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Indeed, legacy business apps are living far beyond the lifecycle of the underlying technologies, many times thanks to virtualization, and because business are reticent to re-engineer old apps (virtualization is allowing them to stay with old tech a lot longer).

I dislike profoundly the concept of desktop WOA, but it might make sense for some. MS is looking to drastically simplify the platform. If they get rid of most legacy APIs (and old ways to do things) and make it easy for consumers and enterprise users and IT to just install a light client (ie, WOA), they might have something. Having WOA for the endpoint might make sense because you can always provide the good old legacy apps using RDP and RemoteApp, getting the best of both worlds (as long as you have a connection, disconnected laptop users be dammed). MS will be charging for 2 licenses per user: one for the WOA device, one -or many- for the RDP server client licenses.

As for the list of tools: Delphi might make it. Embarcadero is pushing cross platform development with their FireMonkey framework in the XE2 line of products (ie, Delphi and C++). They already support WIndows, OSX and iOS, and there are plans to support Android (blog posts hint at a beta sometime this quarter or next).

FireMonkey is not a direct Delphi VCL (or even OWL) replacement, so it's not like you'll be able to just recompile your old Delphi apps, but you at least get a starting point, and Delphi component vendors seem to be taking notice and creating components for the framework. It remains to be seen how much vapor and how good it is, and how many organizations are willing to port their Delphi apps.

So for native cross development for iOS and Android, there might be a few options in the horizon:
* Xamarin monoTouch and monoDroid, at $400 each (for single developer license)
* Embarcadero FireMonkey XE2 products (when it supports Android)
* Qt

And these support WIndows x86, and will likely support WOA.

They already invested on mobile platforms (iOS) http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi .
Unfortunely, it may be a little to late to keep the interest in Delphi.

You'd force yourself out of the Visual Studio tool chain which carries with it a significant amount of extra work. If you don't mind or perhaps you just want to run Eclipse with a C/C++ plugin, or some other solution with both compile and debug support go for it. However, you really won't find anyone using a win32 port of gcc for serious work. The hassles and other negatives involved out weigh any conceivable benefit. If you're allergic to Visual Studio you could go with C++ Builder from Embarcadero (formerly Borland).

Microsoft doesn't offer a 64-bit compiler that cross-compiles to 32-bit. Fine, I can accept that. But there are other compilers one could use:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-compilers/ is still reputed to produce the tightest, fastest WinXX executables available.

http://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder (formerly Borland C++)

The venerable http://gcc.gnu.org/

http://www.ghs.com/products/optimizingC++EC++Compilers.html (though it looks like GHC might no longer target Windows at all)

While it is true that Borland is out of the developer tools business, their tools live on at Embarcadero. In fact, they've just come out with their newest version of Delphi called XE2 which supports native Windows, Mac and iOS development, and will support native Linux & Android development in the next release.

Actually, Borland's tools (Delphi, C++ Builder, etc.) are still there and they have just released a new version that allows development for Windows (32- and 64-bit, finally), OSX, and iOS. Called Firemonkey, it looks pretty exciting. Android targetting is promised soon.

Borland has also had support for parts of the C++0x spec for some time now.

Borland has also had support for parts of the C++0x spec for some time now.

it seems crazy but the purest form of Delphi these days is Prism for .NET

Totally marketing garbage. Man is probably a great guy, with a lousy job. But F#, really? even .NET is ripping off Java.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that F# is somehow "ripping off" Java? If you mean it's a "rip off" something else, then, well, it's clearly designated as an OCaml derivative, it's not exactly news... but we wouldn't get far if people wouldn't "rip off" the work of others, and build on that. You know, just like Java ripped off C++ and Smalltalk, and JavaScript ripped off Self, and Smalltalk ripped off Lisp, etc...

If you mean .NET as a whole being a rip-off of Java, then you're late by like 6 years or so - C# 1.0 was for the most part "a better Java" (note the "better" part, however), but since then it has evolved much faster, and Java is struggling to keep pace, "ripping off" C# as it goes. To give a specific example: C# had first-class functions (called anonymous delegates in the language) in version 2.0, released in 2005. Java still doesn't have them, and they will only likely come in Java 7, to be released by the end of this year. To give another example, C# 2.0 and above has generics that Java language designers would call "reified". Java doesn't, and there's no telling when, or even if, it will.

Microsoft talks about building "ecosystems" but the way they do it, everything in the ecosystem has to have a M$ logo on it. Why can't they just inter-operate and integrate with outside software?

Uhh, I don't even know where to begin here.

Here is the C# language specification, if you ever want to write your own C#compiler. Here is the CLI spec - this covers VM semantics, all involved file formats, and the fundamental class library - this is useful for a .NET compiler for any language.

And third-party languages for .NET do exist in large quantities. One good example is Delphi Prism, which provides full Visual Studio experience, not any worse than what is there for C# out of the box. Then there's Eiffel, Smalltalk, Perl, Fortran, COBOL... IronPython and IronRuby were also outside projects, by the way - their authors got hired by MS along the way because the company was interested in developing dynamic languages on the platform, and, naturally, picked the two most popular ones.

Libraries are also part of the "ecosystem", by definition and there are tons of third-party ones. I won't even bother giving links as there are too many - google it if you want.

So, can you explain what you mean by "inter-operate and integrate with outside software" with respect to .NET, if the above is not good enough?

All the developer tools were spun off a couple of years ago into CodeGear, which was bought by Embarcadero last year.

All those tools you knew are still alive and well. Delphi 2009 is the best native Win32 developer tool in the world and the language is experiencing a renaissance with the addition of new language features such as generics and anonymous methods. The whole environment has recieved major upgrades as well, which has also benefitted C++ builder, since they use the same IDE. They are also really starting to nail down the documentation side, which honestly has been the suits weak point for years.

By the way, there are free trial versions! Check them out!

You can read the "No-nonsense License Statement" here. It came out with TP 3.0 (and I still have an original manual, with the license printed on the inside front cover :-).

Sorry, bud, but you're wrong. There was a CP/M version of Turbo Pascal. 1MHz sounds slow, but the first Kaypro ran at 2.5MHz. The Timex Sinclair had a 1MHz Z-80, but anyone who was trying to program in Pascal on that thing would have been some kind of lunatic.

The Borland Museum has the old Turbo series of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo C++ for MS-DOS downloadable for free.

Turbo Pascal and Delphi got replaced by Free Pascal, and Turbo C++ got replaced with GNU C++ and MinGW C++ for Windows which are open source alternatives to them. Which I think is why the Borland Museum got opened and why the command line version of Borland C++ was given away for free.

While people were waiting for the Borland Museum to release Delphi 1.0 the Lazarus Project was developed based on Free Pascal to replace Delphi.

I am curious if anyone understands the relationship between former Borland and current Embarcadero. It seems Embarcadero owns most of the apps and tools that Borland used to make, and they also live in Borland's former building in Scott's Valley. Curiouser and curiouser... Could it be possibly that Embarcadero is former Borland who simply shed its name to some Texas-based company? Anyone with better insight care to chime in?

Yes, as did I, good times indeed. Borland split that off long ago...about um 2006. They spun it off as codegear with the intention of selling off their ide stuff, and then codegear got bought up by embarcadero in 2008. I guess borland didn't want my money anymore as for the enterprise version I drop $1500 for an upgrade copy every couple of years. I find that was a pretty stupid idea...well not as stupid as changing their name in 1999 to inprise...well at least they undid that in 2001 and went back to borland...but still pretty dumb. I still use it every day...well kinda, it lives on here: http://www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder You can get a free version(s) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/c_builder I also used turbo pascal way back when, but when delphi came out I ignored it since their PR department touted it as a totally new thing instead of visual pascal, so I never got into delphi since I had no idea it was pascal at the time. and turbo pascal (ok turbo delpi) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/delphi

Yes, as did I, good times indeed. Borland split that off long ago...about um 2006. They spun it off as codegear with the intention of selling off their ide stuff, and then codegear got bought up by embarcadero in 2008. I guess borland didn't want my money anymore as for the enterprise version I drop $1500 for an upgrade copy every couple of years. I find that was a pretty stupid idea...well not as stupid as changing their name in 1999 to inprise...well at least they undid that in 2001 and went back to borland...but still pretty dumb. I still use it every day...well kinda, it lives on here: http://www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder You can get a free version(s) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/c_builder I also used turbo pascal way back when, but when delphi came out I ignored it since their PR department touted it as a totally new thing instead of visual pascal, so I never got into delphi since I had no idea it was pascal at the time. and turbo pascal (ok turbo delpi) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/delphi

Most DBA's don't use the included tools anyways, they are pretty much crap compared to others.. Look for DBArtisan (One I have seen and used, not sure if its the best, there are many others out there.. Works with every major database, Oracle, Sybase, MSSQL, MYSQL, Postgres, etc. Last I looked it up for our DBA, it was about $7500 per database type.. IE, manage as many Oracle Databases as you want for one price..

That'll teach you to go around feeling lucky. The second Google result (and the ads) are for Business Process Management. I've heard that Embarcadero is working on integrating a BPM into their suite. They already have a UML design tool and a data modeling app.

I'd like to introduce you to rabid squirrel.

Actually CVS does exist for databases however the cost is more than a little prohibitive for your average Joe wannabe-DBA/programmer. Typically the tools (e.g. Embarcadero) run into the several thousand dollar per seat range. Their RapidSQL product, for instance, works with many existing CVS tools out there and E/R Studio, an absolutely fantastic db design tool, uses a repository with full check-in/check-out. Well worth the cost if you are serious about your tools. Heck, compared to what VS.NET 2005 will cost, full-up, the suite is on par.

Hey, to my knowledge, there isn't an open-source tool that'll do what you want. You might, however, just consider shelling out the cash for a program such as Embarcadero's Describe. Check it out, and see if it fits your needs.

Oh, and it uses Perl as a scripting language, so you can really customize it to match your design flow wherever you are. One of our coders modified an existing script to make it do some useful things, like interact with the GUI, and (of course) the core of the program.

One of the better mods someone around here came up with is one that lets it trundle over source code, and reverse-engineer the UML for you, if you're working off of an existing code base.

Take a look. They offer downloads for trial purposes.

Free as in Beer UML Toolkit here

The best package I've seen is unfortunately Windows-only: Embarcadero ER/Studio

Supports forward- and reverse- diagramming (i.e. diagram from SQL, SQL from diagram) and supports the following databases:

• Oracle 7.3 & 8.x
• Sybase System 11.x
• Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 & 7.0
• Informix OnLine & SE
• IBM OS390 & DB/2 Universal Database
• SQL Anywhere & Watcom
• InterBase 4
• Microsoft Access 2.0, 95, 97 and Access 2000
• Microsoft Visual FoxPro

Probably worth taking a look-- at my last company we did some hardcore DB design, and this is what the DB wizards used to do the data modelling.

You seem like a pretty clueful DBA so I'll won't reiterate anything you can easily pick up by reading the documentation.

I'm in the middle of doing a feasibility study of migrating our flagship database (~30GB ASE 11.5) from big-iron AIX boxen to commodity x86 boxen running Linux / ASE 11.9.2

I have not found the dump/load incompatibility to be a major hassle. If you tune your Linux box for fast BCP the load shouldn't be too painful. As an alternative, you might try using DBArtisan from Embarcadero Technologies. It has a migration feature that makes moving data and schemas between servers very painless. It is well worth the price ($5000, IIRC) - it will pay for itself quickly in time savings alone

In my test setup, I was able to move our 30GB database from the AIX box to the Linux box in about 10 hours, which fits within our normal scheduled maintenance window. The AIX box is a 4-way RS/6000 box w/ 1 GB and all the storage allocated as virtual partitions on a RAID-5 array (I didn't set this up). The Linux box is a quad Xeon w/ 1 GB of RAM and 8 drives; I'm using raw partitions and doing my mirroring manually from within Sybase. DBArtisan runs on an Athalon 550 w/ 128MB under NT Workstation.

The AIX box is a little simpler to manage, because the old DBA had all the tables on the default segment. Even though it's more work, I prefer to hand-tune the database and place the big and/or active tables on their own segments & devices. Needless to say, you need to be comfortable using sp_placeobject & sp_partition to take this approach. I find that the extra effort setting up the server pays off in the long term in performance and reliability. Barring the difference in the physical storage strategy, I don't see any factor that makes ASE on Linux more difficult to administer than ASE on any other flavor of Unix. Actually, the OS-level administration is simpler in Linux than in AIX, IMHO.

Since you say this is going to be a data warehouse system, you REALLY want to use partitioning so you can take advantage of parallelism. Re-read chapters 13, 14, 15, and 17 of the Performance & Tuning Guide before you start, you'll be glad you did.

I don't know what your uptime requirements are, so I can't say if Linux is robust enough for you. If you need rock-solid 24x7 availibility, I'd say stick with big iron and commercial Unix. If you don't need to be bulletproof Linux should be fine. For us, the cost savings are worth the slightly higher risk. As I write this, our Linux test server has 63 days uptime and has survived several stress-tests with no problems, so reliability hasn't been an issue so far. Linux performance seems to be on par with the AIX box so far -- but the database is not the bottleneck in our system.


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