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| Resources for Your Developer Toolbox |
| Theresa W. Carey |
.gif) Empirix Inc. recently introduced FirstACT, which performs load and functional testing on both the COM components and XML Web Services that drive transactional applications. FirstACT enables users to test the scalability and functionality of middle-tier components early in the development process, when problems are easier and less costly to fix. FirstACT allows developers and quality assurance professionals to test the performance and functionality of COM and COM+ objects, the building blocks that make up COM. In addition to those tests, FirstACT enables testing of XML Web Services.
The company also announced the update of e-TEST Suite, 5.1. e-TEST Suite includes e-Tester for functional and regression testing, e-Load for performance and scalability testing, and e-Monitor for monitoring deployed Web applications. With new real-time integrated graphing and reporting of both user experience and back end performance of the Web infrastructure, you can identify bottlenecks and site performance issues as needed.
Through a new test console, in e-Load and e-Monitor you can understand how users experience Web applications and how the underlying Web infrastructure affects performance. Further, you can now drill into the underlying Web infrastructure during load testing and monitoring to profile COM+ performance. Empirix produces test and monitoring solutions that measure end-to-end Quality of Experience (QoE) for Web and voice applications, contact centers, and communications networks.
Empirix Inc.
1430 Main Street
Waltham, MA 02451
781-993-8500
https://www.empirix.com
Reusable Software Components
.gif) ComponentSource, a resource for reusable software components, recently launched the ComponentSource Enterprise Reuse Solution (ERS), a customizable, Web services-based reuse platform. A set of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and XML-enabled Web services are coupled with an organizational model and incentive structure to enable an organization to create its own private marketplace and community. These Web services fall under three main categories, enabling customers of ComponentSource ERS to supply, manage, and consume their own internally built off-the-shelf components on an enterprise level.
ComponentSource's public repository of over 5,500 Microsoft COM components is integrated, providing developers using Microsoft® .NET and COM with a source of reusable components. This three-tier solution supports the practice of "Reuse before you buy, buy before you build," bringing the concept of private marketplaces and communities to enterprise customers looking to reuse.
To help organizations prepare for enterprise-scale reuse, ComponentSource provides content through its Enterprise Reuse Section. White papers and articles, based on the company's six years of expertise, empower its community of developers and CIOs who want to reuse existing components. ComponentSource's 450 authors can also create commercially compelling components for large corporations. The Buy section offers product reviews and discussion forums to assist you in decision making.
ComponentSource
3391 Town Point Drive Suite 350
Kennesaw, GA 30144-7083
888-850-9911, 770-250-6100
https://www.componentsource.com
Visualize Your Code
.gif) Headway Software Inc. has released Headway reView 2.4, a source code visualization tool for Java and C++ developers. Headway reView can improve developers' understanding of their source code by showing dependencies at all levels and between all levels: application, package, class, method, and data members. Headway reView is a reverse-engineering tool that allows developers to bridge the gap between visual environments found in design tools and text-based Integrated Development Environments. The program extends the value of Unified Modeling Language (UML) by using a subset of its notation to visualize code. The result is a visual illustration that shows developers their codebase as it actually is.
Product features include access to documentation, the ability to suggest and simulate refactoring as well as chase dependencies, scalable reverse-engineering, and speedy code viewing and surfing.
Headway Software Inc.
78 Boston Street
Somerville, MA 02143
1-877-432-3929
https://www.headwaysoftware.com
Graphical FTP Server
.gif) RhinoSoft.com and Cat-Soft have released version 3.0 of their FTP server, Serv-U. Serv-U 3.0 features a new graphical interface and remote administration capabilities. Serv-U's domain-based FTP servers allow customizable domains on a single FTP server. You can manage multiple domains on your FTP server as if it contained multiple servers. Virtual paths, links, and directory mapping allow you to provide access to virtually any file or directory on your network while hiding the actual path and maintaining security. For the Sysop, Serv-U's User Messaging allows you to send and receive messages from users connected to your server. Other features include native Windows NT® and Windows® 2000 service support, remote server administration, and customizable response messages.
Rhino Software Inc.
P.O. Box 53
Helenville, WI 53137
262-593-2751
https://www.serv-u.com
Produce Web-based Reports via OLAP
.gif) Crystal Decisions Inc. has released Crystal Analysis Professional, a front-end Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) product that transforms multidimensional analysis into Web-based reports for interactive viewing. The product features tight integration and support for Microsoft SQL Server™ 7.0 OLAP Services and SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services.
Crystal Analysis Professional integrates with Crystal Enterprise, a Web-based information delivery platform for delivering reports, analytics, and strategic business information into any enterprise, Internet, intranet, or extranet application. The complete Crystal Decisions suite gives users a scalable reporting, analysis, and distribution infrastructure that includes Crystal Reports.
Crystal Analysis Professional delivers reports consisting of alternate cube views on each page and analysis buttons that guide users from view to view. Users can gain insight into sales figures, financial numbers, key performance indicator metrics, Web log analysis, and more. Reports can contain simple interpretations of the data as well as instructions, and can be viewed in a zero-client, DHTML environment requiring no plug-ins or applets. The product provides analytic functionalities as well as a drag and drop design environment, page templates, and experts.
A Web publishing wizard for report creation and delivery is also included.
Crystal Decisions Inc.
895 Emerson Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
800-877-2340, 604-681-3435
https://www.crystaldecisions.com
New Components for .NET
Infragistics has announced UltraServerTree and UltraListBar, the first of its new components for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Infragistics will be releasing a variety of .NET-compatible components in the near future. UltraListBar is a navigation control that brings the look of Microsoft Outlook® to applications. It incorporates a system of sliding groups, each of which is identified by its header. Clicking a group's header causes the group to become active, slide into view, and display the items it contains. UltraListBar can be used to provide users with the ability to group and categorize a variety of items for quick access, and it's a familiar look to anyone who works with the Microsoft Outlook personal organizer or the Office 2000 suite of applications.
UltraListBar uses the Infragistics .NET Presentation Layer framework, which is implemented as a series of .NET assemblies and will be shared by all Infragistics Windows Forms components. UltraListBar reduces the size of each component and promotes visual consistency and common programming usage across all Infragistics presentation layer components.
The UltraServerTree control is a hierarchical tree and menu rendering control. It offers complete customization features for colors, fonts, images, borders, backgrounds, and more.
The UltraServerTree Studio application offers complete visual design features for constructing, saving, and rendering trees and menus to HTML using predefined and customizable templates. UltraServerTree supports data binding to hierarchical datasets and any XML file through XSL style sheets. The application allows client side selection and editing of nodes with event-handling implementation on the server side.
Infragistics
2540 Route 130
Cranbury, NJ 08512
800-231-8588
https://www.infragistics.com
.gif) URFIN JUS has released CLASSter 1.2, a code-generating tool for developers using ASP, Visual Basic®, and SQL Server. CLASSter generates Visual Basic database access classes that effectively import a SQL Server database into the Visual Basic environment. This class may be used either by a Visual Basic business logic class in a COM DLL, or directly from the ASP scripting environment. The program takes over the task of coding database operations through ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO). CLASSter provides numerous options for developers to specify the exact features and functionality they want in the database class. The generated database class is not just a snapshot of the database. It has powerful functionality for data processing, including transaction control, batch execution, XML processing, and extended error handling.
URFIN JUS
P.O. Box 58935
Renton, WA 98058
206-355-5772
https://www.urfinjus.net
Traceroute Troubleshooter
.gif) Nessoft has released Ping Plotter 2.30 for Windows, a traceroute and ping utility that allows network administrators and Internet users to assess connection status and troubleshoot problems. With its multithreaded graphical engine, Ping Plotter can graph performance and packet loss over extended periods. Ping Plotter can save historical data and graphs for later retrieval and comparisons. This historical perspective gives users insight into network performance as it varies by time and day. The program's design allows you to see the speed of each network hop in real time. The performance graph can be resized, scaled, zoomed, dragged, and manipulated to make problem identification easier. Ping Plotter tracks every route change. It can perform an ARIN IP whois lookup so you can see who owns the IP address for a given hop. With its low resource usage, Ping Plotter monitors network performance without degrading system performance.
Nessoft
https://www.pingplotter.com
Send your New Stuff to Theresa at newstuff@microsoft.com. |
Theresa W. Carey is a freelance writer who lives in California. Her byline has appeared in Barron's and PC World.
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