Project Orion

IBM is making progress on their Project Orion. The goal is to product an IDE like Eclipse that runs on the web. They just put out a Beta release for around 5k developers.

I think of Eclipse as being an IDE for Java. However Orion intends to work for any programming language. For example, they want Orion to be able to handle JavaScript development.

The beauty of being a web app is that it can download code in real time from the web. IBM plans to integrate other free tools into Orion. This could be things such as Git, Bugzilla, and/or Jira.

Watson Plays Jeopardy

IBM has developed a computer named Watson to compete on the game show Jeopardy. It is going to be pitted against two of the best human Jeopardy players ever.

Watson has a lot of computer memory. It has a fixed store of data is has "learned". It then needs to use the clues from the Jeopardy game to use this memory to answer the questions.

Watson is composed of a bunch of IBM Power 750 servers. The thing actually understands the nuances of the English language.

There is talk about commercial applications of this technology. But first IBM will need to figure out how to run the Watson program on something less than a massive computer.

ClearQuest is a Dog

I finally got my ClearQuest client upgraded to version 7.1. This thing looks and feels a lot different than the earlier version I am used to. For starters, the thing takes forever to launch. I spend a lot of time looking at the splash screen. The screen states that the product was built with Eclipse, and uses Java. Maybe that is part of the slowness.

When I do a query that results in many defects, the results are now paginated. Previously ClearQuest would put each of these defects in a single huge spreadsheet control for me to navigate. Now I need to guess which page the resullts will be on. If my guess is off, I need to click on the other results pages. Poorly done.

I cannot resize the preview pane for the defect I want to look at. What the heck? Somebody has determined the optimal layout of screen real estate for the query results and the preview. Great. The problem now is that I feel like I used to have much more room in the preview. At least I can double click a query result row and get a popup window will all the details.

From everything I have seen in the past week, I want my old version of the ClearQuest client back.

Rational Tool Upgrade Trouble

Our customer upgraded their Rational Tools Suite to version 7 this past weekend. As expected, the upgrade did not go smoothly. Here was the plan. The servers were going to be upgraded on the weekend. An upgrade icon was going to be pushed out to workstations to allow users to control when the client tools would be upgraded.

A lot of people did not receive the icon for the upgrade. I got the icon on one of my machines. However when I clicked the icon, I got an error because I did not have enough room on my C: drive. It seems that I need at least 1G of free space on my C: drive. Now my machine is a virtual one with a measly 10G of space on C:. Most of that space is currently used. I am now spending a lot of time trying to hack away at drive space used.

I know I may be in the minority. New computers have massive C: drives. But come on. Is this some major code bloat in the latest version. It would be best if I could just install those tools I actually need. That is a small list. I require ClearQuest and Clearcase. It would also be nice if I could specify what options are installed for these two products. Microsoft does that all the time and gives me the options to not install pieces. Can we get that from IBM here?

Rational Upgrade

My customer decided to finally upgrade to the latest version of Clearcase and ClearQuest. The upgrade was timed to happen between releases of other critical software. The plan is that the system administrators are going to upgrade the servers over the weekend. They are also going to push out a client upgrade program over the weekend.

People are supposed to keep their computers online over the weekend. Then on Monday, they are to launch the client program upgrade install. There is a story out that the last time we upgraded, things did not work too well. It was a while before we were able to access the ClearQuest data. I am doing a couple backups of my ClearQuest data myself just in case. I cannot afford to be offline from ClearQuest for more than a day or two.

Enterprise Generation Language

IBM has announced their Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). This is a new language to help with modernization legacy systems. The big idea is to convert legacy apps to the EGL. Then you can compile the EGL to a modern language and platform. Some applicable legacy environments to convert from in clued green screened terminal apps. The benefit from the conversion is that you can avoid any 3^rd party licensing costs.

A main destination language that EGL targets is COBOL. You can compile EGL into COBOL for the IBM CICS or iSeries hardware platforms. You can also compile the EGL to Java to run on Websphere or Tomcat. Finally you can compile EGL to JavaScript to run in a web browser.

All of this EGL business is a shortcut from manually porting legacy code to a specific target system. A lot of legacy code has already been rewritten in Java. However the EGL case does sound good if you need to target multiple environments. Just convert the legacy code once to the EGL. Then you let the software do the hard work of porting to multiple environments. How do you like that?

The IBM Cloud

IBM recently announced that they are providing a free public cloud for development and test. This will allow developers to quickly work in a virtual machine. Obviously they are doing this to get their cloud to catch on, and generate paying customers later. I like the idea.

In conjunction with their cloud service offering, IBM has released the Rational Software Delivery Services. These are a bunch of tools to do development and test in their cloud. So far I have not done any cloud computing. But IBM seems to be making it very easy to try out.

Now that IBM has led the way with a free offering, I wonder if competitors like Amazon will follow suit. There is nothing better that companies coming out with free services for developers.