News
Oracle Claims Developers Jumping Redmond Ship
- By Scott Bekker
- 10/06/1999
NEW YORK -- Depending on who you ask the question of whether Microsoft developers are remaining Microsoft developers can elicit a myriad of responses. Oracle Corp. made a slew of announcements concerning its developers at Internet World on Wednesday, one of which implies that the ark of developers sailing around Redmond is losing passengers and that their life rafts are heading south to Oracle HQ.
"For the first time in a decade, Microsoft's developer community is up for grabs," says Jeremy Burton, vice president of Internet platform marketing for Oracle Corp. "They want to get to know the fashionable technologies." Burton says those include Java, XML and Linux.
Oracle cites a 1,000 percent increase in membership, from 40,000 to 400,000, of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN, http://technet.oracle.com) as evidence of the Microsoft exodus. On Wednesday, Oracle increased its commitment to OTN by launching a new site with expanded professional resources, software and support for developers. Developers can now take part in topic-based communities and find as "Ask Oracle" forum for direct interaction with Oracle experts.
Oracle also reports that more than 50 percent of new OTN members since February 1999 identify themselves as former Windows-only developers.
Also announced were the availabilities of Oracle Application Server 4.0.8 (OAS) and Oracle JDeveloper 3.0 and their support for Oracle's new Business Components for Java (BC4J). Similar to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFCs) for building desktop applications, BC4J makes building Java server applications easier and more productive. The new version also has increased support for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSPs).
Using separate technologies it got from Halcyon and VisualEdge, Oracle is opening OAS to Microsoft technologies. Halcyon's Instant ASP provides a Java runtime environment for Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASPs). VisualEdge's ObjectBridge for COM-CORBA allows COM objects residing on NT to call remotely to EJB. -- Brian Ploskina
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.