News

Wasmer’s WCGI pairs WebAssembly and CGI

WCGI allows existing CGI applications to be reused by compiling them to WebAssembly, taking advantage of ultra-small packages and sandboxed execution, Wasmer says.

C rival Zig language cracks Tiobe index top 50

Systems programming language that aims to replace C makes the Tiobe index top 50 for the first time. The Google-led Carbon language, an alternative to C++, ranked 168th.

Meta open-sources ‘significantly faster’ build system

Buck2 is a large-scale build system written in Rust and designed for speed. Builds complete twice as fast as with Buck1, the company says.

Here’s why Oracle is offering Database 23c free to developers

Oracle’s change in strategy to release a developer-first version of its new database is linked to the company’s plans to defend its market dominance and look at innovative ways to acquire new customers, analysts said.

Databricks launches lakehouse for manufacturing sector

The new industry-specific lakehouse could help Databricks increase lakehouse adoption, according to analysts.

Apple’s Swift 5.8 previews Swift 6 features

Swift 5.8 brings improvements to the developer experience, enhanced Windows support, and the ability to try out features coming in Swift 6.

Visual Studio Code 1.77 previews GitHub Copilot chat

Preview of deeper Copilot integration allows VS Code users to view Copilot suggestions inline and ask Copilot questions as they code.

MariaDB SkySQL adds serverless analytics, cost management features

The new release of the managed database as a service removes the need for extracting, transforming, and loading data by adding a ‘serverless’ layer powered by Apache Spark SQL.

JetBrains updates IDEs for Java, JavaScript, Ruby

Improvements to the IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, and RubyMine IDEs range from smoother zooming and navigation to faster code completion, dependency resolution, and Git commits.

Google ambushes on-prem PostgreSQL with AlloyDB Omni

Google is previewing a downloadable, ML-tuned version of its PostgreSQL-compatible AlloyDB, which it claims is 2x faster than standard Postgres for transactional workloads and 100x faster for analytical queries.

Generational garbage collection promises to boost Java performance

Generational Z Garbage Collector would lower garbage collection CPU overhead, lower heap memory overhead, and reduce the risk of allocations stalls, OpenJDK proposal says.

YugabyteDB Managed adds managed command line interface

The new updates to the managed version of Yugabyte’s open source distributed SQL database include support for AWS PrivateLink, improved observability, and faster scalability.

GitHub Copilot X will tap ChatGPT-4

Future version of GitHub’s AI-powered programming assistant, now in limited preview, will add a chat interface and extend to pull requests, docs, and the command line.

AWS adds ML-based call analytics capabilities to Amazon Chime SDK

Spin 1.0 aims to simplify WebAssembly microservices

Fermyon Technologies’ Spin, an open source framework for building event-driven microservice applications with WebAssembly, is now available in a stable release.

Oracle Helidon taps virtual threads for ‘pure performance’

Version 4.0.0 of Oracle’s Java microservices framework introduces a web server based on virtual threads, which promise both outstanding performance and simpler programming.

Oracle adds machine learning features to MySQL HeatWave

In addition to updating MySQL HeatWave’s AutoML and Autopilot, Oracle will now offer a small shape for the service, targeting customers with smaller volumes of data.

Visual Studio Code 1.76 shines on usability, pytest

February 2023 release of Microsoft’s code editor enhances usability for profiles and remote development, improves IntelliSense for pytest in the Pylance extension.

Splunk adds new security and observability features

New security and observability features will be added to Splunk Mission Control and its Observability Cloud to identify threats and incidents more efficiently, the company said.

SAP to add more governance capability for low-code tool Build

The new feature, which will enable IT teams to monitor the usage, performance and data access to applications developed on Build, is likely to be added soon, the company said.

JDK 20: The new features in Java 20

The latest upgrade of standard Java, now available in a production release, incubates or previews a number of new capabilities including virtual threads and structured concurrency.

Oracle: Java subscribers can renew under old terms

Existing Oracle Java SE licensees may continue with their per-processor or per-user plans, and do not have to move to the new per-employee subscription, Oracle says.

What’s new in TypeScript 5.0

Latest upgrade to Microsoft’s strongly typed JavaScript, rebuilt to use ECMAScript modules, promises to be smaller, faster, and simpler.

Oracle’s Container Engine for Kubernetes to offer managed virtual nodes

The addition of virtual nodes to Oracle’s Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) will let enterprises run their development operations without having to manage infrastructure.

AWS Chatbot now integrated into Microsoft Teams

The chatbot’s integration will allow enterprise users to get notifications about events such as security risks and the status of system health from within Teams, and also let them run command line interface commands to run notebooks.

.NET 8 Preview 2 brings Blazor performance boosts

ASP.NET Core improvements in the second .NET 8 preview include a high-performance Blazor component for displaying tabular data and partial JIT compilation for Blazor WebAssembly apps.

Docker sunsets Free Team subscriptions, roiling open source projects

Docker users with a legacy Free Team organization subscription have been told they have one month to convert to a paid tier or risk losing access to their data.

TypeScript 5.0 rebuilt to use ECMAScript modules

With TypeScript 5.0, the TypeScript development team has restructured the entire codebase to use ECMAScript modules, reducing package size and improving performance.

Google joins the generative AI parade with new previews

Tibco’s Spotfire 12.2 release adds streaming and data science tools

The latest iteration of Spotfire makes it an end-to-end data visualization and analytics platform combining data science, streaming and data management tools.

Eclipse Java downloads skyrocket

Eclipse Foundation reports more than 12 million downloads of its Temurin Java SE binaries per month over the past three months.

ChatGPT now chatting via Azure OpenAI Service

Developers can now integrate ChatGPT directly, using a token-based pricing system, into a host of different enterprise and end-user applications.

GitHub begins 2FA rollout

GitHub will begin selecting accounts for enrollment in two-factor authentication next week. All users will be required to use 2FA by year-end.

Wasm comes to R

Posit, formerly know as RStudio, has debuted an early version of an R package, aimed at developers, that brings WebAssembly (Wasm) to R.

Microsoft introduces reliable web app pattern for .NET cloud apps

Microsoft’s reliable web app pattern is a set of best practices for migrating ASP.NET web applications to its Azure cloud.

JetBrains Qodana previews taint analysis for PHP

Qodana automates code quality checks and performs tasks such as spotting duplicates, possible bugs, and formatting issues in a number of programming languages.

Golang returns to the top 10

Go is once again the world’s 10th most popular programming language, per the March 2023 edition of the Tiobe index.

Data Workshops for Ukraine: Learn a skill and support a cause

The two-hour workshops offer training in data visualization and analysis with R, Python, and SQL and cost just $20 or €20. Next up is ChatGPT in R.

Dremio adds new Apache Iceberg features to its data lakehouse

The new features include the ability to copy data and roll back changes in Apache Iceberg tables.

Java source code could switch to UTF-8 encoding

The current state of ‘ill-defined encoding’ creates unnecessary problems when working with the JDK codebase, an OpenJDK proposal says.

EDB’s Postgres Distributed 5.0 boosts availability, performance

The distributed version of the open source, object-relational database system is available as an add-on, dubbed EDB Extreme High Availability, for EDB Enterprise and Standard plans, the company said.

C++ 23 language standard declared feature-complete

Forthcoming update of C++ will include a standard library module named std. Attention of the ISO C++ Committee now turns to C++ 26.

Google makes AlloyDB for PostgreSQL available in 16 new regions

The PostgreSQL-compatible, fully managed database-as-a-service will come with a new feature called cross-region replication, which is currently in private preview.

Deno adds package.json support

Deno 1.31 automatically detects package.json and uses it to install and resolve dependencies, making it easier to move from Node.js.

ASP.NET Core gets full-stack web programming in .NET 8

Blazor United combines server-side and client-side rendering in a full-stack web programming model in ASP.NET Core 8, now available in a first preview.

Tabnine readies AI-generated unit testing for developers

Forthcoming Tabnine Enterprise feature, now in beta, uses artificial intelligence to generate unit tests for Python, Java, and JavaScript code.

Microsoft .NET 8 bolsters Linux support

.NET 8 Preview 1 is now available. Microsoft plans monthly previews with general availability due this fall.

90% of APAC enterprises plan to deploy AI over the next 12 months: Report

The top three business processes in which APAC enterprises are expected to incorporate AI/ML include IT operations, security, and customer support and service.

Snowflake’s Telecom Data Cloud bets on accelerating cloud efficiency

The cloud data warehouse firm has launched yet another industry-specific product, this time aimed at helping companies in the telecom sector to manage their data.

Visual Studio 2022 17.5 arrives with C++ enhancements, AI coding suggestions

Latest upgrade to Microsoft’s flagship IDE also promises more streamlined API development and significantly improved code search.