Real-World Hardware

Take a peek at what four software developers think about the hardware they use—and would like to use.

If software is the lifeblood of computer systems, then hardware is the body that houses it. And this is one body that not only needs to reach peak performance, but must also keep up with the fast pace of technological change.

Hardware requirements vary from company to company, and different kinds of software development work call for different hardware. Meet four developers—all working in different capacities—and discover the resources they use, or would like to use, to do their jobs. How does your system compare? Read on and find out.

The Consultant

Paying attention to today’s pace of technological advancements in both hardware and software is extremely important to consultant John Harrison, a technical architect at Complete Business Solutions Inc. (CBSI). CBSI is a consulting services firm that provides business and technical solutions for large companies such as banks and insurance providers.

Ensuring the necessary hardware is in place is one of the first steps Harrison takes when starting any project. This was especially important during a recent Java development project he worked on, which involved creating a billing system for a gas power provider based in Los Angeles, Calif. Harrison was the team lead for two different teams that were working on developing the system.

“We were retiring one system and moving to another,” says Harrison. The new, Java-based system bills gas customers and provides contract management for account managers. The account managers use the system to access information for contract negotiations. Negotiations can include gas resources, pricing, and delivery of the gas itself.

For this and other projects, Harrison’s first step is to do a readiness assessment with the client. Before any actual development is done, Harrison ensures the client’s hardware system is up to par for true application performance. If it isn’t, he makes recommendations accordingly. “Like quality assurance,” says Harrison, “hardware considerations are often made at the end of a project, but things work better if it’s done at the beginning.”

Harrison mostly works on client-provided machines. He also has a Windows NT laptop he uses to dial into clients’ machines remotely: an NEC Versa LX with a 233 MHz PC (Pentium II), 128MB of RAM, a 5GB hard disk, and a 56k modem. His ultimate system—which would have 256MB of RAM, two 10GB or 20GB hard disks, and a cable modem—would also run Linux.

“The system I have suits my needs well enough,” says Harrison, “but I’m currently looking at a SCSI disk that I could use to hook up an external drive so I can run Linux as a second operating system.” Harrison wants to run Linux because he feels it’s gaining popularity as an operating system for PC platforms. “The current Linux kernel doesn’t work well with Windows NT, so a second drive is the best solution right now.”

Harrison wants a faster modem because he says Internet performance will become more important, and will drive how applications are developed. Additionally, he cites public domain software as an important change the industry has seen in recent years. Other changes he’s noticed include lower prices for most platforms, including higher-end laptops. “Last year high-end laptops were $7,500, including hardware and software. Now even better systems cost $4,500.

The Object-Oriented Developer

If anyone has a grasp on the big picture, it’s Bobbin Teegarden. Teegarden, an object-oriented software developer who recently accepted a position at Active Software (Santa Clara, Calif.), mostly works on large business models and architectures. She uses Java and CORBA ORBs to create generic models that can be reused in different domains, including billing, customer service, sales, and product development. “A typical object-oriented model will have hundreds or thousands of connected objects and classes. You can get wall-size pictures sometimes,” she says.

Prior to her current position, Teegarden worked as an independent consultant with a large utility company as director of technology and chief architect. The project goal was to provide distributed enterprise information to the company’s employees and clients by adapting all of its legacy applications to be enterprise-savvy.

As a consultant, Teegarden mostly worked on PCs at client sites, and their strength and speed varied from project to project. At her home office, she uses a PC for application development, and a Macintosh G3 Powerbook for Internet research, office presentations, and Java development using Symantec’s Visual Café. “I enjoy Macintosh because it’s faster, easier to use, and a more comfortable way of computing,” she says. “I’m very right-brained, and Macintosh has that appeal. I can design it to work how I think, but there aren’t enough software development applications that run on it.”

On her home PC, she has Windows NT and Windows 95 installed. “I have to go back and forth between them because some things don’t run on both,” she says. She cites this rebooting process as a disadvantage.

“I have a RasterOps monitor, which I can plug both the PC and Macintosh into,” says Teegarden, “but I have to unplug it to switch between them. An A/B switch box or a split screen ability would be a good solution for this.”

Her ultimate workstation would have a Macintosh interface and a UNIX backbone. It would also include a large LCD and would “max out whatever the industry is capable of” regarding memory, disk space, and networking capabilities. “I’m looking for true multiprocessing, which includes the network,” Teegarden says. She explains that the ability to process whenever and from wherever she wants would be optimal. “I want as much local intelligence as I can get,” she says.

The Year 2000 / IS Developer

Larry Staley, a programmer/analyst and member of the applied systems management team at MCI/Systemhouse, works behind the scenes to make sure everyone gets the information they need. His team of four people works on an automotive information system that supports the Emergency Road System (ERS) for the California State Automobile Association (CSAA).

CSAA, an affiliate of the American Automobile Association (AAA), provides roadside assistance for drivers who experience car troubles. The ERS tracks all incoming calls, routes them properly, and generates various reports. If everything works correctly, the tow truck driver gets paid on time, the driver’s information is logged, and service records are updated.

The ERS system uses a client/server and batch system. Staley specifically works on the membership interface of the batch system, developing with COBOL (Microfocus and mainframe) and Visual Basic. He is currently working on solving Year 2000 issues that affect the system. His workstation is a Compaq Deskpro with 32MB of RAM, a 2GB hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive. Because the files he works with are so large, he keeps most of them on the network rather than on his desktop. The desktop also dual-boots between OS/2 and Windows NT.

Staley says that the company relies on archived information for its back-up system, but that he thinks a tape back-up system at each desktop would be more convenient for retrieving information. As far as his “ultimate”workstation goes, he would like additional speed and memory capacity. A machine with 8GB of disk space and a minimum of 64MB of RAM would work well for caching database information locally, which is something Staley is interested in pursuing in the future.

The Network Systems Developer

Communication is the key to a good relationship, regardless of whether it’s personal or business-based. As a principal member of the technical staff at Pacific Bell (owned by Southwestern Bell), Chris Bouamalay helps keep the lines open—in more ways than one. She is a systems programmer for network systems engineering, doing underlying support and development for monitoring Signaling System 7 (SS7) networks. She also communicates closely with her immediate team members, who are primarily hardware- and operations-oriented.

A typical network application will generate call records, which keep track of the network resources that are used when a call is placed (for example, if it was completed, busy, toll-free, transferred, and so on). To monitor call setups and completions, compliance with local number portability (LNP), and other SS7 protocol requirements, and to present the call statistics through web interfaces, Bouamalay uses C, C++, Java, JavaScript (ColdFusion), and Perl.

Once the information is gathered, it is stored in databases that are distributed company-wide via the network. Bouamalay’s main focus is on using load balancing and new technologies such as xDSL (a type of digital subscriber line, similar to ISDN, that is being rolled out by phone companies). The goal is to make the information easily accessible to those who need it.

One of Bouamalay’s workgroups has about 20 machines, mostly Sparc 20s that have an average of two external 2.1GB drives and 128MB of RAM. They also have some Sun workstations and Sun 450 servers. The Sun Ultra Enterprise II has a dual processor, two 4.2GB external drives, and 256MB of RAM. It’s extremely important to have reliable machines in this group, she says, since they support network hubs that are working to transfer 70MB to 80MB files. “We’re always upgrading,” says Bouamalay.

“For example, before we acquired our Sun 450 servers, each with four 300MHz CPUs, we used four Sun Sparc 20s to run just one of our main monitoring applications. Otherwise the application wouldn’t run, because it couldn’t keep up with receiving the incoming data while doing the necessary processing at the same time,” Bouamalay says.

Although Bouamalay sees hardware getting better and less expensive, she says her team still relies on an expensive custom platform to do SS7 network monitoring and testing. “But we’re investigating cheaper alternatives (such as a PCI bus to plug into the Sun server) for some monitoring tasks,” she adds. “Also, switched hubs would give us more options than we had with subnetting earlier router/bridge configurations.”

“The only disadvantage to our current system is that, because we are constrained for time, we have to use a separate network that runs on a Windows NT server,” Bouamalay continues. “But there are no solutions we’ve found to bridge between Windows NT and UNIX servers.

Bouamalay’s ultimate workstation would be portable, and would work with any printer. “It would be nice to never have to worry about what I’m running or if I might run out of memory,” she says.

A Few Necessary Evils

Reading about the hardware platforms these four developers use in their daily work, I’m sure you’ll recognize some common themes. Everyone works on multiple platforms: from consultant John Harrison’s Windows and Linux work, to object-oriented developer Bobbin Teegarden’s Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX platforms; from Larry Staley’s OS/2, Windows, and mainframe environments, to Chris Bouamaley’s high-end UNIX telecommunications machines and lower-end Windows NT network.

Although dual-booting systems seem to be common, switching from one operating system to another isn’t easy, and is often a cause of frustration. Additionally, the ability to print easily is highly sought-after. Almost everyone voiced concerns surrounding the printing issue.

In the best of all worlds, problems caused by switching between operating systems or printing hassles would be minor annoyances that wouldn’t affect software development. But if the experience of these developers is any indication, even with many of the latest and greatest resources at hand, there are bound to be a few necessary evils.