Sybase News

IBM to Acquire Mobility Vendor Worklight - An Analysis
IBM has jumped into the MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) competition with yesterday’s announced intent to acquire MEAP vendor Worklight.   Worklight is headquartered in New York and was founded in 2006 by CEO Shahar Kaminitz.  Worklight's software supports HTML5, hybrid and native applications for smartphones and tablets with industry-standard technologies and tools.   Their solutions include an Eclipse-based software IDE (integrated development environment), mobile middleware, mobile solution management and analytics.

Worklight Studio competes with Appcelerator, Verivo (formerly Pyxis Mobile), Sybase Unwired Platform (SAP), Antenna, Syclo, ClickSoftware, Kony Solutions, Rhomobile (Motorola), Webalo and other mobility vendors that are experiencing rapid growth.

The deal size was not disclosed by IBM or Worklight, but the Israeli website Globes (www.globes.co.il) reported the acquisition to be $50-60 million.  Worklight raised $21 million in investment capital, from investors Genesis Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Index Ventures, and Shlomo Kramer.  Globe also estimated 2011 revenues for Worklight at between $5-10 million (http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000720723).


My analysis is that all ERP vendors need a standardized approach for supporting mobility.  Mobility, and MEAPs in particular, are far too strategic to leave up to partner ecosystems to deliver.  SAP acquired Sybase, IBM will acquire Worklight, and we are all awaiting Oracle’s expected 2012 move to acquire a MEAP vendor.

Interesting note, I cannot think of many situations where an ERP vendor bought a mobile apps company.  I am told that SAP's proposed acquisition of SuccessFactor will involve some mobile apps, but have yet to see them.  ERP vendors seem to want to buy the middleware, so they can standardize integration, syncing, security and management, and leave most apps to their partner ecosystem.

In a recent IBM study of more than 3,000 global CIOs, 75 percent of respondents identified mobility solutions as one of their top spending priorities.  Nearly all of the global analyst and research firms are also reporting enterprise mobility to be a top three priority.  In the Enterprise Mobility Survey 2011 that I conducted in September of 2011, 80% of survey respondents said enterprise mobility was "very important" to "critical" to their company's future success.

IBM officials said with this acquisition, IBM's mobile offerings will span mobile application development, integration, security and management.  Dow Jones Newswire reported on an internal memo from IBM’s senior vice president in charge of middleware software, Robert LeBlanc that highlighted their ambitions, “"Now is the time to make IBM essential in the era of mobile computing."

I had the privilege of interviewing Worklight’s COO Kurt Daniel about 15 months ago and published the interview on this site.  Here are some excerpts that you may find interesting given this week's news.


Worklight has developed a MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) and a mobile SDK (software development kit), not for their own use, but rather for systems integrators and end customers to use to develop their own enterprise mobility solutions.  They want to be a technology company, not a mobile application company.

Kevin: What are your areas of responsibilities at WorkLight?
Kurt:  I look after our worldwide business channels, partnerships, sales and marketing.
Kevin:  Tell me about your solutions.
Kurt:  We have the WorkLight Studio, WorkLight Server and WorkLight console.  ISVs and OEM partners use these solutions to build their own packaged mobility applications.
Kevin:  How do you avoid competing with your partners in the mobility market?
Kurt:  We don't sell applications.  We are not experts on ERPS or other backend systems.  We focus on developing the best mobile technology possible, not services or mobile applications.
Kevin:  How do you fund your start-up business in the early years without generating revenue from services and mobile applications?
Kurt: We raised over $17 million.  That affords us the opportunity to invest in the technology without losing focus by delivering services and enduser solutions.
Kevin:  How do you keep your users loyal to your technology?
Kurt:  We provide them with a platform and SDK that supports the latest modern devices.  We provide them with great productivity tools that enable the same code base to be used across multiple devices and mobile operating systems.  We offer trial versions for 60 days.
Kevin:  Where do you see mobility going in the next 18-24 months?
Kurt: Enterprises are going to need to support a larger number of mobile devices and mobile operating systems.  They will need to support iPads, tablets of all kinds, Android and many more mobile apps.  Internally, companies will be launching large numbers of their own mobile applications that were developed in-house.
Kevin: Who do you compete with?
Kurt:  In-house development teams, Sybase and Antenna.
Kevin:  In conclusion, where does your company fit in the enterprise mobility ecosystem?
Kurt:  WorkLight is a 100 percent technology focused company.  We develop a horizontal MEAP.


It is fascinating to ponder Worklight's strategy.  They decided to build a new and powerful MEAP, but not to provide services or sell mobile apps to end users.  They chose to use their investment capital to focus exclusively on developing technology and developer support.   That is a rare strategy.  Sybase mostly followed that strategy with their embedded mobile database and synchronization business (iAnywhere and former Extended Systems) and was purchased by SAP, and now Worklight who followed a similar strategy will be acquired by IBM.  What does this tell us?  Perhaps ERP vendors don't want the burden of supporting a large MEAP or mobile app enduser base that does not fit their traditional customer profile.  They would rather just acquire the technology stack?  What do you think?

Most MEAP vendors depend on services and end user app sales to help cover expenses as they develop and mature their solutions and channels.  Worklight refused to follow that path.   It doesn't appear they had yet reached profitability, since it seems they took in another $4 million in investor funding in the past year, but they did accept IBM's offer as their exit strategy.  They committed to focus on the technology, rather than indulge the temptation (and distraction) to grab short term end user sales.

End user mobile app sales are sexy.  They get the press and show well, but ultimately I think the MEAPs themselves are the mobile market consolidation points.  Not just the mobile middleware, but the IDEs.  The integrated development environments that are used to design and develop the apps.  Some mobility vendors like ClickSoftware and Syclo actually support several choices of mobile middleware under their IDEs.  The customers often only see the IDE, but underneath the covers are middleware options.  SAP and the Sybase Unwired Platform also offer numerous choices (SUP, NetWeaver Gateway, Sybase 365, etc.) for middleware in their architecture.

If all the large ERP companies are going to ultimately acquire their own MEAP solution, that means MEAP market fragmentation will be hardened along ERP lines.  If that is the case, would mobility vendors that focus on mobile end user applications find it necessary to support all the major MEAPs if they want to sell into those markets?  That would be expensive!!!  If that is how the market evolves, then it seems cloud based ERP-to-mobile app integration hubs would be worth a consideration.  Mobile app developers would simply connect to one cloud based integration hub that integrates with all the ERPs.  Wow, this line of thinking reminds me of my early days working with EDI/B2B translators and EDI hubs.

It will be interesting to watch the choices companies will make that have a mix of different business solutions and ERPs across their IT landscape.

If I have any bad data or information in this article please correct me!

Please share your thoughts and ideas with us!!!


*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Kevin Benedict, Mobility Analyst and Consultant Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

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web2.sys-con.com | 2/3/12 12:00 PM
IBM to Acquire Mobility Vendor Worklight - An Analysis
IBM has jumped into the MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) competition with yesterday’s announced intent to acquire MEAP vendor Worklight.   Worklight is headquartered in New York and was founded in 2006 by CEO Shahar Kaminitz.  Worklight's software supports HTML5, hybrid and native applications for smartphones and tablets with industry-standard technologies and tools.   Their solutions include an Eclipse-based software IDE (integrated development environment), mobile middleware, mobile solution management and analytics.

Worklight Studio competes with Appcelerator, Verivo (formerly Pyxis Mobile), Sybase Unwired Platform (SAP), Antenna, Syclo, ClickSoftware, Kony Solutions, Rhomobile (Motorola), Webalo and other mobility vendors that are experiencing rapid growth.

The deal size was not disclosed by IBM or Worklight, but the Israeli website Globes (www.globes.co.il) reported the acquisition to be $50-60 million.  Worklight raised $21 million in investment capital, from investors Genesis Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Index Ventures, and Shlomo Kramer.  Globe also estimated 2011 revenues for Worklight at between $5-10 million (http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000720723).


My analysis is that all ERP vendors need a standardized approach for supporting mobility.  Mobility, and MEAPs in particular, are far too strategic to leave up to partner ecosystems to deliver.  SAP acquired Sybase, IBM will acquire Worklight, and we are all awaiting Oracle’s expected 2012 move to acquire a MEAP vendor.

Interesting note, I cannot think of many situations where an ERP vendor bought a mobile apps company.  I am told that SAP's proposed acquisition of SuccessFactor will involve some mobile apps, but have yet to see them.  ERP vendors seem to want to buy the middleware, so they can standardize integration, syncing, security and management, and leave most apps to their partner ecosystem.

In a recent IBM study of more than 3,000 global CIOs, 75 percent of respondents identified mobility solutions as one of their top spending priorities.  Nearly all of the global analyst and research firms are also reporting enterprise mobility to be a top three priority.  In the Enterprise Mobility Survey 2011 that I conducted in September of 2011, 80% of survey respondents said enterprise mobility was "very important" to "critical" to their company's future success.

IBM officials said with this acquisition, IBM's mobile offerings will span mobile application development, integration, security and management.  Dow Jones Newswire reported on an internal memo from IBM’s senior vice president in charge of middleware software, Robert LeBlanc that highlighted their ambitions, “"Now is the time to make IBM essential in the era of mobile computing."

I had the privilege of interviewing Worklight’s COO Kurt Daniel about 15 months ago and published the interview on this site.  Here are some excerpts that you may find interesting given this week's news.


Worklight has developed a MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) and a mobile SDK (software development kit), not for their own use, but rather for systems integrators and end customers to use to develop their own enterprise mobility solutions.  They want to be a technology company, not a mobile application company.

Kevin: What are your areas of responsibilities at WorkLight?
Kurt:  I look after our worldwide business channels, partnerships, sales and marketing.
Kevin:  Tell me about your solutions.
Kurt:  We have the WorkLight Studio, WorkLight Server and WorkLight console.  ISVs and OEM partners use these solutions to build their own packaged mobility applications.
Kevin:  How do you avoid competing with your partners in the mobility market?
Kurt:  We don't sell applications.  We are not experts on ERPS or other backend systems.  We focus on developing the best mobile technology possible, not services or mobile applications.
Kevin:  How do you fund your start-up business in the early years without generating revenue from services and mobile applications?
Kurt: We raised over $17 million.  That affords us the opportunity to invest in the technology without losing focus by delivering services and enduser solutions.
Kevin:  How do you keep your users loyal to your technology?
Kurt:  We provide them with a platform and SDK that supports the latest modern devices.  We provide them with great productivity tools that enable the same code base to be used across multiple devices and mobile operating systems.  We offer trial versions for 60 days.
Kevin:  Where do you see mobility going in the next 18-24 months?
Kurt: Enterprises are going to need to support a larger number of mobile devices and mobile operating systems.  They will need to support iPads, tablets of all kinds, Android and many more mobile apps.  Internally, companies will be launching large numbers of their own mobile applications that were developed in-house.
Kevin: Who do you compete with?
Kurt:  In-house development teams, Sybase and Antenna.
Kevin:  In conclusion, where does your company fit in the enterprise mobility ecosystem?
Kurt:  WorkLight is a 100 percent technology focused company.  We develop a horizontal MEAP.


It is fascinating to ponder Worklight's strategy.  They decided to build a new and powerful MEAP, but not to provide services or sell mobile apps to end users.  They chose to use their investment capital to focus exclusively on developing technology and developer support.   That is a rare strategy.  Sybase mostly followed that strategy with their embedded mobile database and synchronization business (iAnywhere and former Extended Systems) and was purchased by SAP, and now Worklight who followed a similar strategy will be acquired by IBM.  What does this tell us?  Perhaps ERP vendors don't want the burden of supporting a large MEAP or mobile app enduser base that does not fit their traditional customer profile.  They would rather just acquire the technology stack?  What do you think?

Most MEAP vendors depend on services and end user app sales to help cover expenses as they develop and mature their solutions and channels.  Worklight refused to follow that path.   It doesn't appear they had yet reached profitability, since it seems they took in another $4 million in investor funding in the past year, but they did accept IBM's offer as their exit strategy.  They committed to focus on the technology, rather than indulge the temptation (and distraction) to grab short term end user sales.

End user mobile app sales are sexy.  They get the press and show well, but ultimately I think the MEAPs themselves are the mobile market consolidation points.  Not just the mobile middleware, but the IDEs.  The integrated development environments that are used to design and develop the apps.  Some mobility vendors like ClickSoftware and Syclo actually support several choices of mobile middleware under their IDEs.  The customers often only see the IDE, but underneath the covers are middleware options.  SAP and the Sybase Unwired Platform also offer numerous choices (SUP, NetWeaver Gateway, Sybase 365, etc.) for middleware in their architecture.

If all the large ERP companies are going to ultimately acquire their own MEAP solution, that means MEAP market fragmentation will be hardened along ERP lines.  If that is the case, would mobility vendors that focus on mobile end user applications find it necessary to support all the major MEAPs if they want to sell into those markets?  That would be expensive!!!  If that is how the market evolves, then it seems cloud based ERP-to-mobile app integration hubs would be worth a consideration.  Mobile app developers would simply connect to one cloud based integration hub that integrates with all the ERPs.  Wow, this line of thinking reminds me of my early days working with EDI/B2B translators and EDI hubs.

It will be interesting to watch the choices companies will make that have a mix of different business solutions and ERPs across their IT landscape.

If I have any bad data or information in this article please correct me!

Please share your thoughts and ideas with us!!!


*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Kevin Benedict, Mobility Analyst and Consultant Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

read more

web2.sys-con.com | 2/2/12 12:00 PM
PowerBuilder News
Sybase and AvantGo, a leading provider of mobile enterprise software, announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Sybase to acquire AvantGo in a cash merger valued at approximately $38 million.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 2/1/12 7:00 AM
Just to make bending the rules a little more difficult...

Business Card Company: Sybase Posted on Jan. 29, 2012 09:08 AM in Aerospace and Defense , Defense , Governance, Risk and Compliance , Mobile , Partnership Macworld iWorld wasn't just about exhibit halls full of cute, bizarre accessories for iPads and iPhones .

www.topix.net | 1/30/12 11:12 PM
Perhaps You Can Teach an Old Dog a New Trick Or Two…
Struggling to get familiar with the new PowerBuilder.NET IDE and the technology it allows you to use (e.g., WPF, REST, WCF and the rest of the alphabet soup)? Then you should run, not walk, over to the free eTutorial series that Sybase just made available for PowerBuilder 12.5: http://www.sybase.com/powerbuilder125eTutorial The training was put together by Yakov Werde. Yakov, for those who may not have heard of him, is the managing partner of eLearnIT LLC. Prior to that he spent more than 10 years as a trainer for Sybase, teaching classes on PowerBuilder, Java and .NET. And before that he was a software developer like you and me using PowerBuilder. So he knows of what he speaks. (Yakov is also a regular author for PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal and the ISUG Technical Journal, a member of TeamSybase and a PowerBuilder MVP.)

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 1/26/12 8:09 PM
Syclo and IBM's Maximo for Enterprise Asset Management
Many people know Syclo as a mobility partner of SAP, particularly in the EAM (enterprise asset management) space, but did you know they also work with IBM's Maximo in the EAM space?  I was reading today about Syclo's Smart Work Manager version 7.5 for Maximo.  Here is a list of some of the supported features and capabilities:


PSION's Durable Enterprise PDA
EP10 Work Orders
• Location
• Short/long description
• Priority and status
• Field generated work requests
Data Capture
• Time/attendance
• Parts and material used
• Failure codes
Plans and Histories
• Job plans
• Safety plans
• Equipment work order history
Advanced Functions
• E-validation and E-signature
• GPS, GIS enabled
• Assignment Manager

An area of particular interest to me was the workflow description in Syclo's press release , "...your technicians are guided through intuitive, action-driven workflow to ensure they capture all relevant information - including work performed, failure codes, parts used, and more. "  The ability to guide your workforce through specific tasks, in remote locations, using mobile apps is becoming increasingly important, especially in utilities where they are losing many of their most experienced workers due to retirement.

Enterprise asset management is one of those areas that many solutions come together.  A mobile EAM system can include:

  • Work orders (field service management)
  • Time and attendance (HR and payroll)
  • Parts and material used (inventory levels, suppliers, re-order, etc.)
  • Safety plans (worker safety and compliance) 
  • GIS/GPS tracking
  • etc.
Most mission critical mobility solutions, that offer competitive advantages, are not just one mobile app connected to one backend system.  It is a mobile app connected to many backend systems in unique combinations.


*************************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Kevin Benedict, Mobility Analyst and Consultant Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

read more

wireless.sys-con.com | 1/25/12 4:45 PM
Syclo and IBM's Maximo for Enterprise Asset Management
Many people know Syclo as a mobility partner of SAP, particularly in the EAM (enterprise asset management) space, but did you know they also work with IBM's Maximo in the EAM space?  I was reading today about Syclo's Smart Work Manager version 7.5 for Maximo.  Here is a list of some of the supported features and capabilities:


PSION's Durable Enterprise PDA
EP10 Work Orders
• Location
• Short/long description
• Priority and status
• Field generated work requests
Data Capture
• Time/attendance
• Parts and material used
• Failure codes
Plans and Histories
• Job plans
• Safety plans
• Equipment work order history
Advanced Functions
• E-validation and E-signature
• GPS, GIS enabled
• Assignment Manager

An area of particular interest to me was the workflow description in Syclo's press release , "...your technicians are guided through intuitive, action-driven workflow to ensure they capture all relevant information - including work performed, failure codes, parts used, and more. "  The ability to guide your workforce through specific tasks, in remote locations, using mobile apps is becoming increasingly important, especially in utilities where they are losing many of their most experienced workers due to retirement.

Enterprise asset management is one of those areas that many solutions come together.  A mobile EAM system can include:

  • Work orders (field service management)
  • Time and attendance (HR and payroll)
  • Parts and material used (inventory levels, suppliers, re-order, etc.)
  • Safety plans (worker safety and compliance) 
  • GIS/GPS tracking
  • etc.
Most mission critical mobility solutions, that offer competitive advantages, are not just one mobile app connected to one backend system.  It is a mobile app connected to many backend systems in unique combinations.


*************************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Kevin Benedict, Mobility Analyst and Consultant Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

read more

wireless.sys-con.com | 1/25/12 4:45 PM
Better Controlling MySQL Memory Usage
MySQL, like a lot of other software, has many knobs you can tweak. Most of these knobs may affect behaviour, but more importantly most affect the memory usage of the server, so getting these settings right is very important. Most of MySQL’s memory is really used just as a cache, in one form or another, information that otherwise is on disk. So ensuring you have as large a cache as possible is important. However, making these memory sizes too large will trigger the server to start swapping and possibly can cause it to crash or cause the kernel to kill the process when it runs out of memory.  So that’s something we want to avoid. Certain settings affect memory allocation on a per connection/thread basis, being bounded by thread_cache_size and max_connections.  If you configure for the worst behaviour (max_connections) you may end up not actually using all the memory you have available, memory which normally could be used for other purposes. Recently a server I managed was configured incorrectly with a large sort_buffer_size (4M to 256M) and larger read_buffer_size (4M to 20M).  The change in configuration on first glance looks quite innocent, and not noticing that these are per-connection settings this got rolled out. max_connections on this server was set to 1000, while normally there were ~40 connections of which only a few were active. The mysqld memory footprint on startup looked fine. In fact under normal usage it also worked fine. However spiky load suddenly changed this nice behaviour: as configured mysqld ramped up the thread count and hence memory usage, resulting in swapping and finally server death… The fault of course was mine for not noticing, but this has been an issue with MySQL forever.  Most other RDBMSes manage memory slightly differently: you define how much memory you want to use (maximum), this is optinally locked into memory, and further requests for different buffers are taken from this global pool.  That is much safer, avoids unexpected swapping, or memory over-allocation, but does raise the question of what happens when a memory request can not be honoured. Initially I would expect two different behaviours: either kill a thread whose memory can not be allocated, or wait a certain time to allocate that memory, after which it gets killed anyway. Option (2) is probably saner, and possibly some sort of deadlock detection can kick if in all threads are waiting for memory, perhaps killing the younger thread, or thread which has done least work first. Possibly there are other better ways of doing this? I can imagine that changing MySQL’s current behaviour to do something like this could be quite hard, especially as ideally the engines would also use the same memory management mechanisms, but I see this as being a good thing and would make MySQL more robust, especially under load, which is after all what counts.  Of course this will not happen in today’s 5.5 GA version, or tomorrow’s 5.6 version which is probably likely to appear some time this year. That’s a major change. It would be nice if Oracle look at this for 5.7 as a way of ensuring that when resource usage does come under pressure MySQL does not go heads up, but attempts to use the allocated resources as best as possible. In the meantime what would help would be: better documentation so we can see clearly how all mysql memory is allocated. There are several web pages commenting ways to calculate this, but certainly no definitive guide. The InnoDB engine’s documentation talks about memory usage and most people think that the innodb_buffer_pool_size is the main setting. yet read further and there’s talk of an overhead of perhaps 1/8th. I have recently been playing with innodb_buffer_pool_instances settings > 1 (using values in the range of 20-40) and am inclined to think that this increases that overhead somewhat more, yet there’s no documentation on this and whether my guess is right or not. Please InnoDB developers improve your documentation, if only to prove me wrong. Ideally some tools to tell you if you server is possibly misconfigured. Coming from a Sybase environment I’d be tempted to suggest a stored procedure in the mysql database which can tell you total memory usage and how it is broken down as doing this with a single SELECT is going to be tricky. Then once that is done consider adding some extra variable to enable total memory usage to be controlled. I made a feature request for this at http://bugs.mysql.com/?id=64108. If you think this feature might interest you please let Oracle know. blog.wl0.org | 1/25/12 1:32 AM
PowerBuilder News

CORPORATE Information Liquidity 11/26/02 - Sybase announced a new set of free online resources designed to help companies achieve "Information Liquidity," or the efficient transformation of enterprise data into economic value.

www.topix.net | 1/1/12 1:15 PM
PowerBuilder News

CORPORATE Information Liquidity 11/26/02 - Sybase announced a new set of free online resources designed to help companies achieve "Information Liquidity," or the efficient transformation of enterprise data into economic value.

www.topix.net | 1/1/12 9:51 AM
PowerBuilder News
11/26/02 - Sybase announced a new set of free online resources designed to help companies achieve 'Information Liquidity,' or the efficient transformation of enterprise data into economic value. The Web site is in partnership with and available on Forbes.com and features an interactive Information Liquidity Assessment test that provides an evaluation and next steps to improve the speed, flow, and quality of data within an enterprise.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 1/1/12 7:00 AM
Operational Scalability and Security with Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise

Robert Schneider defines the elements that comprise operational scalability, and then provide concrete examples of how Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) augments operational scalability via minimizing downtime, sustaining heavy workloads, and supplying enterprise-grade security.

www.databasejournal.com | 12/19/11 10:01 AM
The Mobile Business Object... Your Mobile Way Forward
As you probably know the Mobile Business Object (MBO) is at the heart of Sybase's UnWired Platform, which is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform used in turn as part of the SAP Mobility Platform. Once defined the MBO can be used in Native (such as iOS) as well as Hybrid Web Container Applications. It can be described in four points. Defines the data you want to use from your backend system and exposes it to be used for your mobile application /workflow. Created using our simple, graphical tooling inside the Eclipse development environment. Re-usable, allowing you to leverage across multiple device types. Future proofing of your application, when new device types are added your same MBO can be used.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 12/14/11 4:43 PM
New BlackBerry Mobile Fusion also Manages Android, iOS Devices
If you can't beat them, secure them. That seems to be the philosophy behind Research In Motion's latest market move. RIM just launched BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, an enterprise mobility solution that marks its entrance into the multi-platform mobile-device management space.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion plays on RIM's strength: enterprise security. The company is using what it has learned over the past decade to manage smartphones and tablets running not only BlackBerry, but also Google Android and Apple iOS operating systems. RIM's aim so to win the business of companies and government agencies looking to manage the various mobile device workers tote.

Alan Panezic, vice president, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at RIM, said the new solution offers the "necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations."

Managing Worker Mobility

RIM's smartphone sales may be suffering in the face of competition from Apple and Android, but it is nevertheless the undisputed leader in enterprise mobility solutions. More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies provision BlackBerry devices.

With its BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, however, RIM is tapping into a felt need of today's enterprise. Not only is the smartphone and tablet market continuing to grow, IT admins have to manage both company-provisioned and employee-owned devices.

It's well documented how employee-owned devices have introduced new challenges for CIOs and IT departments as they work to manage and control wireless access to confidential company information on the corporate network.

In competition with companies like Mobile Iron, Sybase and Symantec, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will offer asset and configuration management, security and policy definition and management, application and software management and connectivity management. RIM said the new offering also secures and protects lost or stolen devices, features user- and group-based administration, high scalability and a centralized console.

RIM's New...

www.cio-today.com | 12/2/11 12:21 AM
Silverlight Is Dead, Long Live Silverlight
There’s been a lot of discussion since Microsoft’s BUILD conference on the fate of Silverlight. (Something that is an issue for us because Sybase was originally looking at supporting it for web app development in PowerBuilder 15.) Contrary to what a number of the pundits and would-be pundits have said, I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that Silverlight is dead in Windows 8. I think it’s more accurate to say it’s evolved. As background for those who haven’t been following this closely, Microsoft announced that the Windows 8 operating system would support two kinds of applications: traditional “desktop apps” and the newer “metro style apps.” What would not be available in the Internet Explorer provided with Windows 8 would be support for any plugins, either Silverlight or Flash (see Figure 1).

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 11/17/11 10:18 PM
Sybase ASE Application Development and Big Data

Sybase ASE can now work with unstructured data and very large data volumes.

www.databasejournal.com | 11/15/11 2:59 PM
SAP and Sybase Announces Next Wave of Mobile Apps
November 9, was an exciting day in Mobility as SAP and Sybase at SAPPHIRE and TechEd in Madrid announced a New Wave of SAP Mobile Apps built on SUP, that will be available on iOS, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile... “SAP’s strong momentum in bringing to market waves of mobile apps is driven by tremendous customer demand to unwire their enterprise,” said Dr. Raj Nathan, executive vice president, Sybase, and head of Mobile Applications, SAP. “Not only does SAP see this market opportunity, we have a rapidly expanding network of partners in the mobile space that continue to grow with us. We foresee SAP partners contributing 80 percent of mobile application development in support of SAP solutions to further meet customers’ mobility needs.”

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wireless.sys-con.com | 11/10/11 8:00 PM
SAP and Sybase Launch Next Wave of Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile Put the Power of Enterprise Applications in Employees' Hands

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wireless.sys-con.com | 11/9/11 9:00 AM
SAP and Sybase Launch Next Wave of Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile Put the Power of Enterprise Applications in Employees' Hands

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wireless.sys-con.com | 11/9/11 9:00 AM
Samsung Stratosphere
Samsung Stratosphere Android Smartphone : Verizon Wireless and Samsung Mobile has launched the Samsung Stratosphere, a Galaxy S smartphone, and it's available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online via the Verizon Wireless website. The Samsung Stratosphere is the first 4G LTE smartphone from Verizon Wireless equipped with a five-row QWERTY keyboard and designed with Samsung’s 4-inch Super AMOLED display. Additionally, the Samsung Stratosphere supports enhanced B2B-enabled connectivity services from Cisco, the most comprehensive mobile implementation of Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) and support for secure remote device management from Sybase Afaria. www.letsgodigital.org | 10/25/11 3:30 PM
Why You'll Want to Upgrade to Sybase ASE 15.7

Sybase ASE 15.7 has a bunch of new features you may want to consider, including improved performance, scalability and security.

www.databasejournal.com | 10/21/11 10:29 PM
CVE-2011-2042
The Sybase SQL Anywhere database component in Cisco CiscoWorks Common Services 3.x and 4.x before 4.1 allows remote attackers to obtain potentially sensitive information about the engine name and database port via an unspecified request to UDP port 2638, aka Bug ID CSCsk35018. web.nvd.nist.gov | 10/21/11 3:00 AM
Planet Eclipse: Ian Skerrett: Key Milestones Over 10 Years of Eclipse

As we get ready to celebrate 10 years of Eclipse, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the major milestones in the Eclipse community, ie. what were the major events that have helped shape and drive the Eclipse community.   Here is my list but please feel free to add your own in the comments.  We have also created a slide show of these milestones available at the end of the post.

1. IBM’s initial contribution of Eclipse under an open source license.   What started it all was IBM’s bold and forward-thinking decision to open source Eclipse.   They basically made the decision to give away a $40 million investment.   In many ways, IBM has been one of the leading companies implementing open source strategies.  Their Eclipse decision is proof of a strategy well implemented.

2. Eclipse Consortium Announced.   IBM didn’t just dump a bunch of code into a cvs repository.  An important part of the strategy was to create an ecosystem of industry partners.   They announced the Eclipse Consortium on Nov. 29, 2001.  Borland, Merant, Rational Software (at the time an independant ISV), Red hat, Suse and Togethersoft were listed as members of the consortium.

3. The first EclipseCon in 2004.  I wasn’t at the first EclipseCon and I hear the Disney theme hotel was not the greatest but I do think EclipseCon is an important annual event for the Eclipse community.   We are a large distributed and diverse community that collaborates mainly online.   It is always amazing how much easier online collaboration can become if you have had a beer with the other people.  EclipseCon is the community’s chance to have a beer and build relationships.

4. Eclipse Foundation Created.   In 2004, IBM, with the help of many partners in the Eclipse community, created the Eclipse Foundation, an independent, vendor neutral steward of the Eclipse community.  To IBM’s credit they realized their ultimate control over Eclipse governance was an issue for growth and more importantly the control didn’t really bring a lot of benefit to IBM.   I would add that some companies still don’t understand the fact that you get influence in open source projects by participation, not control.  IBM understood this in 2004.

5. Eclipse Take Off in 2004.   For many people, Eclipse is/was a Java IDE.   When Eclipse was first released there were 4-5 popular Java IDEs: Borland JBuilder, Sun NetBeans, Oracle Jdeveloper, JetBrains IntelliJ and IBM VisualAge for Java (replaced by Eclipse and IBM WASAD).  In 2004-2005, Eclipse adoption took off and by the end of 2005 Eclipse has achieved around 65% market share.  The dominance of Eclipse in the Java IDE market helped propel the growth of the Eclipse ecosystems.  Even today, there are thousands of products and plugins built for Eclipse and on top of Eclipse.

6. Release of Eclipse 3.0.  The release of Eclipse 3.0 in 2004 was a huge release for Eclipse.   I know there was a ton of stuff in the release but I think two things really shaped our community going forward: 1) Eclipse became a universal platform for building rich client applications.  RCP has been a huge success with a wide variety of non-developer related applications built on-top of it.   2) Eclipse adopted OSGi as the standard for our plugins.  Implementing an industry standard has help propel the growth of different technologies, from different providers, all working on a common runtime.

7. Seven New Strategic Members for the Eclipse Foundation.  In 2005, 7 companies joined the Eclipse Foundation as strategic members.  BEA, Borland, CA, Nokia, Sybase, Wind River and Iona all joined as strategic members.   Each of these companies brought committers, code, dollars for the Foundation and legitimacy for the Eclipse platform.    Some of these companies were strong competitors to IBM, so it was also an endorsement that the Eclipse Foundation was now vendor-neutral.

8.  Creation of Eclipse Modeling Top-level Project.  In 2006, Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and a number of other modeling related projects were building very successful communities.   However, they didn’t have a natural home, so the Eclipse Modeling Top-level project was created and as they say the rest is history.   The Eclipse modeling community is one of the most diverse, productive, innovative and passionate at Eclipse.  I have lost track of the number of modeling projects hosted at Eclipse but I do know the excitement and innovation keeps building.  If you are doing modeling in software development, chances are you are using Eclipse technology.

9. Callisto, the first release train.  In 2006, a number of committers and project leaders got together and agreed to coordinate their project schedules so that they would release on the same time and the same day as the Eclipse platform.   They also told the entire community and world their plans, months in advanced.  I confess, at the time I thought it was impossible and could lead to potentially disastrous result. Obviously I was wrong and today the Eclipse release train is expected and a great example of professional, predictable open source development.

10. EclipseRT Top-level project created.  The success of the rich client platform and the advancement of Equinox and OSGi led to a series of innovations in runtime technology being built on-top of Equinox.   Therefore, the EclipseRT top-level project was created to be the home for projects, such as Jetty, EclipseLink, RAP, Gemini, ECF, Virgo, Riena and more.  Eclipse has a long tradition in tools but now runtimes as just as important.

Those are my 10 key milestones for the last 10 years.   Projects such as CDT, Mylyn, BIRT, WTP and others have all been very successful and important for our community growth.  I also know a LOT of other things have happened over those 10 years, so please feel free to add comments for your you think have been key events.


ianskerrett.wordpress.com | 10/14/11 10:27 PM
Aloha – MySQL Dives into the Thread Pool
By now you have probably heard about the MySQL thread pool plugin and API, but you may not have fully processed the details. Here’s the quick summary:  With the new thread pool plugin, there is now an alternative way to handle connection threads in MySQL Enterprise Edition.  With the plugin, MySQL connection threads are shared like an extraordinarily well managed timeshare in Hawaii.  When one connection is “idle”, asking nothing of and expecting nothing from the database, another connection can use that same thread for its database requests.  Threads are released by each connection as soon as the request is completed and  go back into the pool for re-use – just like the theoretical timeshare is up for grabs on the weeks you are not there. In the older, and still default connection thread model, threads are dedicated to a single client  for the life of the connection and there are as many threads as there are clients currently connected to the database.  This has some disadvantages when the server workload must scale to handle large numbers of connections, and the overhead can be signficant. This occurs for several reasons: Lots of threads use lots of memory and can make the CPU cache ineffective Too many active threads trying to execute in parallel may cause a high level of resource contention and be inappropriate for the amount of parallelism available The new thread pool plugin offers an alternative thread pool implementation, and focuses on limiting the number of concurrent, short running statements to mazimize performance and reduce overhead.  By limiting the number of concurrent, short running statements and sharing threads, we can control the number of active threads at any one time.  Thread management has been revamped and by managing these threads in a highly efficient manner, we end up reducing overhead and often increasing performance.  Here are the mechanics:  In the new plugin, threads are organized into groups (16 by default but configurable up to 64 on server startup).  Each group starts with one thread and can increase to a maximum of 4096 threads.  Additional threads are created only when necessary.  Each incoming connection request is assigned to a group by round robin. Each group has one listener thread that listens for incoming statement requests. When a statement request comes in, it is executed immediately by the group’s listener thread if it is not busy and there are no other statement requests waiting.  If the statement request finishes quickly, the listener thread then efficiently returns to listening and is available to execute the next incoming request, preventing the need for a new thread to be created.   If the request does not finish quickly, it runs to completion but another thread is  created as the new listener. If the listener thread is busy, the request is queued.  There will be a very brief time (configurable with the thread_pool_stall_limit system variable which defaults to 60 ms) while we wait to see if the currently executing statement will finish quickly or not. If it finishes quickly (under thread_pool_stall_limit), we can re-use this thread for the next request in the queue, eliminating the overhead of creating a new thread or having too many short statement trying to execute in parallel . You can see how this thread pool design strives to have one thread executing per group at any time . The number of groups (thread_pool_size_variable) is very important, because it approximates the number of short running statements that will be executing concurrently at any one time.  Long running statements are prevented from causing other statements to wait, since if they go beyond the thread_pool_stall_limit, another thread will be started and the next request in the queue will execute on it. Your predominant storage engine will help determine the number of groups you should have.  For InnoDB, between 16 and 36 groups seems to work well in many cases, but for MyISAM set it much lower (4-8). There are two queues for waiting statements, low and high priority.  The low priority queue contains: all statements for non-transactional storage engines all statements if autocommit is enabled the first statement in  an InnoDB transaction These statements do not languish in the low priority queue forever since they will get kicked over to the high priority queue when the thread_pool_kickup_timer times them out. However, there is a maximum number of statements that can be moved per time period to keep things under control. The high priority queue contains any subsequent statements in InnoDB transactions, and any statements kicked up from the low priority queue. You can find the thread pool plugin and other commercial extensions in MySQL 5.5.16 and above, available on http://support.oracle.com. This release contains a plugin library object file which must be placed in the appropriate directory.  The server must then be started with the –plugin-load option. Documentation  and complete install directions for the plugin can be found at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/thread-pool-plugin.html.   There is also a thread pool API available in the Community Edition. Happy swimming! Lynn Ferrante has worked with databases in the enterprise for her whole career at MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres.  She also worked on an open source project called GenMapp (University of California, San Francisco), and contributed to the development of many database applications in the fields of energy and environment mysqlintheenterprise.com | 10/12/11 1:33 AM
Great Content at the Sybase and SAP Nordic Roadshow 2011
Last Month the Sybase SAP Nordic Roadshow again hit 4 countries in 4 days... Stockholm Sweden, Helsinki Finland, Oslo Norway and Copenhagen Denmark. A serious amount of traveling, delivering a serious amount of content, within the 3 tracks Manage, Analyze and Mobilize. A number of the key speakers, including myself had presented at Sybase TechWave, which was co-located with SAP TechEd in Las Vegas the week before... Raj Rathee and Javier Cuerva had Manage, Dan Lahl had Analyze and I had Mobilize.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 10/11/11 4:24 PM
Samsung Stratosphere Smartphone Targets Business Users
The iPhone 4S has seen more than a million pre-orders, but that's not stopping competitors from coming to market with smartphones of their own. Apple rival Samsung is rolling out a Galaxy S phone that aims to offer something Apple doesn't: more typing options and 4G speeds.

Verizon Wireless announced that the Samsung Stratosphere will hit its network on Oct. 13. The Stratosphere is the first 4G LTE smartphone Verizon Wireless has offered with a five-row QWERTY keyboard and designed with Samsung's 4-inch Super AMOLED display for richer graphics.

"There are going to be some consumers -- as there have been in the past -- who don't want an iPhone for whatever reason," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner. "There are also consumers who do want a QWERTY keyboard on their smartphone. In that regard this phone will definitely fill that niche."

Targeting Business Users

Samsung is perhaps aiming more at Research In Motion consumers than Apple users with the Stratosphere. The device supports B2B-enabled connectivity services from Cisco, a mobile implementation of Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and support for secure remote-device management from Sybase Afaria.

EAS includes features such as direct push, e-mail, calendar, contact sync and Global Address List, as well as EAS policies such as storage-card encryption, device encryption, and simple- and complex-password support. Stratosphere will support Samsung's Enterprise Platform enhancements such as VPN, encryption and mobile-device management.

The phone runs Android 2.3, which means there is also support for Google Mobile Services. And since the Stratosphere is built to run on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network, consumers can expect download speeds of five to 12 megabits per second and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G LTE mobile broadband coverage areas.

Room for Variety

"The iPhone 4S is certainly the device to beat right now with over 1...

www.cio-today.com | 10/10/11 9:19 PM
Samsung Stratosphere official, brings QWERTY to Verizon 4G
Verizon helped kick off the CTIA show this week by confirming the frequently rumored Samsung Stratosphere. The Android 2.3 phone is Verizon's first smartphone to tout both a QWERTY keyboard and LTE-based 4G, and the carrier is treating it as a pro device. It gets fresh remote connection services from Cisco for VPNs as well as improved Exchange and Sybase's tools for remotely wiping a lost phone....

www.electronista.com | 10/10/11 3:35 PM
FmPro Migrator 6.35

FmPro Migrator migrates FileMaker databases to MySQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, OpenBase, PostgreSQL and FrontBase.

www.topix.net | 10/2/11 9:21 AM
PowerBuilder News
9/10 - Sybase announced the general availability of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) on the Apple 'Jaguar' Server. With ASE, system implementers will be able to deploy high-performance, scalable, database-driven applications on the Mac platform. Sybase also announced the availability of a free Developer's Edition of ASE, designed to enable developers to build and test ASE solutions.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 10/1/11 7:00 AM
Galaxy Tab 8.9 hits pre-order, ships October 2nd in US; Galaxy Player 5.0 and 4.0 shipping October 16th
Hot on the heels of a UK release , Samsung has just announced that its long-awaited (and long-delayed ) Galaxy Player 4.0 ($229) and 5.0 ($269) will be available for pre-order starting September 27th, with US availability pegged for October 16th. Oddly enough, Samsung gave no reason behind the once-spring, now-autumn pushback, but at least we can finally stop wondering and instead start enjoying the spoils of an (almost) Galaxy Note-sans-phone . (Not like we haven't heard a similar tune before). All that aside, the Player 5.0 and 4.0 weigh in at 6.4 and 4.2 ounces, respectively, and both are powered by Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread); other specs include 802.11b/g/n, WVGA Super Clear LCDs (800 x 480), Bluetooth 3.0, 8GB of onboard storage, a microSD expansion slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, voice recorder, mini-USB connectivity, front and rear cameras and support for Sammy's Media Hub content service. The big fellow gets a 2,500mAh battery, whereas its little(r) brother is equipped with a 1,200mAh cell. (Psst... you can catch our hands-on with these here and here. )

Meanwhile, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is available for pre-sale right now , with shipments to hit retail on October 2nd. You'll be laying down $469 for the 16GB model, while a doubling of capacity will run you $100 more. Need a refresher on this one, too? How's about a WXGA (1,280 x 800) touchpanel, dual-core T250S processor, 6,100mAh battery, sub-one pound weight, DLNA compatibility, a 3 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front-facing camera, integrated Swype / Polaris Office and even a few amenities for those in the enterprise -- things like full support for Exchange ActiveSync (v14), on-device encryption, Cisco VPN, Sybase MDM and WebEx support. Best of all, the inbuilt FindMyMobile service allows users to track their lost / stolen Tab 8.9 down on a map as it moves, remotely lock the device to prevent unauthorized access and delete personal information stored on the device. Head on past the break for the full release.

Continue reading Galaxy Tab 8.9 hits pre-order, ships October 2nd in US; Galaxy Player 5.0 and 4.0 shipping October 16th

Galaxy Tab 8.9 hits pre-order, ships October 2nd in US; Galaxy Player 5.0 and 4.0 shipping October 16th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink    |  Best Buy  | Email this  | Comments www.engadget.com | 9/27/11 1:15 AM
FmPro Migrator 6.24

FmPro Migrator migrates FileMaker databases to MySQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, OpenBase, PostgreSQL and FrontBase.

www.topix.net | 9/24/11 12:49 PM
SAP adds security, management for app stores

SAP customers looking to open iTunes-like enterprise app stores through Apple's Volume Purchase Program will soon have the ability to manage and deploy the software securely thanks to new VPP support in the Sybase Afaria platform, SAP said Tuesday at the Tech Ed conference in Las Vegas.

www.topix.net | 9/14/11 2:09 PM
Sybase Celebrates 20-Year PowerBuilder Milestone
Sybase, Inc., on Monday announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 12.5, the second .NET release of Sybase's award-winning rapid application development tool. PowerBuilder 12.5 empowers developers with the easiest, fastest and most cost-effective solution for creating modern and visually appealing business applications on the Microsoft Windows 32 ((Win32)and .NET Frameworks. Today's announcement was made at Sybase TechWave, collocated with SAP TechEd 2011 and being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from September 12-16. "Sybase PowerBuilder has remained throughout the years a bastion of application development productivity for a wide class of enterprise applications that combine heavy database orientation with a highly productive graphical user interface (GUI)," said Al Hilwa, program director for IDC's Application Development Software research. "The direction that PowerBuilder has taken to become a seamless Windows .NET environment with the Visual Studio shell incorporated into its infrastructure has meant that the product can now be considered equally for evolving existing systems and for developing new ones for traditional Windows 32 environments and for .NET."

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 9/12/11 9:56 PM
Join the Wolf Pack in Vegas Baby!
Sybase TechWave is back in Vegas Baby!.. The glowing light in the hot Mojave Desert, Las Vegas, is this week the location for the hottest & brightest technologies in the IT industry… presented by Sybase & SAP. For me I have been involved in the preparation and planning of the Mobility Track which is key to Sybase's 'Enterprise UnWired' vision, but there are more... TechWave features four conference tracks: Data Management, Application Development Tools, Analytics, and Enterprise Mobility. Products covered include Sybase ASE, Replication Server, SQL Anywhere, Sybase Control Center, Sybase IQ, PowerBuilder, PowerDesigner, Sybase RAP, Sybase ESP, Afaria, and Sybase Unwired Platform. Some products may be represented in multiple tracks. Each track will open with a Plenary Session on Tuesday morning, immediately following the SAP TechEd General Session. These special sessions provide a high-level overview of the products and topics that will be covered in the breakout sessions.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 9/12/11 4:11 PM
Welcome to TechWave 2011!
The more things change, the more they stay the same. There are a lot of changes at TechWave this year, largely due to the somewhat delayed effects of SAP’s acquisition of Sybase. But in many ways, it’s almost a return to the old way of doing them. This will be the first year that TechWave is co-located with a SAP TechEd event. As a result, we’re back in Las Vegas. (SAP TechEd is also being held in Bangalore, Madrid and Beijing, but later in the year.) It also means that it’s being held in mid-September, much later than I can recall any other TechWave being held (in the past they seem to have been in August or even as early as July). In 2009 and 2010, Sybase held TechWave “symposiums” that were less expensive but with a shorter agenda than prior years and consisted almost entirely of Sybase employees as presenters. This year’s agenda (and registration cost) is more reminiscent of the earlier events. In 2008, the event was also held in Las Vegas (at the Mandalay Bay rather than the Venetian), and it also officially started on Tuesday and ran through Friday morning. Also similar to 2008, there are pre-conference courses on Sunday and Monday and the special event is scheduled for Thursday evening. Back in 2008, the combination of the special event the night before and many people having to catch flights out Friday morning resulted in very low attendance at the Friday morning sessions. I expect the same to happen this year.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 9/9/11 9:28 PM
FmPro Migrator 6.13

FmPro Migrator migrates FileMaker databases to MySQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, OpenBase, PostgreSQL and FrontBase.

www.topix.net | 9/3/11 6:17 PM
About JSON

I've participated recently on a proof of concept using Sybase Mobile Workflow for Business Suite and I was in charge of finding out how to teach the customer on developing the code required for sending notifications to devices.

www.topix.net | 8/9/11 12:16 AM
About JSON

I've participated recently on a proof of concept using Sybase Mobile Workflow for Business Suite and I was in charge of finding out how to teach the customer on developing the code required for sending notifications to devices.

www.topix.net | 8/5/11 10:32 PM
Galaxy Tab Update Aimed at Boosting Business Sales
In an effort to differentiate its Android tablet from the other Android tablets trying to compete with Apple's category-dominating iPad, Samsung is releasing a software update for the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab. The update is intended to enhance the interface and provide features that appeal to business users.

Some of the new features are for the Android 3.1 operating system, including Wi-Fi printing functionality and secure, remote network access. There's also a new user interface, called the TouchWiz UX, designed to make good use of the large screen, and to provide multitasking and customization.

'Enterprise Enablement'

Gavin Kim, Samsung Telecommunications America vice president of content, data services, and enterprise mobility, said in a New York press event that the updates further the promise to customers that "we were going to delight them by ensuring the experience" delivered helps "with work and play."

Other new features in the update are a media hub for playing movies and next-day TV content, and pre-loaded apps, such as Amazon's Music Cloud Player and Kindle. The update will be available via an over-the-air download beginning Friday. Once the tablet is updated, however, the new features can't be removed if the user wants to go back to the original Android operating system.

Kim told The Wall Street Journal that Samsung has done a lot of research about what users want, and the update addresses those needs -- ease of use, visual appeal, more fun, and "enterprise enablement."

Some of the new features are intended to appeal to business users and IT departments with security, work-group, and remote management functions. Other features include the ability to manage access to the Android Market, offer videoconferencing such as Cisco's WebEx videoconferencing and unified communications from Polycom, and real-time document sharing. The security features include support for Cisco VPN and Sybase Afaria.

'More Customer-Ready'

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst...

www.cio-today.com | 8/4/11 6:35 PM
Malware Is Rising on 'Wide Open' Android Devices
Mobile malware is on the rise, and Android users are feeling the pain. According to a new report from Lookout Mobile Security, Android users are 2.5 times as likely to encounter malware today than just six months ago.

Of course, Android isn't alone. Lookout estimates three out of 10 mobile users are likely to click on an unsafe link, including malicious and phishing links, over the course of a year. Still, analysts agree that Android's open platform broadens the malware risk.

"Many people are talking about how Android is not safe because of all the malware," said Michael Disabato, managing vice president of network and telecom at Gartner. "Apple checks the code, and there is no undetectable malware on un-jailbroken iOS. Google is not doing any of the checking, so it's wide open."

Android Threats

Discovered in June, GGTracker is the first known Android malware that specifically targets U.S.-based users. This malware signs users up for premium text-message subscription services without their knowledge, charging $10 per service to a person's phone bill.

"Symantec, Sybase, McAfee and others are going to start pushing antivirus scanners for your smartphone, which will render it useless," Disabato said. "What happens when your Windows laptop goes into scan mode? Imagine doing that on a smartphone."

Lookout also reported that attackers employ a tactic called malvertising, where they use mobile ads to direct users to a malicious web site that triggers an automatic malware download. Meanwhile, the number of unique apps with malware grew from 80 to 400 in the first half of 2011.

Two of the most prevalent threats, DroidDream and GGTracker, were regularly published in new mobile apps over the first half of the year. During this period, the authors of DroidDream released more than 80 unique applications with variations of malware to take control of a user's phone....

www.cio-today.com | 8/3/11 10:36 PM
Samsung details TouchWiz UX update for Galaxy Tab 10.1, OTA rollout goes public on August 5th
We're headed over as we speak to get an early look at what TouchWiz has in store for Tab 10.1-totin' New Yorkers , but in the meantime, Samsung's served up a laundry list of details (after the break) to clue everyone in on what it'll bring. Aside from pushing the TouchWiz UX overlay atop Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), the new digs will also enable Samsung Kies 2.0 support for PC and Mac, solving an issue we spotted a few weeks back. For those unfamiliar with Sammy's Android dressings, this one promises to bring a Live Panel (described as a magazine-like widget view for immediate access to weather, social updates, email, and news on the home pane), a Mini Mode Tray (providing one-touch access to commonly used apps), Clipboard (it's copy and paste, advanced ), Photo Editor (it edits JPEGs, y'all) and the token Indicator Quick Panel (which enables users to quickly toggle on / off WiFi, notifications, sound, brightness and settings in lower right hand corner of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 display).

Of course, proceeding with the update means that you'll get Amazon's Music Cloud Player, the Kindle app and 'Words with Friends' preloaded, but enterprise folk can at least look forward to full support for Exchange ActiveSync version 14, on-device encryption and compatibility with Cisco's VPN / Sybase MDM / WebEx. Still hungry for more? How's about wireless printing to any "compatible" printer, as well as a bolstered Swype app that enables resizing of the keyboard and movement of the keys to any position on the panel. You'll also find Adobe's Flash Player 10.3, a redesigned Samsung Media Hub service and a promise that all Galaxy Tab 10.1 owners will start to see it beginning August 5th. If you're eager to get prepped for Friday's release, hit the source link to setup a required Samsung account; once registered, you'll be notified when your device is ready for the upgrade and given drop-dead simple steps to complete it. Naturally, we'll be bringing you an early look of the changes as soon as humanly possible.

Continue reading Samsung details TouchWiz UX update for Galaxy Tab 10.1, OTA rollout goes public on August 5th

Samsung details TouchWiz UX update for Galaxy Tab 10.1, OTA rollout goes public on August 5th originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink    |  Samsung  | Email this  | Comments www.engadget.com | 8/3/11 6:19 PM
Bugtraq: ZDI-11-246: Sybase Adaptive Server Backup and Monitor Server NULL Write Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
ZDI-11-246: Sybase Adaptive Server Backup and Monitor Server NULL Write Remote Code Execution Vulnerability www.securityfocus.com | 7/30/11 2:14 AM
Bugtraq: ZDI-11-245: Sybase Adaptive Server Backup and Monitor Server Translation Array Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
ZDI-11-245: Sybase Adaptive Server Backup and Monitor Server Translation Array Remote Code Execution Vulnerability www.securityfocus.com | 7/30/11 1:59 AM
MySQL Partitioning and its Confusing Syntax
While looking at partitioning I recently made a mistake which I guess can happen to others. Often this is due to not fully reading the documentation or scanning it too quickly and misunderstanding what’s being said. So this post is to complain about the MySQL partitioning syntax and to warn others who may easily make the same mistake without realising. First we probably need to ask why we are partitioning a table in the first place. The main reasons for this are I think: to improve query performance to reduce individual .ibd file sizes for large tables (if using innodb_file_per_table) In my case I wanted to do both. I had a several tables which store a large number of rows (batches of data) based on an incremental batch number. One of these tables was around 40 GB and had about 500,000,000 rows in it.  When processing data in this table often all the data from a particular batch run would be aggregated with the resultant data being stored elsewhere. So I knew I wanted to partition and performance of these aggregations would be improved as the time to table scan a batch would be reduced to the time to scan the partition rather than the whole table. The primary key of these tables was already in the form ( batch_id, other_key ) so I really wanted to just partition by the batch_id key, using in my case 64 partitions. batch_id is defined as int unsigned NOT NULL. This is where I made the mistake. There are various ways to partition tables in MySQL and they are named: RANGE, LIST, HASH, KEY.  Given the batch_id was a gradually increasing value and I didn’t want to modify the partitioning once it was created RANGE and LIST seemed inappropriate. Of HASH and KEY, I incorrectly assumed that HASH would do some complex hash function of my integer batch_id, and since batch_id was part of the key that KEY would be the right way to partition. So I incorrectly defined the table like this: ALTER TABLE xxxxx PARTITION BY KEY ( batch_id ) PARTITIONS 64; When you read the documentation you see that for HASH-type partitioning you provide a functional value which must be numeric and it actually determines the partition to use by doing MOD( your_functional_value, number_of_partitions ). KEY-type partitioning works diferently and only allows you to provide column names and then it uses its own internal hashing function to generate the partition id. So using PARTITION BY KEY ( numeric_column_name ) seems to correct but is likely to be more expensive to calculate. For large tables this is likely to cause additional performance issues.  It looks like I’m going to have to rebuild the tables I’ve just partitioned and that’ll be another weekend of work. A suggestion to those at Oracle is that: PARTITION BY KEY ( numeric_column_name ) should be modified to behave like PARTITION BY HASH ( numeric_column_name ). However, as this is likely to cause on disk incompatibilities during a version change if it were implemented, I’m guessing it just won’t happen, unless there’s some easy way to distinguish the current behaviour and my proposed new behaviour. The documentation is made a little clearer and mentions this obvious case. What I see with a lot of the MySQL documentation is that it documents technically how things are done rather than documenting the problem and then how to implement the solution. Since it’s likely that many people are going to partition on one of the columns especially if a multi-column primary key is used this use case should be made clearer. If I had time I’d look at how partitioning is implemented in Oracle database, Sybase, Postgres or DB2 and see whether it’s just MySQL which has chosen these unfortunate keywords for defining their partitioning methods. However, I’m curious: am I the only one to fall in this trap? blog.wl0.org | 7/18/11 4:53 AM
HTML5 - What I Am Learning
With all the discussion around HTML5, I thought I would spend some time getting to know more about it myself. I will be researching it and sharing what I am learning through a series of articles over the next month. I have read that it is expected to have a huge impact on mobile software applications and the business models of software vendors. Is it ready for prime time? I hear a variety of opinions on that subject. Sybase has stated that their goal is to "enable web developers to become mobile application developers" through the use of HTML5 and their mobile SDK that will come with SUP (the Sybase Unwired Platform). I was told by Nick Brown at SAP that version 2.1 of SUP would be out in the September 2011 time frame and this version will include HTML5 support and an HTML5 container.

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ajax.sys-con.com | 7/11/11 1:38 AM
HTML5 - What I Am Learning
With all the discussion around HTML5, I thought I would spend some time getting to know more about it myself. I will be researching it and sharing what I am learning through a series of articles over the next month. I have read that it is expected to have a huge impact on mobile software applications and the business models of software vendors. Is it ready for prime time? I hear a variety of opinions on that subject. Sybase has stated that their goal is to "enable web developers to become mobile application developers" through the use of HTML5 and their mobile SDK that will come with SUP (the Sybase Unwired Platform). I was told by Nick Brown at SAP that version 2.1 of SUP would be out in the September 2011 time frame and this version will include HTML5 support and an HTML5 container.

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ajax.sys-con.com | 7/11/11 1:38 AM
Using Data Access Application Blocks with Sybase ADO.NET Provider
In this article, I will introduce you to the Data Access Application Block (DAAB) and explain how to use it with respect to the Sybase ADO.NET Provider. Additionally, we’ll examine how to reference the DAAB in a Visual C# .NET Project.sixteenths or any combination thereof. If a pie is small, you might even choose to serve each guest a whole pie. It’s up to you to determine which size pieces are appropriate for your guests. The Patterns and Practices Team at Microsoft have provided a collection of patterns and practices as well as code blocks that we can use in our applications. These patterns and practices are based on proven architectures, guaranteed production quality code, and known lifecycle best practices.

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 7/8/11 10:20 PM
SAP's Sybase adds scalability to IQ analytic database

Chris Kanaracus 07 July, 2011 20:05 SAP's Sybase division announced the latest version of its IQ columnar database on Thursday, a release focused on providing enough scalability to allow many thousands and types of users within a company to access the system.

www.topix.net | 7/8/11 10:21 AM
First Installment of Free PowerBuilder .NET Training Video Posted
This week PBDJ will publish part one of a series I am writing called “PowerBuilder .NET RESTful Web Services: A quick-start how-to guide”. I’m also producing an accompanying video demo series. To get the buzz going I decided to make each section of the demo video separately available. When all the pieces are completed I’ll tie them all together in a single indexed video tutorial. The complete video will most probably be published on Sybase.com. In the first installment, I show the demo program UI and explain the code structure architecture. Click on this link to watch the first installment

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pbdj.sys-con.com | 7/5/11 7:43 PM