It would be easy to mistake the Consumer Electronics Show for one big party, with the booze, the pasted smiles, and 130,000 people milling about. But in reality, it's the Antwerp of technology. More than any gathering outside the White House, your fu...
You needn't be a DBA to understand that all knowledge in a company or organization lives in, or at least passes through, a database manager. The DBMS sees all, knows all, and at any point in time, is the most authoritative source not only for data, b...
From the viewpoint of skeptics, SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft's whole "better together" campaign are clever levers for strong-armed upgrades and whole-catalog purchases. It's clear that Microsoft is targeting Unix competitors with an enterprise portf...
You needn't be a DBA to understand that all knowledge in a company or organization lives in, or at least passes through, a database manager. The DBMS sees all, knows all, and at any point in time, is the most authoritative source not only for data, b...
Innovation rules. I was stoned in '04 (I mean, stones were thrown at me) for saying that. But in '05, AMD, Apple, RIM, Nokia, and a few others illustrated my case ably. That's why I frequently chose to write about those companies and their products.
The media's tendency to portray Steve Jobs as Apple's sole visionary and strategist is woefully short-sighted. Nonetheless, on the eve of another Macworld Conference & Expo, the only thing on people's minds is what Steve Jobs will say on stage this t...
Within the next two weeks, I'll be getting in deep with the Mac and PC technology that will take us into the next decade of Internet with every TV. This time, I'm certain it'll catch. Intel's Viiv Internet media hub initiative isn't just a brand, but...
I dreamed that Microsoft put me in charge of development for its 64-bit enterprise server applications, the Exchange and SQL Server, and so on, all of which travel collectively as Windows Server System. I was asked to find out why some elements of WS...
In terms of stability and functionality, Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 is a marked improvement over the preview released in May. I found that Beta 1 resolved most of the interactive operational glitches I experienced in my earlier look at the...
Practical IT science tends to evolve most rapidly from projects that have business objectives in mind rather than scientific ones.
Let's settle this up front. Microsoft has let its developers down. During the past few years, the company has left a trail of broken promises: a .Net-centered operating system; a broad stack of managed, .Net-based server applications; effortless targ...
Microsoft Corp.'s BizTalk server introduced the concepts of business process automation, management, and orchestration to many IT organizations. With the release of BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft delivers the benefits of leading-edge business process...
I'm quite particular, even protective, about my development tools. Microsoft's Visual Studio 6 is the only integrated development environment that came out of the box matching the way I think and work. I bonded with VS6 so well that I used it to code...
Upgrading an operating system is never as simple as popping in a CD-ROM and twiddling your thumbs through an automated install. Every OS change requires planning, retraining, and sometimes changes to client systems and custom applications. To make th...
Microsoft recently began shipping the retail edition of its new top-end development product, Visual Studio .Net Enterprise Architect. This massive bundle unites the Visual Studio .Net IDE (integrated development environment) with Visio-based modeling...
