Software Development Training Survey: Between Ugly and Good
Published April 27th, 2009 Under Numbers, Software Development | Leave a Comment
Our question was: How many weeks of training have you followed on average the past 3 years??
| None | 23% |
| Less than one week | 19% |
| One week (5 days) | 15% |
| One to two weeks | 18% |
| Two weeks to one month | 8% |
| More than one month | 17% |
Number of participants: 258
Ending date: April 2009 Read more
Oracle Buys Sun: What Will Happen Next?
Published April 20th, 2009 Under News, Software Development | Leave a Comment
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 20, 2009. Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. The price represents a 42 percent premium to Sun’s Friday closing stock price of $6.69. This acquisition came after Sun broke negotiations with IBM, which was offering $9.40 per share.
Sun Press release said “There are substantial long-term strategic customer advantages to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris.” I think that this last sentence will reflect the main point of this purchase, as far as software developers are concerned. In his quest for getting a more important share of the software infrastructure of companies, Oracle acquires mainly a programming expertise and operating system that should complement its application and databases solutions. The hardware part should also allow Oracle to offer a complete optimized hardware and software solution to its customers, even if, due to Sun smaller market share, Oracle has to be friendly with its other hardware partners like HP or Dell. Acquiring Sun, Oracle also increase its expertise in the Java middleware area, after the acquisition last year of BEA Systems.
The other fact which is contained in Sun press release sentence, or I should say which is omitted, is MySQL. Sun acquired MySQL in January 2008, as a way to boost its software offer. MySQL has been for a long time an important issue for Oracle, as it was a big competitor in the lower end of the market for databases. With this acquisition, Oracle has the possibility of “quietly” killing the MySQL development process and offer the current MySQL paying customer an opportunity to migrate towards its own database product. I don’t see Oracle maintaining two database product lines, especially if one is mainly “given away” for free. Even if existing Oracle customers may not be tempted by MySQL, this new database was always in consideration for startups. There were also some companies that tried to build upon MySQL the missing tools to bring it close to the power of Oracle products.
We expect a similar fate, silent slow death through lower financial support, for mainly of the other Sun’s technologies: NetBeans, GlassFish, JavaFX or OpenOffice. Oracle always want to get the most of the financial aspect of acquisitions and spending money on open source projects and technology that has low immediate return on investment is not something that it would consider, unless it could be used as a tactical weapon against some of its competitors, like Microsoft or SAP for instance.
Sun Press Release
http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/index.jsp
Confessions of a Serial Product Owner
Published April 20th, 2009 Under Books, Methods & Tools, Software Development | Leave a Comment
Anna Fors gave me the opportunity to host “Confessions of a Serial Product Owner” on DevAgile.com. This free e-book is a short guide to a business person aiming for becoming an excellent Scrum product owner. A further iteration of the experiences of Anna as a product owner will be published in the next edition of Methods & Tools.
Linkopedia April 2009
Published April 16th, 2009 Under Links | Leave a Comment
“The Optimal Team Size is Five” tries to answer the question “What is the optimal size of a team?”
Why cheap developers will cost you
Look below the UI for more effective and robust UI automated test case designs
Molybdenum is a test tool for web applications.
Jitr is a JUnit Integration Test Runner.
Developing a Complex External DSL
Defect Detection By Developers
Professional Frontend Engineering. This video covers the foundations of the discipline, some of its core ideas, and some of of its best practices.
The Dysfunctional Daily Scrum Meeting. In this video, ScrumMasters show you how things can go wrong as they “play” a daily Scrum Meeting.
How I Can Code Twice As Fast As You. A video on text expander programs for faster programming.
Find more interesting links on the software development links directory, the software development tools directory, the software development articles directory or the software development videos directory
What is an Agile Tester?
Published April 2nd, 2009 Under Quotes | Leave a Comment
Here is a good definition of the Agile Tester, from the book “Agile Testing” of Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory: “We define an agile tester this way: a professional tester who embraces change, collaborates well with both technical and business people, and understands the concept of using tests to document requirements and drive development. Agile testers tend to have good technical skills, know how to collaborate with others to automate tests, and are also experienced exploratory testers. They’re willing to learn what customers do so that they can better understand the customers’ software requirements.”
Source: “Agile Testing”, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, Addison-Wesley, 2009