I just wanted to acknowledge the tremendous increase in the amount of Blog activity that I have received over the past year. I think (and hope) that this is because many Sybase professionals out there have come to visit my site for latest information on the Sybase scene. Since I started my Blog in August of 2005 I have seen a steady increase in unique visits to my site. This whole Blog experience of course is Reed Shilt's fault. Reed is the development manager for PocketBuilder and started the whole thing off by opening his own Blog within PBDJ, then sending me an invitation to join him in this new venue. At that point in time, Blogging was a whole new experience for me and in fact, I had not even heard the term until I received Reed's email.

When building the right project team to complete a custom solution there are many forces at work. These include business drivers, technical drivers, and organizational and political motivations. Regardless of the business or organization there are three basic rules to follow in building a team to deliver a technical solution. The first is to involve the business before the team is even assembled. Each organization has certain technology standards that govern specific tools and products that can be used on a given project.

We've all had days when QA made things difficult. When we take a closer look at what caused it we usually find that there was some miscommunication between QA and the programmers. And this miscommunication was most likely caused by the business having unrealistic expectations of the development team or the business/programmers not understanding the best way to utilize QA. So where does QA fit?

Statistics Canada provides aggregated census, social and economic survey information to the public while protecting sensitive details - and offering multi-years' worth of data online using Sybase technology.

PowerBuilder 10.5 is almost ready, and I'm sure you have a lot of questions about what's in the release and how it can make your job easier. You are also probably wondering why it's called '10.5,' how it fits in with our roadmap for PowerBuilder, and what our plans are for tools in general, especially in light of the news that Borland is selling off its IDE product set. I will attempt to answer those questions and more in this update on the latest release.

Remember the excitement you felt when you first learned to develop applications with PowerBuilder? Instead of taking three weeks to build a window like your C counterparts, you were painting windows in less than three minutes - and you were able to code functionality to connect those windows to your enterprise database! You delighted management by delivering projects in record time, you dazzled users with nifty graphics and easy to navigate applications, and you could even implement end users' change requests with lightning speed.

'Compliance and security are the new Software Quality drivers,' said Dr Adam Kolawa, cofounder and CEO of Parasoft Corporation, talking live on SYS-CON.TV to Sean Rhody, editor-in-chief of Web Services Journal and Yakov Fain, Enterprise Editor of JDJ.

Spooked at the thought of an Oracle-PeopleSoft combination to the point of considering playing white knight, IBM has now allied directly with PeopleSoft, getting it to promise to standardize its applications on IBM's WebSphere middleware.

And if not the CEO, how about some tech support, order takers, a programmer, some direct marketers, and maybe even a couple of scheduling analysts? Telecommuters are becoming more than a clever '90s buzzword.

Why is it that some Web sites are more appealing and seem to work better than others? It's not always about the speed of the download, although quite often that can be the problem. Sometimes there are broader issues at hand. Even with screens that refresh slowly and try our patience, we can't seem to pull ourselves away as we move from one site to another.

When is 'tech' going to rebound? Like many people in the industry, I get this question a lot. After waiting two years, we are all still waiting. Now it looks as if technology spending will remain flat through 2003.

A key challenge when developing custom software is creating effective design specifications. A good design provides two key benefits: (1) it serves as a specification so developers can build the proper system, and (2) it serves as a communication tool between the designers and the user community so the designers can understand the users' business and design their requirements correctly and succinctly.

In Part 1 of this article (PBDJ, Vol. 8, issue 12) we presented the technology for building and using HyperTextObjects (HTOs). HTOs enable authoring of powerful HTML/JavaScript controls that can easily mimic the functionality and APIs of PowerBuilder controls.

Let's face it: we would love to put our PowerBuilder systems on the Web. As the industry trend is to make every new project 'Web-enabled,' our PB applications have already acquired the word 'legacy' in front of them.

TechWave offers many enjoyable aspects - from classes to vendor contests to free booze. TechWave can really be a lot of fun. However, as in all things, it's just as well to make some concessions to moderation. When it's clear that you can't get what you want from a vendor or a technician or a teacher, or even from Shamu, then you're in real trouble.

I have dealt with Sybase in one form or another for over five years, initially as a student, taking classes from certified instructors, or on occasion calling technical support for an assist. Over the last few years I've been a primary support point of contact for our subsidiary of Williams, a beta tester, and president of our local user group.

Has anyone seen the commercial in which a repairman rings the doorbell of a young couple's house? It goes like this: a husband and wife are sitting on the couch watching television when the doorbell rings. The husband answers the door and there's a crisply dressed serviceman, toolbox in hand, politely announcing that he's there to repair the refrigerator. 'But I never called you,' the young husband exclaims. 'Honey, did you call someone to fix the refrigerator?' he shouts to his wife. 'No,' she replies. The husband fixes a puzzled gaze on the repairman and shrugs his shoulders. 'No one called me,' explained the serviceman, 'It did,' and he looks at the refrigerator.

John Olson wrote a wonderful article on the value of consultants ('The Value of Consulting Services,' PBDJ, Vol. 7, issue 11). In it he discussed contractor valuation, gave excellent hiring and searching advice, and provided some explanation of how a contractor can be put to use. I'd like to offer an extended view of who some of our contractors are and how best to use them. There are also some tips on how to avoid abusing them.

It may not be economically feasible (or necessary) for you to throw money at speeding up applications. Spending a certain amount of money on speed may be expedient and eventually even necessary, but it shouldn't be our first choice as analysts or managers. Too many hours are spent working up cost justification analyses and AFEs (Authority for Expenditures) that could have been spent on actual repairs.

Dear Cliff, You would salivate at the stuff I'm doing. If you thought PowerBuilder was nice, Jaguar blows it clean away. The stuff I'm doing with Jaguar is beyond belief.

I've recently been involved with several 'frenzy projects' - projects fueled by a sense of desperation. They have a psychotically myopic sense of purpose. These projects are known for large budgets, high profiles and very severe consequences if they don't go well. The sentiment among business users is, 'We don't care what it costs, just make it happen.' This happened all over America with Y2K projects, and it's happening now with companies doing e-business - enabled projects. Next month perhaps it will be a conversion to microscopic embedded databases. Here are some suggestions to help you avoid the gallows and succeed during a frenzy project.

Sybase Enterprise Application Server has come of age with version 3.6. Although it's a strong tool, Sybase must realize that the technical strength of their offering may not be enough to survive in a world crowded with competing products. This article discusses how Sybase can leverage the strength of Enterprise Application Server, as well as learn from the strength of their competitors and combat them.

Several years ago I realized that the Tulsa PBUG (PowerBuilder Users Group) was defunct. After talking to those involved it became clear that interest had waned and there was little officer support - the group died of starvation. It seemed that here was a great opportunity.

The explosive interest in application servers, particularly the Sybase Enterprise Application Server (EAServer), will no doubt result in their rapid adoption as organizations make full-fledged commitments to deploying transactional applications on the Web. Let's quickly snapshot where EAServer has been, and describe where the near term will take us.

It's a new year, a new millennium (give or take a year), and we've just released version 3.5 of the Sybase Enterprise Application Server. There's no better time to contemplate where we've been and where we're going.

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.