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MacEdition ProNews : May 11, 2003
Workin’ on the weekend

by MacEdition Staff (feedback)

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Enterprise, beam me up

Apparently not willing to wait for Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), enterprise heavyweight PeopleSoft Inc. threw their arms around Apple’s Safari browser, making it the only browser outside the Netscape/Microsoft camps to be certified for use as a front-end for PeopleSoft’s server-based applications.

“PeopleSoft is committed to open source standards – which significantly reduce total cost of ownership,” said Rick Bergquist, chief technology officer, PeopleSoft. “PeopleSoft customers that run PeopleSoft pure internet applications on Safari will benefit from faster load speeds and increased performance.”

PeopleSoft is a programming environment which is used to produce business applications for a wide variety of Fortune 500 needs. The customized applications run on the BEA WebLogic and IBM WebSphere server platforms which can be hosted on a wide variety of Windows, Unix and Red Hat Linux server systems.

Safari users hooking up to PeopleSoft apps will find support for handy little widgets like snap-back, tabbed browsing and multi-lingual pages. PeopleSoft anticipates they will have their wares ready for use with Safari by the fourth quarter of this year.

In an unrelated announcement, Apple announced a dedicated track for enterprise developers, system administrators and IT managers for its upcoming WWDC event. It’s the first time Apple’s held training sessions aimed specifically for enterprise developers and administrators during the four-day conference.

The revolution is golden

Runtime Revolution has issued a release candidate for version two of their cross-platform rapid application development environment.

The new revolution will provide developers with XML, SOAP and Unicode support, improved database support for PostgreSQL and MySQL Secure Socket Layers, video capture capabilities, text-to-speech support in addition to an integrated debugger, a new report generator and programming cookbook outlining a range of useful routines.

Runtime has the beta available for evaluation as a download from their website.

Teach the world

FE77 Software expanded the scope of their educational program and are now offering educational pricing for their self-contained server environment to educators world wide.

FE77 allows the user to quickly set up a server on their Mac OS X systems to test the performance of Web-based applications under development. Cost of the educational software is US$19.95 plus shipping and handling.

Codeslingers for hire

Anybody needing to tag up with a coding specialist for an ongoing project might find a new Web resource to be a handy way to hunt down a hired gun in a hurry.

GeBE Computer & Peripherie is sponsoring the Mac Developer Directory, a worldwide listing of 120 developers. It’s the hope of the site’s developers to create a common marketplace for Mac-oriented development projects.

“With more than 120 developers from around the world already registered, any interested party can find experts for almost any development project on the Mac platform,” says Oliver Breidenbach, CEO of GeBE GmbH. Search options include Software Technologies, Operation Systems, Programming Language, Solutions areas of expertise, Services provided, Tools used and much more.

Developer registration and use of the service is free, but the site’s developers are asking user to donate – via PayPal – to support the effort if they find the service worthwhile.

Lovely trinkets abound

FileMaker netted a rather prestigious award by picking up a Codie for best database from the Software & Information Industry Association

The SIIA honored FileMaker Pro 6 Unlimited over IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.1 and three other finalists. It was the second Codie for FileMaker in this category in three years.

FileMaker’s parent company – Apple – took home a Codie of its own from the event as the association judged PowerSchool as the best primary school administration software on the market.

Gunnin’ for #1

4D Inc. might not be packin’ the classy Codie hardware, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t trying its hardest to capture the kudos where they count.

In an effort to make more Web developers happy, the company released a Dreamweaver MX plug-in that allows Web designers to quickly create accurate 4D tags to call database information to their Web pages.

“Using a simple GUI interface, 4D for Dreamweaver MX instantly adds the technologically exact 4D tags to sites designed in Dreamweaver MX,” said Brendan Coveney, president and CEO, 4D, Inc. “Now designers using Dreamweaver MX can simply drag-and-drop icons, or point-and-click to incorporate the latest 4D tags into their creations. The immense power of 4th Dimension including the latest standards-based Web Services technology, with the top design environment for pages and Web-based apps combine to make developing powerful Web-based applications easy.”

The 4D for Dreamweaver MX plug-in is available from the company’s Web site as a free download.

GIS package gets fine tuned

OpenOSX has updated their version of GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) by improving the Cocoa-based user interface, including a more user-friendly install process, improving stability and rolling in support for Tcl/Tk 8.4.2.

The OpenOSX GRASS GIS 5.0.2 CD will transform a Macintosh running Mac OS 10.2.x into a full-fledged GIS workstation in minutes with no Unix or other technical knowledge.

Some of GRASS’ popular features include: ortho-rectification, Digital Elevation Model creation and editing, projection and re-projection capabilities, raster & vector data support in more than 120 projections, shaded relief with 16-bit precision, geostatistics and spatial data analysis, statistical analysis, 3D visualization and simulation modeling capabilities.

Binaries for the program are posted on the OpenOSX Web site, but users looking for the supporting libraries to make the program run must either buy the complete install CD from OpenOSX or download the binaries for the libraries from the GRASS development headquarters and install the libraries by hand.

Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.

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