Development

Microsoft Corp. is refreshing the beta release of its Visual Studio 2005 developer tool platform to feature the full range of technologies planned for the company's Team System application life cycle management system, Microsoft representatives acknowledged recently.

Focused on improving its requirements management arsenal for software development, Borland Software Corp. on Wednesday announced its acquisition of Estimate Professional, a software project planning and estimation tool.

NetBeans support for Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) is something that at least one Canadian-based enterprise development firm is anxiously awaiting, as Sun Microsystems Inc. recently rolled out the first beta version of its new integrated development environment (IDE), NetBeans 4.0.

Javalobby, an online community of Java developers, has removed from its new JDocs documentation Web site several vital Java APIs at the request of Java founder Sun Microsystems Inc., an official with Javalobby said on Friday.

Open Source Development Lab Inc. (OSDL) has upgraded a key Linux kernel development tool, the Scalable Test Platform (STP), with new features to improve simulations of enterprise data centres on the Linux kernel.

Novell Inc. earlier this month bundled the open-source, J2EE-compliant JBoss Application Server with its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, giving application developers a built-in deployment option.

Major vendors are getting better at donating source code to the public. But by and large, companies engage in code charity in safe and limited ways. They incorporate existing free code into their commercial products, giving their nonproprietary enhancements

Officials at Sun Microsystems Inc., Javalobby, and Infravio Inc. last week revealed initiatives positioned as advances in either Java development or Web services consumption.