I've fiddled around with the examples of GLEE, Microsoft's layout engine for graphs and wish I'd had it for some visualization projects I did a few years ago. Looks like a nice library to add to your collection.

Alan Zeichick, commenting on the release of Oracle DB 11G Beta ranks the major databases as:

1. Oracle
2. DB2
3. SQL Server
4. MySQL

I've never been a fan of DB2, but Oracle DB is a rock and I would never hesitate to recommend it. (This despite my involvement with Oracle's abysmal XML-based …

Based on comments to my earlier post, I put further work into Crystal Reports XI and SQL Server Reporting Services. Both seem capable-enough in terms of handling the data volumes and seem to have similar ease-of-use as far as the ultimate end-user goes (the inexperienced programmers who will be charged …

eWeek is quoting an Evans Data survey in which Borland's StarTeam was rated the best source control management (SCM) software, beating out CVS, IBM ClearCase/ClearQuest, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, Perforce, Serena/PVCS, and Subversion. It's an interesting result, because surveys have a strong tendency to …

I agree with Alan Zeichick's analysis of IBM's acquisition of modeling tool vendor Telelogic:  the overlap with IBM's Rational product line is high, the acquisition "is a bid to buy market share....we've taken a powerful innovator and strong IBM competitor out of the market."

The software development industry typically …

Is there a product in the "cheaply deployable" range (say \~\$100) that you can point at a significant SQL Server database and it parses the foreign key relationships and presents a table viewer in which the values in the foreign-key column automatically hyperlink to the relevant table? And this tool …

The preliminary documentation for the DLR is included in the IronPython-2.0A1-Doc.zip download at http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=438 :

We're leveraging the learning we did on IronPython to extract elements that could be common amongst languages (dynamic type system, hosting APIs, cached method dispatch …

That Microsoft was going to increase support for dynamic languages is no surprise: they've been talking about that since (at least) PDC '03 and various hires and initiatives have clearly been in the works. I haven't seen the DLR yet, but my big question is: what version / runtime / patch level …

DeveloperWorks interviewed Rosalyn Lum and I about the Jolt Awards (IBM was a big winner this year).

The easiest Jolt vote I've made in years was for stpBA Storyboarding, a product which every architect and team lead owes themselves to evaluate. I would say it is revolutionary, but it is better than that -- it simply makes the way you probably already work vastly more efficient.

Essentially, it …