New V4 is all about supporting better decision-making by supplying timely and more accurate information in a personalized way.

By Chris Smith

IBM Cognos last week released a new version of IBM Cognos 8 business intelligence software that is intended to help push more timely, accurate information into the hands of business users and better align the roles of the IT and finance departments to achieve a more efficiently running business.

V4 of Cognos 8 has been under development a relatively short time. V3 was released less than a year ago, but V4 has some impressive new features that allow users to determine what information they get, based on personal preferences and job requirements, thereby freeing IT from having to generate an endless stream of reports based on individual needs.

A recent survey shows limited awareness, constrained usage.

By Ron Exler

Small and midsize business (SMB) executives have significant challenges in today's economy, including finding and keeping customers, controlling costs, and positioning for growth. Technology must support those objectives if they want SMB executives to pay attention.

According to the research firm Saugatuck Technology, which focuses on emerging enterprise technologies, Software as a Service (SaaS) refers to "software provided and used in a utility computing context, where the services provider delivers the functionality of the application or utility infrastructure software over a network, through a services interface. Typically this functionality is sold via a subscription model, or on a utility-style, "pay as you go" (PAYG), or per unit, basis." Saugatuck believes SaaS is becoming ubiquitous--and is affecting nearly all solution sectors, industries, and business and IT functions. According to IDC, SaaS software revenues doubled between 2006 and 2008, with it taking as much as 5 percent of the total software market. Gartner says that by 2012 more than two-thirds of independent software vendors will offer their applications as SaaS solutions.

You can determine at run-time the size of a variable.

By Bruce Vining

I recently conducted a workshop on best programming practices when working with system APIs. One of the practices I recommend is to avoid hard-coding values such as variable lengths (or anything else for that matter) throughout the program. Assume for instance that you're calling a retrieve type system API that has four parameters as shown here:

Zoho adds powerful features to Zoho Creator 3.0 and introduces a new Marketplace to buy and sell the resulting Web applications.

By Chris Smith

There are times when you need a small application in a hurry, and you don't feel like spending a few hundred--or a few thousand--dollars to acquire it. Sometimes just the time involved shopping for the right solution can make you decide it's easier to create it yourself. At least that way, you know you're going to get what you need, not something that's "close" but actually someone else's idea of what they thought you should need.