Paul Krill

Borland Software is in a peculiar spot when it comes to offering tools for developing Windows applications. On one hand, Borland provides UML capabilities to Microsoft Visual Studio developers, via Borland

Microsoft's Web Platform for developing and deploying Web applications is being bolstered by the imminent shipment of Windows Server 2003 R2, a company official said. Through the new OS and other recent products such as Visual Studio 2005, the Web Platform supports high-volume Web sites, increases developer productivity and improves security, according to Brian Goldfarb, lead product manager for Web Platform and Tools at Microsoft.

In yet another ploy to attract enterprise customers, Sun Microsystems has decided to package a huge bundle of developer tools and middleware as the Solaris Enterprise System, anchored by the Solaris OS. And, just like Solaris itself, the entire stack is now free.

Boosting its Solaris OS, Sun Microsystems plans to distribute the PostgreSQL open source database with Solaris and will enable Red Hat Linux binaries to run unmodified on the OpenSolaris open source version of the operating system.

Citing a "huge commitment to business applications," Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates sketched out a mid-market strategy that emphasizes role-based user interfaces and tight integration with Microsoft Office.

Power in computing has shifted from proprietary, Microsoft APIs to URLs on the Web and content provision, Google vice-president Adam Bosworth said during the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo last month.

Microsoft on Monday is releasing an upgrade to its free WSE (Web Services Enhancements) package for Windows developers, focusing on security. An add-on component to Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Framework 2.0, WSE 3.0 "dramatically simplifies the development of secure Web services," said Ari Bixhorn, director Web services strategy at Microsoft.

Unifying its developer offerings for Windows, Borland Software this month announced Borland Developer Studio, an environment that includes the latest versions of the company