No question the UI in electronic devices today is playing a larger role in the success of a device. Get the UI wrong and your product will have little chance of surviving. And it isn’t enough to deliver a UI that is merely functional: it has to look good too. Studies have shown that a good cosmetic design can encourage users to explore the full range of features and often, can engender the perception that a product is easier to use, which can make consumers more tolerant of product deficiencies. Learn more today!

Moving to C++ presents opportunities for higher programmer productivity. The requirements of embedded systems, however, demand that the adoption of C++ be carefully measured for the performance impact of run-time costs present in C++, but not in C. This talk suggests strategies for developers who are starting their acquaintance with C++.

Since the SQL Access Group created the Call Level Interface, ODBC has become the most ubiquitous method for connecting to relational database sources. ODBC was developed to allow programmers to access relational data in a uniform manner, regardless of the database backend. ODBC translates those generic commands into the specific esoteric commands of the database backend, so the quality of the driver directly determines the performance of the database connectivity layer. Learn more today!

Connecting to a database requires a number of independent layers. The application needs to incorporate software that establishes the connection and calls to the database. A database connectivity layer needs to be in place to help manage security, communications, and data flow with the database. The database has a set of interfaces that help translate the client requests into actions within the database engine. And with the advent of .NET, the costs of managed versus non-managed code must also be considered.

Terry Bass, V Series and OpenVOS Product Manager, discusses the arsenal of industry standard and open source applications available today on OpenVOS that make UNIX and Linux programmers immediately productive on the world’s most reliable operating system. VOS is now OPEN.

Celina Insurance case study that shows cost reduction and increased productivity - faster, better service to agents and their customers due to integrated systems and real-time collaboration; being “easy to do business with” secures agent loyalty; 50 percent reduction in phone calls and costs due to instant messaging option, and 40 percent reduction in head count while maintaining the same volume of business due to streamlined processes.

Without a comprehensive management program in place IT assets can cost far more than necessary through waste and redundancy (direct costs) and overly complex management and maintenance (indirect costs). Implementing an effective IT asset management program is a first step for companies to deal with these issues. Learn more today!

Is building custom software a necessary evil, a process that’s divorced from the really important parts of a business? Or is the ability to do this well the underpinning of every successful organization? The truth is probably somewhere in between these two extremes. One thing is clear, however: In many organizations, how well a firm executes its business strategies is inextricably tied to how good it is at creating and running new applications.

Being better than your competitors at creating and using custom software can bring substantial competitive advantage. Similarly, being worse can put you at a significant disadvantage. If your organization doesn’t see ALM as one of its most important business processes, it’s time to change that view.

This is an important moment in the evolution of development tools. Since team development tools are now focusing on the right problem, they have more to offer than they did ten years ago. Organizations doing team-based development—a category that includes almost everybody—can benefit from taking another look at this style of tool. Learn more today!

Cut development costs and speed time-to-market with change management.

The online video boom presents an enormous opportunity to grow your audience and generate new advertising revenue. Discover proven methods and strategies to create an optimal user experience with online video, resulting in more unique visitors, increased time on site, and higher repeat visits – and ultimately resulting in more advertising opportunities and higher revenue.

Dell has improved PC deployment activities through patent-pending automation technology and offers an array of services from planning a Windows Vista migration to post-deployment management.

The Choices from many reputable suppliers of IT managed services can appear very much alike. Yet when you have a mission-critical business process whose function must not be interrupted, you know your requirements call for something above and beyond. This paper serves as a field guide to help you identify key characteristics that set a critical managed IT service apart from even highly capable general-purpose offerings.

Listen to this free podcast at your desk or on the road and learn the business challenges and problems causing B2B companies to look at marketing automation ... the near-term and longer-term ROI benefits to expect... what key features and capabilities you should look for in a B2B marketing automation system... and more.  Find out what marketing automation can do for your organization—and how to choose the system that’s right for you. Download this free 15-minute podcast now.

This paper describes the approaches in MDD, explains how CA Gen fits into the larger picture of application development, and relates customer experiences to underpin the quiet success. Access this White Paper now to learn how to CA Gen goes one step further!

Industry debate about the relative merits of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Ecma 376 Office Open XML (OOXML) highlights the significance of the productivity application market shift from binary and proprietary file formats to vendor- and product-independent Extensible Markup Language (XML) models. The competitive stakes are huge, and the related political posturing is sometimes perplexing.

Ready or not, here comes SOA. More and more organizations are turning to SOA to speed application development, increase reusability across and beyond the enterprise, integrate historically separate systems resulting from acquisitions and mergers, and drive costs down and service quality up.

For service-oriented architecture (SOA) to succeed, it needs to begin before run-time, with a strong SOA-based development and delivery environment. This paper discusses some of the challenges around SOA governance in the context of a lifecycle of services, and introduces IBM Rational Asset Manager software as a solution to those challenges.

Companies exploring offshore software development often find an overwhelming array of options. For example, is India the best choice? What about China, Russia or Brazil? Time, distance and language barriers also make it difficult to assess the quality of offshore developers. How can businesses reduce the risks of offshoring?

Despite the fact that Software Executives are pressured to do more with less and cut costs to the bone, many see offshoring as a "threat."  They know they need to go offshore - but where? And with who? What they want is an easier, better, more effective and safer way to use offshore programming resources.

Accurate communication is the key to the success of the bug tracking process. This communication takes the form of timely information flow between customers, QA and Development. Reducing the time spent on tasks that communicate bug information saves money.

Here’s a test: Can you list all the issues your software team is working on now? Can you sort them by severity, priority, features affected, and other criteria such as whether the issue is a bug, customer request, or product enhancement? Can you show the histories of all related comments and actions? Can you distribute this information easily to concerned individuals — showing only the information relevant to them?

Elementool, a leading provider of web-based project management tools for developers, including bug, defect, time-tracking and help desk tools, has announced the release of a bug tracking add-in tool for developers using the Visual Studio.NET 2005 platform. It is available free to Elementool’s community of project management solution subscribers.

Being the new person on a bug tracking team can be very intimidating. The other team members are likely very set in the process and know exactly what they are doing. They are used to working as a team and they understand what is expected of them. Being new, though, does not mean that a person can not fit in on the bug tracking team. All a person needs to do is learn a few beginner tips to using bug tracking software.