************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * December 2000 * * * ************************************* News and Comments We don't seem to quite have the hang of majordomo, our new email list server. Last month we accidentally sent you three copies of the November DB/C Newsletter. Hopefully, you'll only get one copy this month! The first alpha test version of DB/C FS 3 has been distributed to three customers for initial testing. We expect to be in full beta testing the first or second week of January. If you are interested in participating in the beta test program, contact us at support@dbcsoftware.com. Some of the new features planned for DB/C FS 3 include: . support for additional SELECT operators including LIKE, BETWEEN, IN, DISTINCT, COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX . support for the DATE and TIME datatypes . support for positioned UPDATE and DELETE . support for additional FETCH traversal methods . wildcards in TABLE and filename in the DBD file . journaling of file changes . support for the latest version of ODBC and JDBC Support for DB/C 9 ceases at the end of this month. What this really means is that we will try to be helpful if you have a problem with DB/C 9, but if the problem can't be resolved, your only course of action is to upgrade to DB/C DX. Today's prices to upgrade from DB/C 8 and DB/C 9 to DB/C DX will not change through at least March 2001. At some time during 2001 the upgrade prices from DB/C 9 will increase and there will be no credit for upgrading from DB/C 8 and older. If you are still running DB/C 8 or DB/C 9, you need to plan the move to DB/C DX in the next few months. This month's article is a short review of three books that I feel are important to the future of our industry. If you know of any other books that you think readers of this newsletter would profit from reading, please bring them to my attention. Happy holidays from all of us at DB/C Software Company. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** Three Books Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck, published by Addison-Wesley, 2000 Extreme Programming is a software development methodology for projects that are built by small-to-medium-sized teams of programmers. It is unlike any other methodology that exists today. This book provides a complete discussion of the author's view of why projects fail and how the process of creating software can be radically improved. A primary feature of Extreme Programming (usually shortened to XP) is the idea of putting a minimal system into production quickly and then adding functionality to that system weekly or even more frequently. This is a radical departure from the traditional design, program, test, production, maintenance cycle that is normal procedure today. Some of the concepts of XP are quite controversial. Here's a list of of some them: . Don't conduct detailed up front analysis and design. . Don't have specialized team members - everyone is an analyst, architect and programmer at the same time. . Program in teams of two - two programmers with one keyboard! . Write test suites, keep them up to date, and run them all the time. . Don't write implementation documentation. Quite frankly, many programmers have used some or even most of these techniques successfully for many years but were too afraid to discuss them. This quote is from the back cover: "You may love XP or you may hate it, but Extreme Programming will force you to take a fresh look at how you develop software". BizTalk: Implementing Business-to-Business E-Commerce by James G. Kobielus, published by Prentice Hall PTR, 2001 Microsoft has recently announced that its flagship BizTalk Server 2000 product has been released to manufacturing and will be available for testing and purchase in January. This book is being released in conjunction with the release of that software. The book is primarily about the BizTalk standard, not the Microsoft software product. It provides a definitive description of what Biztalk is - what problems it addresses, why it is designed as it is, and how companies will use it. To a lesser extent the book is a description of the BizTalk Server 2000 product. BizTalk is a Microsoft sponsored initiative to define the protocols necessary for business-to-business commerce using the Internet. It is ostensibly an open standard. This is a departure from the traditional Microsoft model of proprietary interfaces and hidden APIs. The BizTalk web site (www.biztalk.org) is the central repository for all information about BizTalk. This book provides a thorough description of the reasons behind BizTalk and what exists today. XML is a fundamental component of BizTalk. It is the basis for all message processing in BizTalk. Protocols like SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which are built on top of XML are also fundamental to BizTalk. This book provides a comprehensive description of all of the technologies (like SOAP) used by BizTalk. The book's intended audience is decision makers and others who need to understand BizTalk's concepts. It does not provide the technical detail that real techies need to work with and implement the BizTalk technologies. The book is over 400 pages in length and is at times quite tedious. However, we heartily recommend this book if you are involved with EDI or with Internet commerce. XSLT Programmer's Reference by Michael Kay, published by Wrox Press, 2000 XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations) is a computer language that is designed for transforming an XML document into another document. This book is the definitive reference for XSLT. At almost 800 pages in length, it isn't light reading. And unlike the two previous books, this has all the technical detail necessary to make even the most hard-core techie happy. XSLT is a key component of Microsoft BizTalk Server. A fundamental problem that the designers of BizTalk Server faced was how to deal with the myriad of formats that today's business documents are stored and transmitted in. Here are a few: X12, HTML, PDF, MS Word doc file, flat file. XSLT is the solution they chose. The XML transform tools of BizTalk Server are visual tools (program by painting!), but underneath the pretty pictures is XSLT. Like most of the XML family of standards, XSLT was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org). And also like a lot of standards created by a committee, XSLT is large and feature-rich. This book provides a history of XSLT (and XSL, its precursor). Most of the book consists of reference descriptions of the elements of XSLT. There are lots of examples. If you are going to be involved with XSLT, you will need to own this book! ****************************************************************************** DB/C Class Schedule Class: DB/C DX and JX Language Fundamentals Date: January 15-17, 2001 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, contact Judi Tamkevic at: voice 630.572.0240 email admin@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you when it is produced, just send an email message to 'request@dbcsoftware.com' and put the line 'subscribe dbcnews' in the body of the email message (omit the ' characters). The newsletter will be delivered to the email address from which the message was sent. To stop delivery, put the line 'unsubscribe dbcnews' in the body of the message.