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Jolt Awards

The 13th Annual Software Development Jolt & Productivity Awards


UTILITIES

InstallAnywhere Enterprise Edition
Zero G Software


Trent Wheeler, Program Manager

Powerful and easy to use, InstallAnywhere 5.0 makes creating installers a pleasure. Zero G’s software creates installers for your application for almost any platform, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and a myriad of Unix platforms. Installers can be configured for distribution by CD or over the Web, or both. Even better, this flexibility is controlled with one install script.

InstallAnywhere is exceptionally easy to use. You create the install script using a graphical interface, adding the files and directories to be installed and specifying any special actions required. InstallAnywhere handles platform-specific details such as creating environment variables and shortcuts, and registering and installing platform-dependent libraries such as DLLs.

On Windows, InstallAnywhere reads and writes the registry as required; on Linux, RPM integration simplifies package management. For Java applications, LaunchAnywhere Java application launchers create a one-click executable file to start your application with the VM of your choice.

You can brand and customize the installation process with your own logo and installation steps with registration and licensing choices presented to the user during the graphical installation process. InstallAnywhere comes with pretranslated installer panels in 29 languages—a great benefit if you’re distributing your product internationally. Or you can create an installer that runs in console or silent mode—convenient for server-side deployment.

—Guy Scharf

DevPartner Studio Professional Edition
Compuware

Compuware continues the steady evolution of this long-time developer’s friend. DevPartner 7.0’s design enables you to track and trace the behavior of a failed transaction—such as a 500 error—from the browser to the server to the database and back to the browser across multiple processes. This edition also supports Visual Studio .NET, including C#, Visual Basic .NET and ASP .NET, as well as tight integration into the Visual Studio .NET IDE, adding to DevPartner’s already full capabilities of performance analysis, code coverage analysis, detection of incorrect API usage and detection of inefficient code. You say you’re not a pure .NET developer? No problem—DevPartner works its magic in mixed environments, too. 1997 Jolt Award winner.

—Roland Racko

RoboHelp X3
eHelp

If you think enough of your users to provide them with good online help—no matter what platform you’re programming to—RoboHelp X3 (Version .11) should be on your short list of tools, if not a list of one. It creates WinHelp, HTML Help, WebHelp, JavaHelp, Oracle Help and printed documentation—all from the same source files. That source, by the way, can be Microsoft Word documents, Framemaker, HTML, existing help files or help projects for other tools. For Windows help formats, precooked specialized templates are provided for common programs and tools like Excel, Visual C++ and Delphi; Microsoft Word is the native editor. If you’re doing Web applications, RoboHelp HTML is included, a stand-alone tool to create cross-platform, server-based HTML help—and to analyze usage patterns after you’ve deployed it.

—Rick Wayne

Anthill
Urbancode

Agile processes such as XP emphasize frequent builds and communication within the development group, along with early introduction of testing into the lifecycle. Organizations committed to version control systems such as CVS, SourceSafe, ClearCase, but lacking integration with build facilities, will find that Anthill 1.5 offers a way to get control of the build process, including recovery and reproduction of any previous build. An Anthill-controlled build can not only check out code and build it, but also run unit tests and calculate source code metrics. Team members can access build results, as well as ancillary documentation, at an Anthill-updated project website.

—Warren Keuffel


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