HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The ER/Studio 8.5 Beta Program is Underway

For those of you that use or have used ER/Studio at a current job or past job, know that we have a pretty rabid customer base of very loyal beta testers.  We absolutely enjoy the feedback and it is vital to the product’s success.  Now is your chance to join the fun.

We just launched our ER/Studio 8.5 beta program yesterday, July 9.  If you’d like more information about what we’ve added for this release and/or join in on all the fun of downloading and testing out the new functionality.  You can click on this link here:

Apply for the ER/Studio 8.5 Alpha Testing Program

Note, that this beta program also includes the ER/Studio Portal, and EA/Studio.  Stay tuned for more news in the upcoming weeks/months.

Embarcadero Debuts On-Demand, Multi-Platform Software Development Tool Chest

Embarcadero today announced the launch of All-Access™, the  industry’s first software development tool chest that provides application developers, data architects and database professionals with cost effective, on-demand access to all the tools they need to design, build and run their software applications and data systems.

All-Access enables you to choose from one of four All-Access levels providing on-demand access to 18 award winning development and management products. This is also a cost effective way to access some of Embarcadero’s leading database design and modeling tools. Each of the four levels include on-demand access to Embarcadero’s Online metadata search and reporting tool (ER/Portal), data model viewer tool (ER/Studio Viewer), and business process modeling tool (EA/Studio). Higher All-Access levels will get you full access to our data modeling tool ER/Studio. While some of our other tools like Schema Examiner and Universal Data Models are not currently available in All-Access, they can still be purchased as stand-alone tools and will work seamlessly with the All-Access licensing.

Another cool feature with All-Access is the introduction of  InstantOn™, a breakthrough feature that allows users to easily “click-and-run” All-Access tools on-demand, without installation, either locally or over the network. InstantOn saves  time and allows instant operation in locked-down desktop environments where installing software is problematic. The InstantOn capability is available today for many All-Access tools and will be available for all components of All-Access in Q2 2009.

We think this is a real game changer in the industry, and so do the leading analysts and publications. Here are a few links of what they have to say:

SD Times -  Embarcadero’s all in with All-Access licensing

eWeek -Embarcadero Licensing Strategy Could Broaden Adoption Among Application, Database Developers

InfoWorld – Embarcadero offers on-demand tools access

Hello World! There is an ER/Studio Blog…

“Hello World!”

Sound familiar?  Kinda like the first program you wrote way back in the day?

Well, I’m taking the leap and starting a blog.  So, let me starting with a disclaimer:  The opinions expressed in this blog are mine and mine only.  They do not represent or reflect those of my employer Embarcadero Technologies, a database tools and developer software company.  Feel free to link to any blog post you find helpful/interesting/informative, leave a comment or subscribe to the feeds.  I’ll update the content as much as I can.

So, what would I like to discuss?  Well, of course the wonderful products I manage, namely, ER/Studio, EA/Studio, Portal and Repository.  ER/Studio Enterprise, being the keystone of the product line, which data modelers/data architects use discover and document unknown database, capture business rules surrounding the data, and document the data about the data, will probably garner the most posts, but I’ll try to be fair to the other products.  They have a ton of goodness in them as well.

I’d like to cover everything from tips and tricks, hidden features, general usage and best practices surrounding the products to more general topics such as modeling practices, data architecture, metadata, data governance, etc.  If you have any suggestions please let me know.  This is a journey and it’s always nice to have friends along for the ride.

Stay tuned…