On January 22, 2008 Zend Technologies, Inc. released Zend Studio for Eclipse 6, a new IDE for the PHP programming language. It is the successor to Zend Studio 5, and as the name implies, is built on top of the Eclipse IDE framework. Unless you have been programming in a cave somewhere, you already know that in the last few years Eclipse has grown to become the most popular and powerful programming environment on the planet. Eclipse has an open plug-in architecture, and Zend has created a set of PHP plug-ins that draw upon the power the Eclipse framework offers. [More…]

If you are looking for a book that describes the process of implementing a Business Intelligence project, authors Larissa Moss and Shaku Atre have done an excellent job. Their book Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications describes a ground plan for BI from a vendor neutral perspective. With the number of BI offerings that are available, each touting their own style, it’s refreshing to finally get an outlook that focuses on managing the project over selling specific features. This book certainly fills that void. [More…]

January 31, 2008. The IBM purchase of Cognos is complete. Following the SAP purchase of Business Object, and the Oracle purchase of Hyperion and now BEA, finalizing the purchase of Cognos must be a relief to IBM. The deal had been in the works for months, and with the approval of Cognos shareholders has now come to pass. [More…]