IBM is expanding its outreach program to Linux developers on
its 64-bit architecture and updating old and new development languages to
meet the demands of Web services and services-oriented architecture
technology.
Software demos, a collaboration portal and training documentation, went up on
IBM’s beefed up POWER microprocessor architecture development site this
week, while WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer 5.1.1 and COBOL 3.3 were
also announced.
Geared towards IBM customers, independent software vendors (ISV) and
business partners on the Linux platform, officials at the Armonk, N.Y.-based
IT giant have been steadily beefing up support on its developerWorks site, a
community forum where programmers can improve on the developing applications
for the 64-bit eServer iSeries and pSeries servers. Support is also
available for the Apple G5.
According to Kathy Mandelstein, IBM program director of worldwide developer
programs, the 7,500 Linux applications created since Big Blue adopted
the open source technology bodes well for future development on
the POWER architecture.
“We got a lot of very positive feedback from the development community,” she
said. “We’ve been progressively adding resources and will continue to see
that over the next several months.”
An IBM spokesperson said the company doesn’t know of any POWER-based applications on
the market to date. Analysts expect them to start cropping up in mid-2004.
IBM has put a lot of
emphasis the past year on the POWER5 chip
architecture announced last October.
The next-generation chip technology uses virtualization — called
multithreading at IBM — to run multiple operating systems on one processor
and allow administrators to configure 64 physical processors before
clustering.
One of the more alluring features of the POWER architecture
is that it’s 64- to 32-bit backwards compatible, so programmers making
applications to take advantage of the new 64-bit computing power can also
run it on industry mainstay 32-bit servers and vice versa.
Also featured on the new developerWorks site is an evaluation kit to create
custom POWER chips in a simulated environment, geared for developers with an
IA32-based
IBM also updated its WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer
and COBOL
(after FORTRAN), yet most widely used around the world.
Enterprise Developer 5.1.1 features the ability to create component-based
Web applications within a Web services
oriented architecture
Enterprise COBOL 3.3 gives programmers more functionality in z/OS, the
mainframe operating system that can be used to launch Java-enabled applications.
Enterprise COBOL has given legs to the decades-old procedural programming
language by supporting Java syntax in the code. It’s a boon for developers
relying on programs developed years ago in COBOL that need to integrate with
Java-based applications.
Also new to COBOL 3.3 is enhanced XML
“GENERATE,” programmers can now grab group and elementary data items from
COBOL programs. Support for the new functions in the IBM Debug Tool
for z/OS version 4 and for DB2 version 8 is is featured, too.
