Drumroll, Please . . .

Software Development
SDWest 2004 / Show Daily / Day Two /

Drumroll, Please ...

Open source and Web offerings come of age at the gala 14th Annual Software Development Jolt and Productivity Awards.

By Rosalyn Lum

Fourteen Jolt Awards, 42 Productivity Awards and one Hall of Fame inductee were announced at SD West Conference and Expo’s evening gala on Wednesday, March 17, 2004. Following the witty—or painful, depending on your point of view—opening repartee of the two masters of ceremony, Technical Editor Rosalyn Lum and Editor in Chief Alexandra Weber Morales, the 14-year-long tradition of recognizing books, products and websites that have “jolted” the industry began with a chuckle.

“It’s a different kind of analysis tool,” said Jolt judging veteran Roland Racko. “A common failure in many groups is that people with very good ideas but who are shy or otherwise politically challenged don’t have a voice. The encouragement comes from the rapid facility to reorganize, on-the-fly, the visual presentation of ideas as they merge and flower in the group at large. This is a result of clever design of MindManager’s GUI. In my opinion, darned few products around have this magic.” “If we had a coolest tool category, this would certainly be my number one choice,” added judge Gary Pollice, a professor of computer science practice at Worchester Polytechnic Institute and a former Rational evangelist.

One of the most challenging races was for the Hall of Fame inductee: a tool, book, vendor or publisher that has made a long-standing contribution to the field or has set the standard in its class. This year, Macromedia garnered the honor for its Dreamweaver Web editing tool—now nearly as ubiquitous as Microsoft Word.

The Jolt Hall of Fame

Products that, release after release, have jolted the industry with their contribution to software development are contenders for the Jolt Hall of Fame award. Past honorees are BoundsChecker, Visual Basic, Visio, O’Reilly and Associates, Visual SlickEdit by MicroEdge, Borland and MSDN. This year’s winner of the engraved crystal ice bucket filled with cans of Jolt cola was Dreamweaver (also the 2000 Jolt Award winner) by San Francisco–based Macromedia. The company’s previous honors include Productivity Awards for ColdFusion MX in 2003, SiteSpring in 2001 and Flash in 2000. The company also took home a Jolt Award this year for its new Studio MX Suite, incorporating Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004, Fireworks MX 2004, FreeHand MX and ColdFusion MX.

“As always, recognizing winners from such a stellar batch of finalists is extremely difficult. In some cases, the surprise entrant overshadowed its more seasoned competition, while in others, perennial excellence took the prize. In the case of Macromedia, we felt it was high time, in this post-boom landscape, to honor a dot-com tool that has become the standard for front-end Web design. It’s paved the way for an entire Jolt-winning suite from Macromedia that

codifies the more esoteric tasks of Web development,” said Weber Morales.

Growing Complexity, New Categories

This year, the number of categories expanded to recognize the increasing sophistication of software development tools in the mobile technology space. The Change and Configuration Management award was separated from the Design and Analysis category, and included security tools. Presaging an increased focus on devices, the security finalists included the competition’s first hardware contestant. Overall, more than 300 vendors nominated their products in the 14 Jolt categories, and from these nominations, 90 products were selected as finalists.

Software Development judges evaluated entrants in 14 categories: Books: General; Books: Technical; Business Integration and Data Tools, Change and Configuration Management Tools; Design and Analysis Tools; Languages and Development Environments; Libraries, Frameworks and Components; Mobile Development Tools; Project Management Tools; Security Tools; Testing Tools; Utilities; Web Development Tools; and Websites and Developer Networks. One product in each category received the coveted Jolt Award, while the three runners-up were honored with a Productivity Award plaque.

Books—General

• Jolt Award: Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (Dorset House)
• Productivity Award: The Art of UNIX Programming by Eric S. Raymond (Addison-Wesley)
• Productivity Award: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck (Addison-Wesley)
• Productivity Award: Pragmatic Starter Kit by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt (The Pragmatic Programmers)

Books—Technical

• Jolt Award: Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide by David Astels (Prentice Hall)
• Productivity Award: About Face 2.0 by Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann (Wiley)
• Productivity Award: Agile Database Techniques: Effective Strategies for the Agile Software Developer by Scott W. Ambler (Wiley)
• Productivity Award: Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective by Diomidis Spinellis (Addison-Wesley)

Business Integration and Data Tools

• Jolt Award: JRules 4.5 (ILOG)
• Productivity Award: DT/Studio 2.0 (Embarcadero)
• Productivity Award: Mapforce 2004 (Altova)
• Productivity Award: Unify NXJ 10.0 (Unify) Change and Configuration Management Tools
• Jolt Award: AccuRev 3.3.1 (AccuRev)
• Productivity Award: BitKeeper Pro 3.0 (BitMover)
• Productivity Award: ClearCase Change Management Solution Enterprise Edition (IBM Rational)
• Productivity Award: Perforce SCM System 2003.1 (Perforce Software)

Design and Analysis Tools

• Jolt Award: MindManager X5 Pro (Mindjet)
• Productivity Award: Borland Together Edition for Eclipse 6.1 (Borland)
• Productivity Award:Visual Paradigm for UML 3.0 (Visual Paradigm)
• Productivity Award: WayPointer 3.0 (Jaczone)

Languages and Development Environments

• Jolt Award: The Eclipse IDE and Application Framework 2.1 (Eclipse—open source)
• Productivity Award: AspectJ 1.1 (Eclipse—open source)
• Productivity Award: IntelliJ IDEA 3.0 (JetBrains)
• Productivity Award: OS X Xcode Tools (Apple Computer)

Libraries, Frameworks, and Components

• Jolt Award: Hibernate 2.1 (Hibernate—open source)
• Productivity Award: JViews 5.5 (ILOG)
• Productivity Award: Prevayler 1.02.002 (Klaus Wuestefeld—open source)
• Productivity Award: JClass ServerViews 4.0 (Quest Software)

Mobile Development Tools

• Jolt Award: Sun J2ME Wireless Toolkit 2.0 (Sun Microsystems)
• Productivity Award: Crossfire 5 (AppForge)
• Productivity Award: IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer 5.6 (IBM)
• Productivity Award: Pocket PowerBuilder 1.0 (Sybase)

Project Management Tools

• Jolt Award: V1: XP 1.0 (Version One)
• Productivity Award: Estimate Easy Use Case 1.1 (Duvessa Software)
• Productivity Award: Microsoft Office Project Pro 2003 (Microsoft)
• Productivity Award: TestTrack Pro 6.1 (Seapine Software)

Security Tools

• Jolt Award: Network Probe 1.0 (ObjectPlanet)
• Productivity Award: eSafe 4.0 (Aladdin Knowledge Systems)
• Productivity Award: OrangeSpam 1.0.3 (Cobion)
• Productivity Award: Reactivity 2300 Series XML Firewall (Reactivity)

Testing Tools

• Jolt Award: TestComplete 3.0 (AutomatedQA)
• Productivity Award: Intel VTune Performance Analyzer 7.0 (Intel)
• Productivity Award: Jtest 5.0 (Parasoft)
• Productivity Award: QA Wizard 2.2 (Seapine Software)

Utilities

• Jolt Award: PopChart, OptiMap and Builder 5.0 (Corda)
• Productivity Award: DevPartner Studio Professional Edition 7.1 (Compuware)
• Productivity Award: Virtual PC 2004 (Microsoft)
• Productivity Award: Visual Build Professional 5.0 (Kinook Software)

Web Development Tools

• Jolt Award: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 (Macromedia)
• Productivity Award: Adobe Creative Suite (Adobe)
• Productivity Award: SOAPscope 2.0 (Mindreef)
• Productivity Award: WebLogic Workshop 8.1 (BEA)

Websites and Developer Networks

• Jolt Award: IBM developerWorks (IBM)
• Productivity Award: JavaRanch.com (JavaRanch.com)
• Productivity Award: O’Reilly Network (O’Reilly)
• Productivity Award: Tigris.org (Tigris.org)

Hall of Fame

• Dreamweaver (Macromedia)