Friday, December 20, 2002

Benefits of Managed DirectX By eliminating the Component Object Model (COM) interoperability layer, Managed DirectX improves performance. Managed code can reduce the volume of code and increase productivity. The interface is more intuitive, inheriting from the powerful and easy-to-use Microsoft .NET Framework common types. Managed code also frees you from having to deal with most memory management tasks, such as releasing objects. In the SDK you will find managed Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# samples and tutorials that duplicate nearly all of the unmanaged code samples. [http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/directx.asp] Improved performance over C++? Nice touch. It will be interesting to see the benchmarks on this. 3:31:54 PM    comment []

"But what about the minor point of Rational not making one product that is worth half the money they charge?" [John Shute's Weblog] That doesn't make them any different than Oracle or Sun ;-). I do agree that it is kind of rediculous that XDE costs 50% more than the full Enterprise Architect version of VS.NET. But hey, if you can get people to dish out the cash... 2:03:44 PM    comment []

"In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, published yesterday, Rational said that during the midst of its discussions with IBM, company founder and chief executive Michael Devlin was contacted by telephone by representatives of a company interested in renewing earlier discussions with Rational over a possible "business combination transaction." Rational did not name that company, referring to it simply as "Company A" but circumstantially that puts Microsoft solidly in the frame. Microsoft has told ComputerWire its executives discussed a possible acquisition of Rational to fill-out its own offerings. The SEC filing said: "During the period thereafter and leading up to the December 6, 2002 announcement of the proposed merger with IBM, numerous conversations occurred between representatives of Company A and us or representatives of our financial advisor, Goldman Sachs. However, these conversations never resulted in a detailed discussion of proposed terms or Company A submitting a specific indication of interest." [http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/28550.html] It would be nice if Microsoft got ahold of Rational. They are much cooler than Borland (hey, and maybe they could just throw in XDE with VS.NET, it works a lot better than the so-called "visio integration"). Speaking of integration, the VS 1.1 page says that Enterprise version of Visual Studio 1.1 (which is definately very cool) includes a version of BizTalk created specifically for developers. Sounds great, but I can't find it in the beta. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough... 11:29:46 AM    comment []

Thanks to Sam for the shout out. 11:22:05 AM    comment []