According to Chip Ziering, chief technical officer at Progress Software of Bedford, MA, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
For many veterans in the IT world, experience is precisely what they already have enough of. What they need instead is education to help them deal with the ever-increasing pace of technological change. UniForum '96 will provide track sessions on two crucial areas: application development for today's databases and ways to manage heterogeneous environments containing Unix as well as Windows and other Microsoft software.
This year, the track on databases and tools for client/server is cochaired by Ziering and Tim Yeaton, director of strategic planning and product development at Digital Equipment Corp. in Nashua, NH. The track on Integrating Microsoft Technologies and Open Systems is co-chaired by Rebel Brown, president of Cognoscenti, Mountain View, CA, and Randy Weston, former managing editor of Open Computing Magazine, San Mateo, CA.
Ziering reports that many sessions in his track will focus on selecting the right application development tools. "In the '80s, question number one was what kind of database to use. Now the focus has shifted from the kinds of tools that enable companies to get the most out of their data."
Selecting the right tools has become even more difficult as companies develop distributed, heterogeneous environments. Ziering points out that many companies are realizing that the tools they used before are now insufficient as development shifts from departmental to enterprisewide applications. That's why many sessions will focus squarely on implementations at the enterprise level. Attendees can learn from the experiences of others in the "real world" of business systems.
Client/server track sessions will help attendees to build a taxonomy for categorizing application development tools, as well as to understand major industry trends such as object orientation and component-based development.
Strategies will be reviewed for developing database-independent applications that can help reduce redundancy and provide increased data access. Object-oriented application development will be discussed in detail, helping attendees to separate the myths from the truths about this important technology.
Other sessions will explain choices between a low-end and high end development tool, as well as advanced system technologies such as VLM, SMP, disk striping and RAID for VLDB. A profile of a successful data warehouse will be presented based on a study of 20 different data warehouse systems. Middleware will also be examined in detail, exploring customer approaches to using middleware in complex, enterprise-wide environments.
The Microsoft track chaired by Rebel Brown and Randy Weston will also offer lessons from the real world, this time from the integrated world of Unix and Microsoft products. This track reflects the growing, and inevitable, focus on Microsoft and how Unix works with a proprietary system.
The integration of desktop and departmental technologies from Microsoft with enterprise-level open systems will be examined, providing business and technical managers with information about the various services and tools available for Unix/Microsoft integration. (Demonstrations of these tools and actual implementations will be presented at the Unix and Microsoft Pavilion on the tradeshow floor.)
Other Microsoft track sessions will provide attendees with effective strategies for managing Unix and NT Windows, focusing on the options available for systems and network management across these heterogeneous environments. Application-development discussions will concentrate on the selection of appropriate development tools and methodologies to ensure easy application portability across Unix and NT systems. Panels will explore selection criteria for tools and methods, as well as real-life results of actual development projects and the lessons learned.
Sessions on porting applications between Unix and Microsoft environments will provide an overview of available tools as well as user scenarios for such projects. Other sessions will explore options for enabling Windows NT desktops to access Unix-based systems without sacrificing the users' familiar environment.
In addition, sessions will examine high-volume Unix/NT applications; the availability of database functionality across Unix and NT platforms; middleware for heterogeneous Unix/NT environments; different approaches to OLE; and how to choose and integrate the right server in Unix and Windows NT environments.