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                    *          DB/C Newsletter          *
                    *            March 2007             *
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                              News and Comments

     I made my fourth annual trip to EclipseCon earlier this month.  As
was the case for the first three EclipseCons, it did not disappoint.
This month's article is a summary of my impressions of EclipseCon 2007
and the general state of the Eclipse community.

     One other item of note - Microsoft has announced that it will cease
development of FoxPro and cease support in 2015.  This is just another
example of how Microsoft operates by buying out its competitors and then
burying their products, either quickly or after milking the cash flow.
I recently read an interesting article about how Microsoft tried to kill
Apple's Quicktime through strong-arm tactics similar to what it has done
with other companies, but that Apple was not intimidated, and that Quicktime
may have been pivotal in saving Apple from being squashed by Microsoft.
I got a chuckle out of this description from that article of what it is
like to partner with Microsoft -

    "History reveals that partnering with Microsoft is like accepting
     a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter. One might as well just
     roll in seasonings and jump in the oven."

Thankfully DB/C Software has been small enough to stay below Microsoft's
radar!  The article I'm referring to is from a web site called Roughly Drafted
Magazine, and the link to the article is -

www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html

                                                     don.wills@dbcsoftware.com


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                          EclipseCon 2007 Report

     The highlight of the EclipseCon 2007 conference was the keynote address
given by Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator/cartoonist.  Adams, who holds a BA
in Economics and an MBA from UC Berkeley, is quite a character.  Here's what
the EclipseCon web site has to say about him -

     "He's been a bank teller (he was robbed twice at gunpoint), computer
      programmer, financial analyst, product manager, commercial lender,
      budget manager, strategist, project manager, and pseudo-engineer.

      During this time Adams entertained himself during boring meetings by
      drawing insulting cartoons of his coworkers and bosses. Eventually a
      bespectacled character named Dilbert emerged from the doodles..."

If you ever get a chance to see Adams speak, don't pass it up - he's quite
entertaining.

     The fact that Adams speech was the highlight does not diminish the rest
of the conference.  The Eclipse community continues to grow, but at a slower
pace than in previous years.  New partners include Oracle, Sybase, Motorola,
Nokia and others.  The conference appeared to have slightly more attendees
than last year.  It is becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft Visual
Studio and Eclipse will be the only major IDEs left in a few years.  IDEs
like JBuilder, NetBeans, IDEA and others are losing mind-space and numbers
to the big two.

     The usual suspects are still the primary movers behind the various
Eclipse initiatives.  IBM is providing the bulk of the developers for the
basic 'plumbing' of Eclipse - the base platform and the languages toolkit
support.  Actuate is the driving force behind BIRT, the report generation
facility.  Oracle, Sybase, Ingres and IBM are the leaders of the Database
Tools Project, which provides primarily a visual front-end of SQL.  The
projects for building tools to develop web-based and AJAX applications are
also quite active.

     One area that has made great headway in the last year is the embedded
tools projects area.  This area consists of language toolkits, similar to
DB/C DX's DDT, which are used to develop and debug programs in C/C++, Java
and other languages on a variety of embedded and mobile platforms.  The
reason these are interesting to us at DB/C Software is that these toolkit
providers are experiencing many of the same frustrations that we at DB/C
Software have experienced in the development of DDT.  Things like keystroke
recording and playback, and distributed debugging were hot topics.

     The general feeling of the conference is that Eclipse has matured, and
that many of the major objectives have been achieved.  The community is now
in the refinement mode of operation.  All in all, the conference was a big
success, and validates the decision that we at DB/C Software made four years
ago to wholeheartedly embrace Eclipse.

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                          DB/C DX Class Schedule

   Class:     DB/C DX Fundamentals
   Date:      June, 2007
   Location:  Woodridge, Illinois

For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com.


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