Louis Armstrong, probably the most famous Jazz singer
Louis Armstrong, probably the most famous Jazz singer

Last Tuesday (2006-09-19), I went to the “Software Trends” organized by IBM in Paris. I discovered a few products that I really think can change the way software engineering works.

Jazz, which I would define as Eclipse Phase 2, is a set of features that focuses on improving team productivity rather than the individual developer productivity. Concrete example: instant messaging within Eclipse, meeting, spec change (well basically any notification) communicated through RSS and much more. I want it now for the team I am setting up!

BuildForge focuses on the development flow. If you have worked on a software project, you know that “passing the potato” from the development team, to integration, QA and finally delivering (and much more steps on some projects) is always (did I say always? I meant always) the mess. This one, I want it yesterday.

Of course, we spoke a lot of Informix.

First I discovered a Premium Support, targeted towards highly demanding customers. It’s almost as if you had the labs in your office. France Telecom is benefiting of this service and Alain Mahé described us some of the benefits of it. Don’t worry, nothing bad about Informix, but you start to have an already complex system, adding some new elements can create some integration nightmares. Well, IBM helped them there. Alain Mahé holds all the information about all fixed lines in France using Informix. Nice database.

Danillo Noveli (we can forgive him of being Italian, he lives in Miami) showed us quite a few successes of Informix this year. Including a 20% increase in sales over the first quarters of 2005.

Jacques Roy and Jerry Keesee explained us trends in the Informix Dynamic Server engine. Great things in plan.

I knew Jacques was from Canadian origins. I guessed from his accent he was of French Canadian origins, but he never spoke to me in French and here he comes and does a perfect presentation in the language of Molière. Gosh… I will not forget that. By the way, Jacques, capabilities does not translated by “capabilités” but “capacités”.

Esri made a presentation of their engagement with IBM and specifically using Informix. Geographical and spatial data is a growing market and a growing need. We were thinking about starting a GIS forum at IIUG, if you are interested, contact David Fraser (david at iiug dot org).

We had a nice time and I hope to have found a few volunteers for finally creating a French local Informix users group.