One of the most visible waves involves the use of distributed objects as building blocks for distributed systems. Perhaps the best example of this is also the world's most distributed system. Stranger things have happened. But we can be sure that development teams are going to keep spreading out, and applications are spreading out with them. Whether you're a developer or a coordinator, make sure you've got the right tools before you're spread too thin.
Different tools can help simplify the work of building each piece of a distributed application.
Pure Software's Purify includes error checking, filter analysis, memory-leak detection, and multiple application testing. Charles D. Knutson is president of ComSoft Consulting in Corvallis, Oregon. In a previous life he was a system test manager for Novell NetWare Client Products.