I'm currently on a gig at a very interesting SaaS company. We're introducing and creating agile methods, creating a new SOA with MDM and recreating the applications in the new architecture. One snag that we hit is that the company is using WebLogic 9.2 and the most recent Hibernate Tools won't work with the WebLogic WorkShop, which is based on Eclipse 3.1.

Can anyone point me to an archive where I can find Hibernate Tools for Eclipse 3.1? The team can't find it anywhere. What's up Hibernate? Use the latest or forget it?

On a related note, I want to give Kudos and a huge hoozah to Martin Ying, Principal Consultant with BEA Systems, Inc. He's accomplished an incredible amount in the four days he's been here. I heartily recommend Martin to anyone wanting to get started with developing in WebLogic Workshop. He's amazing. Thank you, Martin.

We're constantly recreating our 6D™ project management methodology. It started with combining Clarise's software development and project management experience with my aerospace system engineering and program management experience to adopt strict project controls to modern business needs for responsive software development and system integration processes working through distributed personnel. Well, here's a quick thought... software development and deployment should move away from traditional release cycle concepts to one of continuous process/code improvement within SaaS and virtual appliance environments. No code is alpha nor beta nor production, but a continuum of changes and adaptations responding to fluctuating business needs; done within a well managed environment to prevent security errors, poor performance, "garbage out" and junk code. So as we're assuring that our 6D™ [six dimensions of a project] is in accord with the PMBoK, we'll be keeping this thought in mind as well, and let's think beyond Extreme and Agile programming and continuous process improvement for software quality.

Today, Pentaho launched their new open source project, Software Quality Reports (SQR) for Bugzilla. Bugzilla is a "Defect Tracking System" or "Bug-Tracking System" that allows developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product. We interviewed Lance Walter and Nicholas Goodman of Pentaho for this podcast to get the inside story about this new project.

Software Quality Reports for Bugzilla is the first in a series of focused solutions that Pentaho will be bringing forth in 2006 onward. SQR for Bugzilla is based upon the Pentaho Open BI Suite to provide enhanced reporting and analysis of data from Bugzilla.

Lance pointed out that one reason the first Pentaho solution was for Bugzilla is that Bugzilla has quickly achieved worldwide popularity for its rich functionality, and is used by organizations ranging from open source leaders like The Apache Project, Novell, Open Office, and Red Hat to public- and private-sector organizations including NASA, AT&T, Citigroup, GlaxoSmithKline, France Telecom, Rutgers University, Overstock.com, Siemens and more.

Nick provides a wealth of details on the uses and goals of the SQR for Bugzilla project. Bugzilla is used as a source system for the Pentaho solution, though other source systems, such as configuration management and version control, can be added. The Pentaho SQR for Bugzilla adds reports and analytical slice & dice which allow project managers, end users and developers to answer questions about bug resolution or bug burn that can not be easily answered using only Bugzilla reports. Pentaho SQR for Bugzilla is a separate project, licensed under the open source Mozilla license 1.1, and can be downloaded from Pentaho or Sourceforge.

Screen shots can be found at Sourceforge.

The Pentaho SQR for Bugzilla podcast
is approximately 40 minutes in length and 37 MB in size.

Update: You can read the full press release from Pentaho, New Open Source Project Harnesses World’s Most Popular Open Source BI Suite to Enhance Bugzilla with Reporting and Analysis.

Pentaho and Simba Technologies announced today their Spreadsheet Service allowing Microsoft Office users to access Pentaho OLAP using Microsoft Excel's Pivot Tables. Under the terms of their agreement, Pentaho becomes the exclusive distributor of Simba’s Microsoft Excel connectivity technology for use with Mondrian, which will be delivered and branded as Pentaho Spreadsheet Services.

We're trying to get more information about this new service.

[Quick Update:] Lance Walter of Pentaho quickly responded to our request for more information, and provided a link from the Pentaho Analysis page to the Pentaho Spreadsheet Services FAQ.

Spreadsheet Services is basically a client-side library. It sits on the client machine, and translates ODBO calls from Excel’s PivotTable Service into XML/A calls that go to Pentaho Analysis Services / Mondrian. [Pentaho Spreadsheet Services] works with Mondrian “standalone” – meaning Mondrian deployed without any of the rest of the Pentaho platform. So if you’re an existing, happy Mondrian user and want to use Pentaho Spreadsheet Services, you don’t need to deploy or configure the Pentaho platform to use it.
-- From Lance Walter, VP Marketing, Pentaho