I am very happy to announce the General Availability of HydraSDO for Databases 1.0.  We already have a “Java Edition” so this completes the set by providing support for the C++ SDO API.  The Service Data Object specification is particularly important for database access because it is the only industry standard API designed specifically for accessing data in Service Oriented Environments. HydraSDO for Databases provides a Data Access Service (DAS) for relational data that is built on SourcePro DB. This of course means that it is very, very fast – we expect it to be the fastest available in the market. It also means that existing SourcePro DB users can confidently migrate their database applications to a Service Oriented Environment. The database tools provided mean that there is no database access programming required.  HydraSDO for Databases also integrates seamlessly with HydraSCA. This is particularly important because it can be expected that relational data will be a core element of applications built using a Service Component Architecture, just as it has been in older application architectures such as client-server. HydraSDO for Databases is freely available for evaluation at our Download Center. 

I am pleased to announce the General Availability of HydraSDO for XML 2.2. As the product matures and gains more widespread use, some important use cases are emerging: 

Parsing Very Large XML Documents - The industry trend of increasing large XML documents has resulted in unexpected problems with applications slowing down due to slow parsing times and increased memory usage. HydraSDO for XML includes an XML parser that has been designed to quickly parse very large XML documents, which provides an immediate boost in application performance. Using very large XML documents to share data between applications is sometimes referred to as Very Large Messaging - VLM. As a rough guide, an XML document is considered large when it is over 10 MB and very large when it is over 100 MB. The XML schema complexity is also, of course, an important factor. The problem with most XML parsers is that, unlike HydraSDO for XML, they do not scale linearly.

Efficient XML Parser Memory Usage - One of the special characteristics of the XML parser that is shipped with HydraSDO for XML is that is optimized for low memory usage. This can provide an immediate performance enhancement for some applications as well as generally reducing hardware resource requirements. In extreme cases, for very large XML documents, it can prevent applications from crashing due to the unexpectedly excessive memory usage during parsing.  As a rough guide, depending on the XML document complexity, HydraSDO for XML uses about half the memory of a typical parser.

Standardized Access for Custom Data Formats - Writing data access code for custom data formats can be time consuming and can require specialist knowledge and skills. The HydraSDO SDK can be used with HydraSDO for XML to develop the necessary custom DAS for reading and writing custom data. Providing the single, standard SDO API in both Java and C++ for disparate custom data formats saves development time and costs.   

SDO DataObject Streaming - With HydraSDO for XML, you only have to parse an XML document once to take advantage of the ability to stream the SDO DataObject between computers. Using this capability, you remove the need to parse the document repeatedly while maintaining the same simple XPath-based API to work with the data (this feature is called Distributed SDO).  

Sharing Data Between Java and C++ Applications -  HydraSDO for XML uses the SDO DataObject to efficiently share data in memory between Java and C++ applications. Depending on the nature of the shared data, the feature works well for tightly coupled applications where it significantly reduces the memory footprint compared with other methods such as SOAP or CORBA (this feature is called Shared Memory Access - SMA).

Vertical Industry XML Document Handling - the internal HydraSDO for XML test suite includes a wide range of standard industry XML documents, particularly financial services. The test suite is exceptionally extensive because Rogue Wave Software has a long history of providing high performance XML parsers aimed at enterprise developers with requirements for support for specific industry XML formats.  

Service Data Objects (SDO) Standard - SDO is the industry standard for data access in Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). The SDO standard provides access to disparate data formats through the common SDO API, which is available in both Java and C++.  SDO is the data access standard for Service Component Architecture.

HydraSDO for XML 2.2 is available for download at the Download Center.

Two New York University professors, Dr. Robert Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg, have written an article in the Journal of Defense Software Engineering about computer science courses neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods.  The professors’ opinions have attracted discussion in places such as Slashdot and other popular Web sites since they have taken particular exception to the recent emphasis on Java in computer science courses.

The professors provide brief overviews of the educational benefits of various programming languages, including C and C++:

Why C Matters
C is the low-level language that everyone must know. It can be seen as a portable assembly language, and as such it exposes the underlying machine and forces the student to understand clearly the relationship between software and hardware. Performance analysis is more straightforward, because the cost of every software statement is clear. Finally, compilers (GCC for example) make it easy to examine the generated assembly code, which is an excellent tool for understanding machine language and architecture.

Why C++ Matters
C++ brings to C the fundamental concepts of modern software engineering: encapsulation with classes and namespaces, information hiding through protected and private data and operations, programming by extension through virtual methods and derived classes, etc. C++ also pushes storage management as far as it can go without full-blown garbage collection, with constructors and destructors.

What perhaps makes the professors’ opinions more credible is that their concerns are also commercial since they develop software commercially:

As founders of a company that specializes in Ada programming tools for mission-critical systems, we find it harder to recruit qualified applicants who have the right foundational skills. We want to advocate a more rigorous formation, in which formal methods are introduced early on, and programming languages play a central role in CS education

As the head of Rogue Wave Software’s professional services group, I’ve noticed that many of the younger engineers working in some of our customers are less skilled in C++ than their older colleagues.  While we’re happy to help our customers by filling in the skills gap on projects, it’s still a longer term worry because every programming language needs well educated and skilled developers. Teaching C++ in universities is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for some time. I’m particularly interested in what Rogue Wave can do to help with fundamental C++ skills, like promoting the use of the C++ Standard Library in universities and perhaps looking at the practicalities of making Rogue Wave’s products available for use in computer science courses. 

Rogue Wave Software congratulates our customers, JackBe Corporation and seeMore Technologies, who have been honored in InfoWorld’s 2008 Technology of the Year Awards. Both JackBe and seeMore are innovative ISVs that have included Rogue Wave Software’s Service Data Object technology in their product offerings using HydraSDO for Databases.

JackBe has won the prize “Best Enterprise Mashup Platform” for Presto 1.3.1, which InfoWorld describes as:

JackBe Presto provides a sophisticated set of tools for mashing together your data on the server before delivering it to a JavaScript client. A dashboard delivery mechanism lets end users create their own mashups from data services on the Web, or consume pre-built mashups from the Presto server.

SeeMore has won the prize for the “Best Database Middleware” for the Virtual Database Server 2.8, which InfoWorld describes as:

This brilliant tool from seeMore Technologies will enable a large enterprise to gather its far-flung databases — regardless of their origins — under a single, relational roof. The Virtual Database Server seeks to provide access to just about any data source, even flat text files and highly structured COBOL databases, through standard ODBC, JDBC, or OLEDB interfaces.

Rogue Wave wishes JackBe, SeeMore, and all our customers continued success in 2008!