Over the past year, there's been an undeniable undercurrent swirling around based on the rumor that PowerBuilder may have run its course.

The long running Microsoft antitrust lawsuit pursued by the U.S. Justice Department is finally coming to a close. In a recent joint news conference, representatives of Microsoft and the U.S. government announced that an agreement has been made regarding the breakup of Microsoft. The agreement will follow the pattern of AT&T ('Ma Bell') when it was broken up into many smaller 'Baby Bells' in 1984. As a result 'Ma Soft' will be broken into regional companies, referred to as 'Micro Babies,' to be named MicroAtlantic, SoftSouth, PacificSoft, U.S. Soft, MicroWest, and several others yet to be named.

A goal of major software tool companies (Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase, Sun, etc.) is to provide every design and development tool, connectivity product and server necessary for customers to design, develop, implement and maintain their enterprise systems. That's a tall order but within reach of each of those four companies. The EAStudio product set, which includes PowerBuilder, now contains a wide variety of tools in all those areas. However, until PowerDesigner 7 (PD7) was released, that set didn't contain an object designer.

As programmers we tend to live in the fast lane, especially where technology is concerned. If you're anything like me, any mention of the 'wave of the future' gets your immediate attention. The last thing we want is to be left behind, floundering in a dead or dying technology.

Though PowerDesigner 7 was released a few months ago, not many people are aware that it's much more feature-rich than past versions. Sybase has been pushing hard to get the word out that PD7 is a great product, but it's getting only mediocre media coverage. We haven't even mentioned it yet in this magazine, so I'm going to focus on it now. First, a little history?

The application server market continues to be one of the hottest areas in technology. Why? Because an application server is the central piece of software in a Web-based architecture. An application server centralizes application logic and data access, making it possible to access applications over the Internet or an intranet (see my article in the May '99 PBDJ [Vol. 6, issue 5]).

And ther's a hand, my trusty friend, and gie's a hand o' thine. We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne.... I can't get rid of the song - it's with me all the time. Well, the new year is here and with it comes the many new challenges we have to face. We're now in a brand-new century. Looking back at the micro revolution, we definitely have come a long way. Personal computing is no longer a hacker's hobby in some basement or garage. It's become a multibillion-dollar industry. This revolution has altered not only the business world, but also the fabric of our society. Today, technologies such as the client/server and the Internet are revolutionizing the world of our corporate computing, and in the personal computer we've found a new vehicle for the exchange of ideas and the formation of a global community.

Wow, 2000! I remember back in the '70s when I was a teenager thinking about the year 2000. It was so far away. I was sure the world would be radically different, plus I'd be such an old man. Well, I'm older, though not yet an old man. And the world has changed, but not as drastically as sci-fi movies and shows had led me to believe. Technology has made incredible advances. One dramatic example is that the U.S. government-sponsored Human Genome Project expects to finish mapping the entire human gene structures by the end of the year. Not too long ago that task was considered impossible. The great increases in computer technologies are giving scientists power they never had before. This is leading to an unprecedented increase in knowledge, not only for scientists but for the general population. With the recent explosion of Internet capabilities and uses, the Internet is bringing this new knowledge into most homes in the U.S. and many around the world.

Wow, 2000! I remember back in the '70s when I was a teenager thinking about the year 2000. It was so far away. I was sure the world would be radically different, plus I'd be such an old man. Well, I'm older, though not yet an old man. And the world has changed, but not as drastically as sci-fi movies and shows had led me to believe. Technology has made incredible advances. One dramatic example is that the U.S. government-sponsored Human Genome Project expects to finish mapping the entire human gene structures by the end of the year. Not too long ago that task was considered impossible. The great increases in computer technologies are giving scientists power they never had before. This is leading to an unprecedented increase in knowledge, not only for scientists but for the general population. With the recent explosion of Internet capabilities and uses, the Internet is bringing this new knowledge into most homes in the U.S. and many around the world.