February 200910 www.vsj.co.uk Visual Systems Journal

A R C H I T E C T U R E N E W S – in association with

Save the datesIt’s the time of year for marking outblocks in the planner, so it’s worth notingthat Software Architect 2009 has anew slot – 29th September to 1st October.

However, you don’t have to wait untilthen for a relevant conference –DevWeek 2009, being held this year atthe Barbican Centre, takes place from23–27 March and has a track dedicated toarchitecture, with sessions presented byKevlin Henney, Simon Brown, Neal Ford,Kevin Jones and Dave Wheeler on topicsincluding design patterns, refactoring andunit testing. There are also pre- and post-

conference workshops on architecturaltopics that can be booked separately –subject to availability.

There’s even time to claim anearly booking discount by reservingyour place by 27 February.� www.devweek.com

TeamCity version 4.0TeamCity 4.0 from JetBrains is the latest version of anintegration server and build management tool for workgroups,with special facilities for agile approaches to development. Itoffers scalability implemented by a build grid, extensibility via aJava API, and integration with multiple IDEs, version controlsystems and build tools. New in version 4.0 is the introductionof build chains, which improve performance by breaking down asingle build into multiple parts executed on different buildagents in parallel. The agents can also be managed withauthentication and benchmarks. Automatic test re-ordering candetermine a set of tests which are likely to fail and give thempriority for subsequent project builds, thus saving time. A redocommand can repeat a build from a particular version controlrevision. You can also now get statistics for an entire project,and comparative statistics on a single chart. There are newintegrations, including FxCop and dedicated Rake runner, aswell as improvements for old ones such as MSTest and Eclipsein general. The user interface has also been improved withproject overviews and individual test statistics. The freeprofessional edition is restricted to 20 build configurations, andthree build agents.� www.jetbrains.com/teamcity

Follow the dataEmbarcadero Technologies has a solution to the problem oftracing where data comes from and goes to within a system. Therecently released ER/Studio 8.0 includes the new Visual DataLineage, which is designed to help architects and modellers dealwith consolidation, integration and compliance issues. It offers avisual representation of data lineage within an enterprise,making it possible to conduct an impact analysis between datasources and targets, as well as to visually analyse and documentdata flow without having to inspect code.

Other new features in ER/Studio 8.0 include LDAPintegration, attribute-level submodeling, object-level compare flagsand support for Sybase IQ 12.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.� www.embarcadero.com

Find flaws in VB codeProject Analyzer v9 is aprogramming utility thatreads the source code of aVisual Basic program todetect errors. It locatesunconditional decisionstatements, variablewrites that do not execute,and missing oroverlapping Casebranches. It also verifies enumeration constants and warnswhere a number is possibly used in its place. It watches for riskysyntax, such as hard-coded path names or octal numbers. It alsocatches hazardous variable choices, forgotten or almost unusedcode, and brittle declarations.

In addition to revealing existing bugs, Project Analyzerdecreases the likelihood of writing new bugs by recommendingimprovements such as safer declaration keywords. A set of classdesign rules help enforce consistent programming style. It alsodocuments VB projects with source code print-outs, reports,diagrams and software metrics.� www.aivosto.com

For all the latest architectural news, plus dozens of in-deptharticles on a wide range of topics, details of forthcoming

events, a list of architectural training courses in the UK, andother useful resources, visit the ITarchitect web site.

www.ITarchitect.co.uk

Automate testingwith TestDriveTestDrive 6 is the latest version of OriginalSoftware’s “visual-layer” software testautomation tool. Support for Java, OracleForms and 3270 Mainframe applicationsare added to its supported technologies,which includes .NET, Ajax, Web 2.0 andLotus Notes. It now claims to deal betterwith heterogeneous applicationarchitectures and infrastructures using amix of technologies such as Java, SOA,Web and Packaged application forms.� www.origsoft.com

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