Debugging Software

I’m hearing from my friends in the VC community that Java is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in terms of importance and innovation. Seems like Java’s maturity, feature set, reliability and supporting ecosystem makes it a great fit for the continuous integration, continuous deployment software processes that are fast becoming the norm.

Not surprising given that perspective, the upcoming JavaOne conference and exhibition is sold out. Now held at the same time as Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, JavaOne is still the place where the very latest products and technologies are on display and where new product announcements are made.

We’ll be there and we’ve got a couple of new things up our sleeve that we will be showcasing for the first time at the show. Stop by our booth #5205 Oct 3-5 and make Java code, performance and security defects a thing of the past.

The networking folks do amazing things when they have the information they need to diagnose issues and make decisions. They use Deep Packet Inspection to inform everything from bandwidth management, equipment outages and security because DPI gives them the absolute ground truth about their network’s behavior.

We’ve just introduced ReplayDIRECTOR 3.5 and while dot releases are not typically something to shout about, this release represents the front edge of our “Deep Application Inspection” initiative that will deliver the same kind of ground truth for application execution that Deep Packet Inspection provides for the network.

RD 3.5 takes our log viewing and amplification capabilities available in the Eclipse IDE and exposes the details in our standard web UI along with information highlighting defect markers, transactions, users and even client screen shots. In upcoming releases we will be adding a wide variety of deep execution detail to the log view and exposing that data not only in our web UI, but in IDE’s and dashboards of complementary diagnostic and profiling products that provide management information across the software development lifecycle.

Because we see and replicate every method call, exception, db call, variable value, code sequence, etc. there is no more precise and comprehensive record of program execution. Deep Application Inspection is the engine for the diagnostic train and everyone from Dev to QA to Security to Operations can get on board to advance their mission of producing and maintaining high-quality, reliable business solutions.

Anyone who lives on the California arc of the Ring of Fire knows that there is no such thing as geologic stability. We sit on tectonic plates that inexorably move and change direction, mostly unseen and unfelt until the big one(s) hit.

In the world of software, news that CA bought iTKO and Compuware acquired Dynatrace reminds us that as changes continue to grind away in the software development lifecycle, earthquakes like these two acquisitions will inevitably occur. The traditional silos of development, test and deployment/operations have been colliding for years as agile, DevOps and Cloud play to the overall need to reduce the time and effort to produce new business solutions.

The fact that two predominantly APM vendors have dived headfirst into ALM starkly illustrates the need to provide seamlessly integrated tools and management across a rapidly changing software development process. Leverage and value are now moving from “after the fact” monitoring and issue triage to pre-deployment detection and resolution.

ALM products are now at a premium because they can be effective at any point of the software development lifecycle.