Search

Hot skills Microsoft suite eliminates error-prone manual work Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Microsoft Expression Studio is a suite of design and media applications aimed at web designers who […]

Hot skills Supplier builds on functionality of Berkeley DB Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Berkeley DB is a lightweight, embeddable database that emerged from the open source world but […]

Hot skills Open source database has 44% share of the market Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) from Swedish supplier […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? PostgreSQL is the leading alternative database to MySQL in the Lamp (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) open source development and deployment platform. Where MySQL places […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's technology for building interactive web pages, using techniques similar to HTML authoring. It has been described as 'the […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? VBScript may be better known, but JScript, Microsoft's other scripting language, is used widely in Active Server Pages (ASP) programming, and system automation and […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? The Palm operating system is used by more than 35 million personal digital assistants, smartphones and other handheld devices, and there is a thriving […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Active Directory, included with Windows Server, is intended to provide centralised, secure management of networks on any scale from local to global. It is […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Exchange Server 2003, the current version of Microsoft's messaging and collaboration software, was designed to run with Windows 2003 Server. However, many users kepttheir […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Mono is an open source development platform based on Microsoft's .net Framework. Primarily aimed at the Linux community, it can also be used to […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Visual Studio .net is Microsoft's integrated development environment for the Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual J# programming languages. Before the .net […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Active Server Pages (ASP) is a hosting environment or programming framework within which scripting languages such as Visual Basic, C# and J# can be […]

Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? Delphi is a language used for rapid application development for Windows and the web. It is also available for Linux in the form of […]

New software should be perfect and ready to go, like any other new purchase. But it is often not until after it has run in the real world that weaknesses […]

hot skills C# is number 42 in the CW/SSP list of top IT skills The sharper option for the web? Nick Langley computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk What is it? C# is one of […]

Middleware enables data and processes to flow through all of the business' systems. * What is it? Middleware is software that acts as a translator between different programs, allowing them […]

Building applications for databases is as easy as lifting a CD, with Powerbuilder, writes Nick Langley * What is it? Powerbuilder is Powersoft's application development system for Windows client/ server […]

Lotus Notes provides the collaboration component of IBM's Web services strategy * What is it? Lotus Notes and Domino are respectively the client and server portions of IBM/Lotus' messaging and […]

Microsoft wants to give VB6 more than a nip and tuck to bring it into the 21st century * What is it? When Bill Gates called Visual Basic 'the programming […]

Apple has used the open source community to give the Mac a new operating system * What is it? Mac OSX is the first completely new system for the Macintosh […]

ASP enables people with limited programming skills to build dynamic Web pages. * What is it? Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) is a scripting technology used to create interactive Web […]

Ada is widely used by the US Department of Defense but has open source resources, writes Nick Langley * What is it? Ada is a structured programming language extensively used […]

Windows dominates, but HP, IBM, Dell and Sun are all backing Linux for the desktop. * What is it? Linux may be taking the server by storm, but so far […]

Good performance has made Linux a leading operating system for Web servers. * What is it? The most common Web server operating systems are Linux, Solaris and Windows NT/2000. Some […]

Many organisations would be better off using Progress but just don't know about it, writes Nick Langley * What is it? Progress is a relational database and development environment, used […]

* With Windows 2000, Microsoft hopes to extend its dominance to the datacentre * What is it? Microsoft's family of operating systems. While Windows may be facing competition from Linux […]

Access lets Office users create database applications compatible with SQL Server. * What is it? Access is the database component of Microsoft Office 2000. As an entry-level database for small […]

The rise of the Internet and Linux has helped unlock the mysteries of an old favourite. * What is it? The first operating system to be portable across a wide […]

E-business users benefit from Vignette's drive to stake its claim in the new economy * What is it? Vignette's V/Series is a suite of tools for building and maintaining content […]

Ingres can run on almost all platforms and access new and existing data resources. * What is it? Ingres followed Oracle and IBM's SQL/DS into the relational database management systems […]

Techies can escape Microsoft's influence with a free language for creating Web sites. * What is it? In recent weeks, Hot Skills has covered a number of server-side, cross-platform, HTML […]

Coldfusion may sound like it's from the nuclear age, but it is a hot skill for e-business, writes Nick Langley * What is it? Allaire's Coldfusion is a cross-platform Web […]

Microsoft claims that nearly all world-class software is built using Visual C++, but the reading list looks daunting * What is it? 'Nearly all world-class software, from the leading Web […]

EAI aims to smooth the integration process between the application and the broker, writes Nick Langley * What is EAI? Enterprise Application Integration. According to Meta Group, a typical large […]

Solaris was designed with scalability in mind and it has found favour with ISPs * What is it? Sun's implementation of Unix, available both for Sun Sparc (Scalable Processor Architecture) […]

It may have been IBM's second choice, but with Windows skills you won't go hungry, writes Nick Langley * What is it? Microsoft's family of client operating systems, including Windows […]

From the mainframe to all its platforms, Nick Langley charts the progress of DB2, IBM's relational database * What is it? IBM's relational database, first announced for MVS mainframe environments. […]

Being 'Internet commerce enabled' is just one of the advantages of Ingres II. * What is it? Although Ingres wasn't the first relational database in the field, it was widely […]

RPG/400 is widespread, reliable and popular, so why is IBM so reluctant to talk about it? * What is it? Report Program Generator, the programming language most intimately associated with […]

Demand is soaring, but does Java's 'write once, run anywhere' slogan still ring true? asks Nick Langley * What is it? Best known as the programming language for the Web, […]

Despite doubts over its reliability and scalability Windows NT dominates the market. * What is it? Windows New Technology is Microsoft's strate operating system for serious, server-based corporate computing. It […]

There's a lot of Cobol code out there - billions of lines of it - but is the Y2K problem going to be its last hurrah Nick Langley has the […]

We all know the name, now learn the truth, the wise man of hot skills. * What is it? The world's best known relational database supplier, with an installed customer […]

Nick Langley reveals what you need to know before taking on C and C++ * What are they? C is a programming language most commonly used with Unix. C++ is […]