

To be very clear, this isn’t about changing the company name or focus – we are Sun, we are a systems company, and we will always be a derivative of the students that created us, Stanford University Network is here to stay. But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category – and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol. Java means limitless opportunity – for our software, systems, storage, service and microelectronics businesses. And for the open source communities we shepherd. What a perfect ticker.

However, the message that the ticker change sends is precisely that Sun is changing its focus.

A second criticism is that this continues the trend of moving Java away from a multi-vendor community standard to a Sun-specific property. I felt this way when Sun began rebranding its Sun ONE server software as “Java Enterprise System” in late 2003. Rather than reinforcing the popular message that Sun was creating universal software and a level playing field, the JES branding exercise declared that Java == Sun. The stock symbol change now says that Sun == Java.

So, how long until Sun Microsystems changes its name? Sun still owns the name JavaSoft, which defined a Java subsidiary that the company reabsorbed in 1998.

IP addresses may not be renewable resources. Over coffee one day, my colleague Andrew Binstock suggested a problem I hadn’t considered: Many applications and systems are hard-wire to access specific IP addresses, rather than fully qualified Unique Resource Identifiers (URIs). This, in turn, may be generating unwanted network or Internet traffic that probably can’t ever be stopped. (Andrew says that he, in turn, heard about this issue from InfoWorld’s Paul Venezia.)

I’ve seen examples of this myself, with applications and devices configured to send error logs via e-mail. In many of those cases, the app’s control panel has a space for the administrator to specify the dotted quad address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) of the SMTP server. Months and years go by, and the SMTP server ain’t there no more. Meanwhile, the app is still trying to connect to it every day to it can transmit an error log that nobody even remembers any more.

This can be a problem with public and private IP address. Once upon a time, most those addresses were static. Nowadays, just about everything is be dynamic.

The benefit of using URIs, instead of hard-wired IP addresses is that it makes our networks and applications dynamic. That’s why best practices for doing Web services are to use URIs instead of IP addresses. But how many device still have control panels that require a hard-coded IP address for the SMTP server, or for other network resources? Far too many.

In the e-mail log example above, at least someone could track down and readily fix the problem. A bigger challenge is when developers hard-code IP addresses into applications’ source code. If the IP addresses are recycled, and nobody notices, someone’s getting unwanted traffic.

Andrew cited situations where a company is allocated a “fresh” IP address from an ISP, actives it – and then discovers that it’s being swamped by traffic sent to that IP address from some other service. This isn’t an intentional denial of service attack: the previous owner apparently wanted that traffic. However, it represents an unwanted nuisance and wastes bandwidth and CPU cycles.

It reminds me of when some person get new cell phone – with Paris Hilton’s old phone number, which some people still call. (See this Reuters story.) Or, when businesses who get assigned a “new” toll-free number (outside the U.S., often called a “free-phone” number), and the phone starts ringing off the hook… with people trying to reach that number’s previous owner. Sure, the phone numbers lay fallow for six months, but references to them live in printed brochures, databases, old magazine articles and even Web sites for years. How long do IP addresses lay fallow? I know of no policy or industry standard.

What can be done? Look back, nothing. Looking forward, we can set policies to discourage developers from hand-coding IP addresses into applications, even during the testing phases or for exception handling. It’s just not the right thing to do.

It’s amazing how some people get their jollies — such as by hacking into and damaging an open-source project’s Web site. As my colleague Edward Correia wrote about in EclipseSource this week, someone jumped onto the redesigned Eclipse Plugin Central site a few weeks ago, causing a service disruption and attempting to infect the site with a virus.

As Edward writes, “To what purpose?” Certainly if someone has that much creativity and talent, there are many of productive uses for those skills… if they choose to apply their skills that way. But it’s easier to destroy than to create.

Last week, I wrote an entry, “Poor sports,” where I suggested that it’s too bad that hackers aren’t publicly identified and humiliated; all we hear is that “the site was hacked.” We never know who did it or why. Of course, some people might thrive on that type of publicity.

Edward’s article got a few comments. Here’s one that stood out:

There are many type of people (“animals”), some of them would just be ethical and good by nature and some of them are evil, no matter what you plea, no matter what you teach them, no matter if you give them 10 commandments, they will stay evil! For them, strict punishments “may work.” Yes, you used the right words “The Real Sickos”.

And there are some who can be inspired and stopped from going into wrong path. For these, teaching and preaching is a good start to control the evil.

I think Media in general and IT media in special must start a campaign of not publicizing big security breaches and hacks, and instead preach the importance of Computing Ethics, at very personal level. Try to create an EVIL image of those who steal or destroys someone’s hard work.

I guess you used very proper language in your post and I think you have the right platform to talk about this issue.

What do you think? Is it good that we in the media publicize these sorts of hacks — even if we can’t identify the culprit? Or does the “publicity” that we give attacks of this sort merely serve to reward/encourage more malicious behavior?

This week’s news – that a judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, owned the copyrights to Unix and UnixWare – was good news for anyone who believes in open source software, and who also believes in giving customers choice. It was certainly bad news, very bad news, for SCO, and for other companies who shall remain nameless (like Microsoft and Sun) who supported SCO in its attempts to stifle Linux by bankrolling fear, uncertainly and doubt.

I’ve made no bones about it: I’ve been rooting against SCO, whose efforts to prove that IBM violated its licenses and stole its intellectual property were groundless. In particular, I’ve criticized SCO’s leadership, especially its CEO, Darl McBride, and its board of directors, for pursuing this course of action, and in the process, dooming the company, its employees and customers.

So, while I’m delighted with Judge Kimball’s ruling because it might bring this drama to a close, my problem is that I wanted to see the real issues settled by the courts. In short, Judge Kimball ruled that SCO didn’t have the right to sue IBM, because SCO doesn’t own Unix. Left unresolved, however, is the question that SCO raised in its lawsuits: Did IBM misappropriate Unix source code and put it into Linux? That question is not answered… and now may never be answered.

Over the past several years, as the lawsuit dragged out, it because evident to many observers that SCO simply couldn’t demonstrate any theft of intellectual property. It couldn’t, or wouldn’t, show offending source code, despite endless fishing expeditions disguised as legal discovery. Many of us wanted to see SCO’s claims ruled on by the courts.

If it turns out that Judge Kimball’s ruling stands, and the SCO v. IBM lawsuit is dismissed, we wouldn’t have learned a thing about the intellectual property foundations behind Linux. Instead, we would have learned that Novell apparently tricked The Santa Cruz Operation when it sold them UnixWare in 1995, but didn’t transfer over the copyrights or all the IP. We also learned that when The Santa Cruz Operation went to sell UnixWare to Caldera (later renamed SCO Group) six years later, Caldera didn’t buy what it thought it was buying. In other words, the judge essentially ruled that Caldera was sloppy on the UnixWare acquisition in 2001 — and that has nothing to do with Linux.

So, despite what many are saying, this wasn’t a victory of “open source” over SCO. It was a victory of Novell over SCO about the terms of a 1995 business transaction.

To reiterate: I’m happy that this case appears to be winding down. SCO has behaved churlishly, making many claims about IBM, DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone that ultimately it couldn’t substantiate. SCO’s managers, and the investors who financed the company hoping for a big lawsuit payday, deserve to go down with the ship. It’s a shame, however, that we may never see the big Linux v. Unix issue resolved, conclusively deciding once or for all whether Linux contains Unix intellectual property.

As hoped, Barry Bonds smacked his 757th career home run last night, as the San Francisco Giants beat the Washington Nationals 5-0.

Barry’s mighty swing also created the 45th home team “splash,” as the ball flew out of the ballpark and landed in San Francisco Bay’s McCovey Cove. Signs mounted at the park detail both Barry’s home runs as well as the home team splash count. (There have been 14 splashes by visiting teams.)

Also noteworthy at the game:

• Giants pitcher Matt Cain hit his first-ever Major League home run. Not bad for a pitcher!

• Giants manager Bruce Bochy racked up his 1,000th victory, as manager. He’s only the 55th manager to ever reach that milestone.

There was surely a lot of celebrating in the S.F. Giants locker room last night. The Nationals didn’t have much to party about. Great game, glad we were there.

Last year, I wrote a pair of “Zeichick’s Take” columns for SD Times News on Monday. Unfortunately, they weren’t archived onto the Web. However, I’m posting them here now, in response to an MSDN blog entry, “The real cost of compatibility is not in the hacks; the hacks are small potatoes,” by Raymond Chen. So, while the 1993 Ford Mustang GT is no longer in my driveway (sniff…), it will live forever as embodied in these columns.

From March 30, 2006:

Zeichick’s Take: Break With the Past

Dear Bill Gates: I was bummed when the Ford service manager told me that he couldn’t get the parts I needed to repair my 1993 Mustang’s heating system. But Ben — always helpful — explained that the pieces just weren’t available from the factory. He suggested the aftermarket, and indeed, I found exactly what I needed from Late Model Restoration.

Manufacturers can’t support old products forever. In the case of a 13-year-old car several model generations out of date, I can’t be upset at Ford for not having a temperature control cable. In the case of my new Intel-based iMac, software written for Mac OS 9.x (“Classic”) doesn’t work at all, and I’m fine with that, too. Drawing a line in the sand, saying that legacy products will be supported only for a finite amount of time, is generally acceptable, especially if it makes new products better.

One of the reasons why Windows is so bloated, Bill, is because your operating system doggedly supports lots of legacy hardware and applications, including antique overlapping APIs and libraries — many of which predate Windows XP, and some even go back to Windows 95. This complicates matters not only in terms of coding, but also for regression testing and in security patching.

My recommendation: Draw a line in the sand. Tell new Windows czar Steven Sinofsky to pick a set of modern APIs, and make sure that Windows Vista supports those. Eliminate the rest. Whether it’s 100 percent managed code through WinFX, or some mixture of late-model native binaries and .NET, there’s no need to go back to the Paleolithic Era. The same with hardware: There’s no good reason, none at all, for Windows Vista to support graphics cards, CD-ROM drives or network adapters that are older than, say, two years. Reinvent Windows as an operating system for new PCs. Focus on the preloads.

That’s what Microsoft’s PC partners, like Dell, HP and Lenovo, really want — they want to sell new desktops and notebooks, not watch consumers pick up a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate at CompUSA to run on their old Pentium III box. (Imagine if Ford would cripple its new Mustangs by requiring compatibility with the brake pads, fuel injectors and temperature control cable from my old pony.) Cutting off old APIs and reducing the support for old hardware might upset some customers, but it will result in a smaller, faster operating system that’s more stable and more secure. Get rid of the bloat!

What about enterprise customers? Don’t fool yourself, Bill — they’re not rushing to upgrade to Windows Vista anyway. Remember how long it took to get them from Windows 95 to Windows 98? I saw someone on a plane the other day who is still running Windows 2000 on his notebook because, he said, his company doesn’t do operating system upgrades on existing hardware.

Few companies retrofit new operating systems onto old PCs, because it’s expensive and not worth the hassle. Most will make the migration (after they’re through testing and evaluating) as part of the rollout of new PCs during a hardware refresh cycle. Sure, focusing on supporting only current hardware and applications might cause some of those customers to wait a bit longer (especially if they have to wait for enterprise apps to be updated or tested), but when they do upgrade, they’ll be happier and require less support.

Build a better Windows, Bill — by breaking with the past. Yes, cutting off compatibility with old binaries and legacy drivers will make some customers unhappy. But it’s the right thing to do.

From April 6, 2006:

Zeichick’s Take: Break With the Past, Part II

Last week’s column, where I urged Microsoft to break with the past and eliminate support for old APIs and device drivers from Windows Vista, elicited quick and harsh response. No, not from Microsoft, which didn’t respond at all. (Microsoft rarely responds to articles in SD Times or other publications, in my experience.) Rather, some loyal readers insisted that a lot of users still use older PCs — and that eliminating support for legacy hardware (I suggested cutting loose systems over 2 years old) would be an inconvenience.

(They didn’t question my premise that a clean-slate operating system would not only be easier to build and test, but also would be more stable and secure — and besides, as a rule, enterprises don’t upgrade desktop and notebook operating systems.)

“In the past I have upgraded hardware on my PC and I have had to migrate to a newer version of Windows to support it. It would be a disaster if the newer version of Windows did not support the rest of the older hardware and software. People who update all of their hardware and software every two years are very rare,” one person wrote. He’s right: Some people do upgrade the OS to support specific hardware or applications.

But I believe that this may be an exceptional case. As he himself later wrote in his letter: “I know many people who are running Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2000 all with large variations of software and hardware.” Exactly. So, why should Microsoft struggle to make Windows Vista run on an old Windows 98 box — and delay the product and make it unstable in the process?

Another respondent said, “I am writing this on my 10-year-old no-name 200 MHz Pentium PC under Windows 95. The bloat is not in Win 95 but rather in Win 98, Win2000, and WinXP.” Completely true. But don’t you think that this guy is unlikely to put Windows Vista on that 10-year-old desktop anyway?

The best letter was, “I have devices which are more than 5 years old. Now, if Microsoft were to support older software and devices in a shell environment like Macs do to support Windows programs, that would be fine. But not supporting them is not an option.”

That’s a great idea. How about if Microsoft used Virtual PC technology to enable legacy APIs on Windows Vista—i.e., Windows Vista shipped with Windows XP in a preinstalled virtual machine, the way that Mac OS X came with Mac OS 9.2 in a “classic” emulator? That would seem to be the perfect solution, in terms of streamlining the operating system and sandboxing older, less secure programming models and frameworks—and it could be turned off when users no longer needed to support legacy applications.

I like it.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to see the San Francisco Giants take on the Washington Nationals tonight. It would have been truly memorable to be there in the stands when Barry Bonds hit home run #756.

The bad news is that Barry did the deed last night. The good news is that my wife and I were watching the game in HDTV at home. It was truly a spectacular moment, and the video tribute by Hank Aaron and on-field presence of Willie Mays made it even better.

So, tonight maybe we’ll see Barry hit #757. That would be nice. Not as nice as #756, but there you are.

The shame is that there will always be an asterisks next to Barry’s name. As a story on Major League Baseball’s own Web site says, “Bonds has had his dark moments. In recent years, his on-field heroics have been played out under the shadow of the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, widespread speculation about his part in the use by Major League players of performance-enhancing drugs, and a grand jury continuing to consider an indictment against him for perjury relating to his testimony in the BALCO case.”

Today, Apple released its next-generation iMac computers – moving away from the white polycarbonate slab introduced with the iMac G5 in 2004 toward a new, slimmer aluminum slab look.

The new Macs are pretty, though I fear that the MacBook-style keyboards will be a turnoff. They feel fine, but they look too much like the chiclet keyboard (see photo) that helped sink the IBM PCjr.

When you get underneath the skin, there’s very little difference between these new aluminum-slab iMacs and the previous generation of Core 2 Duo-based white-slabs. Frankly, if you already have an Intel-based iMac (even a Core Duo one), there’s not much reason to upgrade.

Compare the specs of the new 20” and 24” models (which Apple calls “mid 2007”) with the older 20” and 24” models (which Apple calls “late 2006”). The new machines are a little faster, sporting 2.0GHz and 2.4GHz processors and an 800MHz frontside bus, compared to the 2.16GHz and 2.33GHz chips with a 667MHz frontside bus. Definitely nice, but not nice enough for replacing an otherwise fine machine.

The other specs show similar incremental improvements. The new machines can handle 4GB RAM; last year’s models officially top out at 3GB RAM, though I’ve seen third-party kits that can bypass that limitation. Last year, you had 250GB and 500GB disks; now, you can get up to 1TB in the 24” model.

A nice touch is that you can have 802.11n in the new iMacs, but were limited to 802.11g in the “late 2006” white slabs. I’m also pleased that Apple has put FireWire 800 ports on both the new 20” and 24” iMacs; earlier, FireWire 800 was only on the 24” model.

So… Apple gets points for style, and if you don’t have an Intel-based iMac, this an excellent model to have. However, if you already are on Intel (with either Core Duo or Core 2 Duo), and don’t otherwise need to make a change, there’s no reason to buy at this time.

If you’re not reading about Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan behaving badly, then you’re reading about sports scandals. As a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I read about baseball great Barry Bonds in the news nearly every day. In part, it’s because of his race to beat Hank Aaron’s home-run record. But it’s also because of his still-unclear role in the BALCO case, which involves the possible use of performance-enhancing drugs. Nearly every story involving Bonds brings up the steroid questions as “context.”

Bonds’ doping allegations are old news. New news is Michael Vick, a U.S. football quarterback accused of backing vicious dogfights. New news is Tim Donaghy, a veteran National Basketball Association referee accused of both betting on games (which is forbidden) and influencing the outcome of games (which is really forbidden). The cycling world has been rocked by a stream of scandals within the Tour de France over the past few years. This year, no fewer than three prominent racers—Alexander Vinokourov, Cristian Moreni and Michael Rasmussen—either failed drug tests or failed to show up for tests, prompting their exit from the race.

Ouch. But what’s noteworthy about all these isn’t that prominent celebrities and athletes are accused of either violating the law or their sports’ rules. That happens all the time. What’s noteworthy is that people like us hear about it…because they’re celebrities. That puts a face and a name on possible wrongdoing. People relate to faces and names.

In our profession, software development, people also behave badly. Sometimes they behave badly on purpose, putting back doors into applications, writing worms, stealing data. Sometimes, they behave badly through ignorance or carelessness, by not running security tests, not encrypting backup tapes, not listening to user requirements.

In almost all cases, professional malfeasance in the software development world is hidden or anonymous. “The software had a bug,” or “the data was stolen” or “the system was breached.” We don’t know who did wrong. We don’t know why. There’s no shame of public disclosure.

Shame drives people to care about their work. You’re less likely to drink and drive, I believe, if you know your name will be in the local newspaper if you get caught. The “perp walk,” or the parade of arrested celebrities past TV cameras, can be humiliating.

We should wish that our sports stars didn’t cheat, and that our entertainment celebrities didn’t take such a cavalier approach to the law. I’m glad that when they do get caught, however, we hear about it. I’m glad it’s not merely swept under the rug.

I’m not suggesting that if someone forgets to check a buffer or initialize a return variable, we should splash their photo on national TV. But if we find developers cheating or stealing—not being a good sport, in other words—it would be good to know about it.

Of course, let it also be said that we’re all, to some extent, hypocrites: I’m going to see the San Francisco Giants play (vs. the Washington Nationals) tomorrow, and I hope to see Barry Bonds hit home run 756.

I have been asked to be more explicit about the ‘field of use restriction’ cited in my earlier posting. To be honest, I can’t be — yet.

The field of use restriction that Apache is talking about is part of the TCK for JSR 176. That is, the technology compatibility kit that anyone who claims to properly implement Java SE 5 must run (and pass).

In order to gain access to that TCK, organizations like IBM or Apache must execute a specific TCK license agreement with Sun. According to Apache, that license agreement places restrictions on how the software tested with that TCK (in this case, an implementation of Java SE 5) can be used.

A challenge is that I don’t have a copy of the TCK license agreement for JSR 176, so I can’t see the field of use language; Sun considers it a proprietary document. (Apache is prohibited from sharing it with me either.) So, that leaves journalists, analysts, outside experts and the greater Java community to consider Apache’s claims without having access to the source document.

The closest we can come (so far) to seeing what Sun actually requires is the following Q&A in an Apache FAQ document:

Q : What is a “field of use” restriction?

A : A “field of use” restriction is a restriction that limits how a user can use a given piece of software, either directly or indirectly. To give a concrete example from the Sun / Apache dispute, if Apache accepted Sun’s terms, then users of a standard, tested build of Apache Harmony for Linux on a standard general purpose x86-based computer (for example, a Dell desktop) would be prevented from freely using that software and that hardware in any application where the computer was placed in an enclosed cabinet, like an information kiosk at a shopping mall, or an X-ray machine at an airport.

I have formally asked Sun to provide SD Times a copy of the TCK license agreement for JSR 176. It is in the public interest to make the text of this license available to the entire Java community, including the media. Restricting access to the contract is contrary to the spirit of community software development. Let’s see how Sun responds.

Well, not for dummies — for enthusiasts! You may recall my comments about Guy Kawasaki’s keynote address at the Salesforce Developer Conference, where I described him as “the funniest entrepreneur.” But whether he’s a CEO or venture capitalist, Guy is, ultimately, a software evangelist.

Last month, as a follow-up, I interviewed Guy, asking for advice for budding software evangelists, as well as for software development managers who would like to work more successfully with their organizations’ evangelists. The interview, “Software Evangelism in 10 Steps,” was published in the July 15 issue of SD Times, and I hope you enjoy it.

Well, it’s not really “Appreciate Your Test Team Day,” but if you read Edward Correia’s latest Test & QA Report newsletter story, you’d think it should be.

Eddie really hit the ball out of the park with his essay, “QA Teams — Underappreciated But Seldom Understood.” A number of readers have already commented that he nailed an important issue. One person wrote in:

Your July 17th article by Edward J. Correia is such a breath of fresh air!!! One reason I highly value my current solo work is the accurate description of inside political scenarios he described. You got my creative juices stirred up for possible ways to overcome the barriers. I think this is a function (encouraging cross-communication) HR reps can and should have as a part of their strategic job description. Ultimately, the QA has to do it, though.

Testers and QA teams are at the heart of successful new product development and ongoing improvement. Some might say, ‘that goes without saying’, but it doesn’t seem that way when you are the one doing the job. (I am a good documenter, but a poor tester, but that may have been different had there been more cross-silo interaction.)

Read Eddie’s column — and forward the link to your development staff and other software stakeholders.

With the release of the Oracle Database 11g beta yesterday, Oracle pulls ahead in the War of the Giant Enterprise Databases. With all respect to all the enterprise database companies, the four main contenders remain, in alphabetical order, IBM with DB2, Microsoft with SQL Server, newcomer MySQL, and Oracle. Yes, there are lots of other great enterprise databases. But at the top tier, both technologically and in market share, the big four stand alone.

Well, actually, IBM and Oracle stand alone. SQL Server (working up from its small-business origins) is half a step behind. It’s catching up fast, but because it’s architecturally limited to one operating system and one hardware architecture, it won’t scale to giant servers; even the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 won’t make it into the very top rung. And while MySQL is maturing fast, there’s functionality that it still needs to develop before it takes down Oracle.

Compared with IBM, Oracle has been the clear top innovator in enterprise database technology for the past half-decade. Take the release of Oracle 10g—nothing came close to what Oracle offered for supporting grids. That gave enterprises a real choice between scale-up and scale-out—or both—without changing databases. Now, with Oracle 11g, the ante is raised higher, with much richer (and faster) support for XML data, really strong security and crypto, embedded OLAP capabilities, and a very rich set of programming interfaces. DB2 is now, in my humble opinion, squarely in catch-up mode.

For those of us in the technology press, it’s been easy to forget about how powerful Oracle’s core technology is. Unlike IBM, which sticks to its knitting, and Microsoft, which talks a lot about SQL Server, Oracle seems to go out of its way to talk about everything except its database. The high-profile hostile takeovers and the associated push toward applications have succeeded in transforming Oracle into an ERP/CRM company, not a database company.

Yet, let us not forget that Oracle actually is a database company, with a number of other products that, essentially, are database applications. If you’re looking for a commercial database to run on huge servers from companies like HP and Sun, you’re talking to Oracle. If you need to scale bigger than SQL Server, you’re talking to Oracle. If you want technology more advanced than IBM’s DB2, you’re talking to Oracle.

By the way, BZ Research just completed a study into database software. We’ll be publishing some of the results in the Aug. 1 issue of SD Times. But here’s a sneak preview: In terms of market share, the top entries are SQL Server, in use at 74.7% of companies; Oracle, 54.5%; Microsoft Access, 54.4%; MySQL, 43.4%; DB2, 23.5%; and PostgreSQL, 11.2%. Note that this data is for database usage of all scales, and wasn’t limited to asking about giant, bet-your-company databases.