The 1997 Developer's Guide is a guide to setting up and running a custom software development company. Written by veteran FoxPro guru Whil Hentzen, this book covers marketing and selling, developing specifications, fostering small office environments conducive to programming, and hiring and managing people involved in the development process. Most of the advice is not specific to FoxPro or any other development product. Much of the guidance is applicable to in-house corporate development shops, especially those that treat software development as a business serving internal customers. Hentzen covers very pragmatic day-to-day topics such as how to conduct a code review, and he writes with a down-to-Earth sense of humor. If you run your own shop, or if you dream about doing so, Hentzen's book is a full of valuable insights and practical advice.
You can read an excerpt of this book on the DBMS Web site at www.dbmsmag.com/hentzen.html.
The 1997 Developer's Guide by Whil Hentzen (Copyright 1996, ISBN 0-9655093-1-1) is available from Hentzenwerke Corp., 735 N. Water St., Milwaukee, WI 53202-4104; 414-224-7654 or fax 414-224-7650; www.hentzenwerke.com; $40.00 US, $50.00 Canada (plus $3.00 shipping and handling).
-- Maurice Frank
The RedBack Application Server is the control point for accessing server-side application objects and databases.The RedBack Repository is a database that contains all the definitions and code that define the application.
Contact Unidata Inc., Denver, CO; 303-294-0800 or fax 303-293-8880; www.unidata.com.
Users install the DataStage Server in a server directory to create a project. Next, the DataStage Repository Manager is used to browse, import, enter, and edit metadata about data sources and targets, and to define additional components. The DataStage Designer is used to visually design one or more jobs that define the warehouse process model -- dragging and linking stage icons to define data flow, while specifying property values. The DataStage Director runs or schedules jobs, monitors activity, examines statistics, handles exceptions, and recovers from failures.
The four stages of DataStage are extraction, transformation, cleansing, and integration. During extraction, DataStage obtains the data needed for the warehouse from operational databases (in whatever format is appropriate), archives, and external data sources. During transformation, the source data is transformed into a format that is appropriate for analysis and decision support. Next, the data is cleansed and readied for analysis. Metadata is checked and modified, if needed. DataStage then maps the data into the warehouse's target schema, integrating information from multiple databases.
Contact VMark Software Inc.; 800-966-9875, 508-366-3888, or fax 508-366-3669; www.vmark.com.