Need To Draw (Mathematical-Style) Graphs? Try This Free Layout Engine for .NET

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.

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Oracle 11g Beta Out: Alan Zeichick Says It's The Leader

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 …

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XML Report Generators, Part 2

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 …

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Borland StarTeam Best SCM Tool, Says Survey

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 …

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IBM's Telelogic Acquisition: Buying Marketshare, Not Expanding Market

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 …

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Auto-Database Browser With FKs as Hyperlinks?

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 …

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Dynamic Language Runtime: PHP, Scheme, and "maybe one more" coming

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 …

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Dynamic Language Runtime / IronRuby Inst-analysis

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 …

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DeveloperWorks Podcast About Jolt Awards, With Rosalyn Lum and I

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

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stpBA Storyboarding: Best Rookie Product I've Seen In Years

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 …

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