Guess this technology.....

[Brad Jones]

I deal with a lot of companies, a lot of press releases, and a lot of marketing hype. I was curious to see if you guys could tell me what product and/or technology the following five benefits describe:

1 - Faster response to changing business needs
2 - Increase productivity through improved access to information
3 - Less time and cost required to integrate information source
4 - Faster return on investment
5 - Lower application devleopment, maintenance costs

I'd be interested in hearing what technology or product you believe this descirbes as well as what other technologies it could also describe.

Brad!

[Shuja Ali]

.NET is what comes to my mind.

[Siddhartha]

1 - Faster response to changing business needs
2 - Increase productivity through improved access to information
3 - Less time and cost required to integrate information source
4 - Faster return on investment
5 - Lower application devleopment, maintenance costsI think Business Software - like Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, etc!

[Hobson]

Just a guess, but maybe its some 'Application Life Cycle Management' application. Borland quit application development enviroments (like Delphi and JBuilder) for these.

[Yves M]

Could be any so-called RAD, right from Delphi, VB6 to the present day. The slogons have not changed a lot even if the technology has...

[Sam Hobbs]

You of course know that all the items in your list are very generic.

If you are asking what I think you are asking, then you probably have answers already but if you are like me it sometimes helps to be reminded of things.

In the past, those descriptions I think were used to describe Fourth-Generation software. I think they also describe Application Generators. Are those close to what you are asking?

[cilu]

So we play jeopardy now? :D OK, I guess it's .NET. (Anyhow, it's something related to Microsoft. ;) )

[Shuja Ali]

So we play jeopardy now? :D OK, I guess it's .NET. (Anyhow, it's something related to Microsoft. ;) )
Thats how I guessed it. :D

[Brad Jones]

These five items were within an advertisement that I read in a magazine describing why you should invest in a specific new technology. I found it interesting that the items seemed like they could describe *most* technologies and that the same items had been used to describe prior technologies. Let me narrow it down.


The technology being presented is suppose to be one of the most important technologies for developers today...... (all developers, not just Microsoft people). So that eliminates .NET.....

Any other guessses?

[Shuja Ali]

Now you have got me Confused. :confused:

[Yanco]

In the past, those descriptions I think were used to describe Fourth-Generation software. I think they also describe Application Generators. Are those close to what you are asking?

I also thought 4GL might be the answer. But I think huge investments would have to be made into research yet..

[Sam Hobbs]

Thank you for clarifying that, Brad. Prior to your last reply, I had begun making a second response, but I was not sure how relevant it was.

For the benefit of others, I think you are asking for ammunition to use that says that some specific advertising is very fluffy; in other words, it says a lot that sounds (feels) good but there is very little practical substance.

I think that "Faster return on investment" is redundant with the other features listed.

Oh, and .Net is not limited to Microsoft people. It is an implementation of an international standard; see The Common Language Runtime (CLR) (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/clr/default.aspx) and in particular Inside the CLR (http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/theshow/Episode020/default.asp). The standard is the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm).

I searched for:+application response business productivity information access integrate costsand the following are some of the results.

Application Integration Software, Hardware, Services and Research Papers - BusinessWeek Technology Solution Finder (http://techfinder.businessweek.com/businessweek/search/browse/51060/statse.webtrendslive.com)

Software Business - Market Reports (http://www.softwarebusinessonline.com/s-bkstr.htm)

Competitive Response Newsletter | Business Applications - December 15, 2005 | Current Analysis (http://www.currentanalysis.com/r/2005/BusinessApplications-US-1215.htm)

WebLogic Workshop 8.1 Premier Component Gallery (http://dev.bea.com/products/wlworkshop81/partners/index.jsp)

Sun Java System Portal Server - Data Sheet (http://www.sun.com/software/products/portal_srvr/ds_portal7.xml)

JOT: Journal of Object Technology - Don't Rip and Replace, Integrate! (http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_05/column3)

SAS 9 Key Data Warehousing Offerings (http://support.sas.com/software/data_warehousing.html) (requires knowing what ETL is an acronym for)

Partners Program at Information Builders - Partner Web (http://www.informationbuilders.com/partner_program/vars.html)

Application Integration Software, Hardware, Services and Research Papers - KnowledgeStorm Enterprise Information Integration (http://eii.knowledgestorm.com/kseii/search/browse/51060/51060.jsp)

Application Deployment with OpenEdge - Progress Software: Products: Progress Software (http://www.progress.com/products/deploy/index.ssp)

Intergraph - SG&I - Department of Defense (http://www.intergraph.com/dod/is.asp)

[Yves M]

The technology being presented is suppose to be one of the most important technologies for developers today...... (all developers, not just Microsoft people). So that eliminates .NET.....

The only thing I can see that would apply to pretty much all developers would be testing on virtual machines like VMWare. And that still leaves mobile/embedded/unsupported platforms out in the cold.

So it can't be a programming language, because that's of course highly specific. It can't be a VM-like runtime environment like .NET or Java because again that's specific. It can't be a performance/compliance/debugging application because that's limited by platforms/languages/compilers.

This just leaves design tools and bug-tracking pretty much. Bug-tracking doesn't really qualify for "Faster response to changing business needs", so that leaves design tools.

Hence the only candidate is a design tool that runs on all known platforms and integrates with all known languages. If such a thing exists, I would be glad to know about it :D

[Sam Hobbs]

Although the features listed include the term "application devleopment" I see nothing that says specifically that a developer's tool is being described.

About a quarter of a century ago I remember journalists and salespeople saying that software such as fourth-generation software will eliminate the need for programmers.

Here is a bit of trivia that might be relevant. The COBOL language was designed more than half a century ago, and it's design criteria included the idea that even non-programmers (such as accountants) will be able to use it.

[Sam Hobbs]

Hence the only candidate is a design tool that runs on all known platforms and integrates with all known languages. If such a thing exists, I would be glad to know about it :DI think that "all known languages" is too broad, but there are many tools (such as application generators) that have the ability to add support for additional languages.

UML (at least one implementation) is implemented in Java and can therefore be used by all environements supported by Java. Various implementations have varying support of (generating code for) languages.

[Brad Jones]

OOP fits the bullets, thus they could be from 1995.....

[Sam Hobbs]

One difficulty we are having is that, except for historical references, there is a limit to how far back the internet goes. There is an abundance of articles and advertisements that are offline from the internet.

[exterminator]

OOP fits the bullets, thus they could be from 1995.....Sorry for posting so late on this thread ... but I caught it just now :).

So Brad, you are suggesting that OOP is the technology that fulfills all those challenges? But I guess, OOP is not considered a technology - but a paradigm, which is different from the former. OOP is a philosophy.

From Wikipedia:In computer science, object-oriented programming, OOP for short, is a computer programming paradigm.A programming paradigm is a paradigmatic style of programmingA paradigm may refer to:
(in philosophy of science) a Kuhnian scientific paradigm
(in the vernacular) a pattern behind a set of typical examples of something
(in experimental science) an experimental setup
(in computing) a paradigm is a style of programming, usually enforced by the programming language used.
(in linguistics) an inflectional paradigm
an example often given of a buzzword.
the Paradigm WebcomicWhile technology:deals with the use and knowledge of humanity's tools and crafts.But of course if you consider technology as a tool/technique the OOP might fit into it... :)

[Brad Jones]

What I was really doing with this therad was determining if you guys could tell what technology those bullets described. My assumption was that you would not be able to tell and that you would be able to relate the bullets to a number of different things.

They were actually used as justification for SOA.

Brad!

[Sam Hobbs]

So we are SOL about SOA; I sure don't know what it is.

As I indicated previously, if it is necessary to refer to printed material about the validity of an answer, then it is unlikely we can do that.

An important resource would be ComputerWorld's (and similar periodicals') advertisements before 1990.

[Brad Jones]

SOA = Service Oriented Architecture. It is the current enterprise buzz thing like OOP was ten years ago. What it actually means depends upon who you talk to.

Is it important?

In my opinion, yes, it is important. But, it is the concepts behind the acronym that are important, not the term itself. There are a number of electronic and paper article out there that define different views on what exactly it is. Does it do the things described in my first post? Yes, but that list could describe about anything!

[Sam Hobbs]

The definition of terminology is often a moving target. When term is used by technical people, it is nearly always defined clearly enough. When a term is used by marketing, it is often unclear.

If you don't mind a comment that is somewhat off-topic, XML is an example of a term that is used both technically and in the manner of marketing. XML is a standard but I find very few tutorials that are clear descriptions and not mostly fluff instead.

The term "generation" of computer software has been abused. The terms first, second and third generation are technical terms that are clearly defined but fourth generation software became a marketing term and it was never clearly defined.

OLE, COM and related technology are clearly defined but ActiveX is a marketing term and not clearly defined.

[Brad Jones]

Sam - I don't think your post was actually off topic :)

Another term that is more "spin" (spin being the same thing as marketing) is AJAX. While I think AJAX is a cool "technology", it is really just Javascript and XML being used in unique ways. Thus, is it really a technology by iteself, or simply "marketing hype" to put a new spin on existing technologies..... ;)

Brad!