“While SAS Viya is the foundation of the SAS software ecosystem, the company is evolving its portfolio with innovative products to meet diverse user needs”, saidKathy Lange, Research Director for AI Software, IDC.
He adds that new offerings such as SAS Viya Workbench aim to boost productivity, improve efficiency and “build trust among AI developers”.
Viya Workbench allows developers and modellers to work in the language of their choice. Initially they will have a choice between SAS and Python, with R expected to be available by the end of 2024. Viya Workbench offers two development environment options – Jupyter Notebook/JupyterLab and Visual Studio Code.
The use of SAS analytic procedures (PROCs) and Python native APIs within Viya Workbench accelerates the development of high-performance AI models. Additionally, custom Python libraries can significantly improve speed and performance with minimal changes to a developer’s existing Python program.
Viya Workbench is a flexible, scalable, and efficient development environment that can be terminated with minimal IT support. The dedicated analytics environment features custom CPU/GPU compute power to meet project needs.
“The many challenges developers face aren’t just minor annoyances – they are obstacles that prevent questions from being answered and work from getting done”, said Jared Peterson, Senior Vice President of Engineering, SAS.
Viya Workbench will initially be available through the Amazon AWS Marketplace in the second quarter. Additional supported cloud service providers and a software-as-a-service deployment option are expected to be available in the future.
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The first release is the serverless SQL D1 database. With this release, the GA platform also gets a number of features requested from the beta release, such as support for 10 GB databases, new data export functionality, and improved query debugging.
Other features that will be available in future versions of the platform include larger databases, more time travel capabilities for database branching, and new APIs for querying and creating databases.
Hyperdrive is the next version that Cloudflare has released. It allows users to transform regional databases into globally distributed databases.
Over the next few months, Cloudflare plans to add new features to Hyperdrive, including MySQL support, the ability to connect to databases on private networks, and more options to configure strategies and more.
The last of the company’s three new products is Workers Analytics Engine, which allows developers to add analytics capabilities to their products.
In addition to releasing the new products as GA, the company also announced two new features for its Queues product, which is in open beta. Users can now download messages and delay messages, which can be useful in situations where the underlying infrastructure has speed limits.
]]>The company will use the new funding to continue to develop its technology and add new features to the platform.
“It has become a remarkably difficult task for developers to confirm crucial questions like, ‘What dashboards will this schema change affect?,’ ‘Can I deploy this code change safely?’ or ‘What data pipelines do we have that are not working?’” said Alon Nafta, CEO and co-founder of Foundational.
“The inability to validate simple code changes, and the lack of visibility and controls, and the time-consuming nature of data engineering create a dramatic bottleneck on innovation and adoption of data and AI”, he added.
By building partnerships with data organizations around the world, Foundational aims to redefine the way large-scale data platforms are built and maintained. With this funding, the company will continue to evolve its technology and introduce new product capabilities for data developers.
]]>Microsoft Graph Toolkit users can now directly edit items, view colleagues’ presence and profiles, and take advantage of the general availability of search components, which are now fully supported.
These updates are intended to improve tasks and interactions across the Microsoft ecosystem.
One notable enhancement is the adoption of the latest version of the underlying Lit framework, which introduces asynchronous rendering. This update enables components to more effectively manage their state, reducing unnecessary re-rendering. As a result, memory usage and processing cycles are optimized for the entire webpage.
Another improvement is the introduction of registration of toolkit components. This method ensures that only the components that are actively used in a project are included in the final package, significantly reducing its size. This approach not only cuts unnecessary bulk from applications, but also improves load times and overall performance.
Microsoft urges new users to discover the toolkit’s capabilities by utilizing its extensive documentation and introductory guides.
What is Microsoft Graph Toolkit?
Microsoft Graph Toolkit is a universal collection of framework-agnostic components and certificate providers designed for seamless integration with Microsoft Graph, which is a platform for connecting various Microsoft 365 services and data. These components are customizable, function in a ready-to-use form, and are compatible with any web framework and modern browsers.
]]>Duet AI for Developers presents an AI-powered coding assistance tool seamlessly integrated into your Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This tool empowers developers with features such as code completion, code generation, chat functionality, and Smart Actions—streamlining tasks through one-click shortcuts for repetitive actions, including the creation of unit tests and code explanations.
Compatible with various widely-used Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Cloud Shell Editor, Cloud Workstations, IntelliJ, PyCharm, and Visual Studio Code, this ensures that developers can maintain their flow state. Seroter highlights that this capability allows developers to access all necessary information and assistance seamlessly within their chosen IDE, eliminating the need to switch platforms.
“What I would usually have done as a developer when I start building stuff, because I have the memory of a goldfish at this point, I don’t remember anything, so what do I do? I jump to search results, I jump to Stack Overflow, I troll for blogs, I’m watching a video, I’m doing whatever. And I’m breaking my flow all the time. And so with this, if I can keep you in a flow state longer, everybody wins. And so here I can stay in my IDE and get good answers and get trusted answers and get back to work. I haven’t broken flow”, said Richard Seroter, chief evangelist at Google Cloud.
Currently, it caters to a diverse range of programming languages, surpassing 20, such as C, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python. Google has successfully collaborated with more than 25 industry partners, including Confluent, Datadog, HashiCorp, JetBrains, and MongoDB, to enhance the solution with integrations and features.
Additionally, the company announced a forthcoming upgrade for all Duet AI services to leverage Gemini in the next few weeks.
To encourage adoption, Duet AI for Developers will be available for free until February 1, 2024, after which it will transition to a subscription-based model.
]]>This tool aims to address the challenges associated with generative artificial intelligence that is powered by large language models (LLMs), or model-based. While such AI models offer a variety of business use cases, they also bring risks and complexities, such as using untested training data and generating results that are not explainable, IBM explained.
Watsonx.governance is designed to help organizations manage these risks, increase transparency and prepare for compliance with future regulations targeting AI.
“Company boards and CEOs are looking to reap the rewards from today’s more powerful AI models, but the risks due to a lack of transparency and inability to govern these models have been holding them back,” said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D, senior vice president of product management and growth at IBM Software.
“Watsonx.governance is a one-stop-shop for businesses that are struggling to deploy and manage both LLM and ML models, giving businesses the tools, they need to automate AI governance processes, monitor their models, and take corrective action, all with increased visibility. Its ability to translate regulations into enforceable policies will only become more essential for enterprises as new AI regulation takes hold worldwide”, he added.
IBM Consulting has expanded its strategic capacities to support clients in the responsible expansion of AI. This encompasses automated model governance and organizational governance that spans people, processes, and technology.
IBM consultants are adept at establishing AI ethics boards, influencing organizational culture, delivering training, overseeing regulations and risks, and tackling cybersecurity threats, all with a focus on human-centric design. Watsonx.governance is integrated into the IBM Watsonx AI and data platform, featuring AI assistants, the watsonx.ai enterprise studio, and the watsonx.data governed data store. Furthermore, IBM has implemented intellectual property protection for its watsonx models.
]]>In this release, Docker Extensions transitions from beta to GA. The Docker Extensions feature connects the Docker toolchain to application development and deployment workflows. To make it easier to use Docker Extensions, the ability to search, install, and uninstall extensions directly from the search bar has been added.
With Docker Desktop 4.16, Docker Extensions and the Docker Extensions SDK are now generally available to all platforms and users.
The Docker Extensions feature allows you to extend Docker Desktop with debugging, testing, security, networking and much more. You can also create custom add-ons using the Extensions SDK.
Since its launch, Marketplace Extensions has expanded from 15 initial extensions to over 30, with more to come.
Here’s more information about extensions and enhancements on Docker:
Docker now enables analyzing an image for vulnerabilities to be up to 4 times faster – and use up to 76% less memory. These performance improvements, which will be introduced as part of Docker Desktop 4.16, can be of great value when working with larger (over 5 GB) images.
To perform the analysis, you must select an image in the Images tab. An analysis will automatically run so that the user can be alerted to vulnerabilities in underlying images and dependencies.
Additional changes are described in the release notes. Many Docker Desktop dependencies have also been updated in this release, in particular Docker Compose is now version 2.15.1, Containerd is version 1.6.14, and Docker Engine has been updated to version 20.10.22. A number of bug fixes have also been made.
Docker Desktop 4.16 is now available. Docker Desktop is free for small businesses, but requires a paid subscription for larger organizations.
]]>Index signatures for symbol and template string patterns are another new feature. Index signatures are used to describe objects that have properties that must use a certain type, but until now they could only be used on string and number keys.
Also, in TypeScript 4.4, the “unknown” type will be the default for catching variables. According to Microsoft, in JavaScript, any type of value can be thrown and then caught in a catch clause, and in the past, TypeScript typed catch clause variables as “any,” but once it added the “unknown” type, it realized it was a better choice than “any” for catch clauses. This release introduces a new flag called –useUnknownInCatchVariables that changes the default type to “unknown” from “any.”
Another new flag being introduced in TypeScript 4.4 is ‘–exactOptionalPropertyTypes,’ which specifies that property types be interpreted as written. According to Microsoft, this flag is not part of the –strict family and must be turned on if a developer wants to make use of it.
TypeScript 4.4 also added support for static blocks in classes, which is an upcoming ECMAScript feature. Static blocks can be used to write a sequence of statements with their own scope that are able to access private fields within a containing class. This allows developers to write more complex initialization code with the capabilities of writing statements, full access to a class’ internals, and not have to worry about leakage of variables.
The ‘–help’ option has also been updated in this release with changes to descriptions of compiler options and updated colours and other visual separation.
More information about the release is available here.
]]>Deno Deploy was released as a first beta on June 23, with a series of beta releases set to follow. General availability is planned for the fourth quarter of 2021. A multitenant JavaScript engine running in 25 data centres worldwide, from Taiwan to Montreal, Los Angeles, and London, Deno Deploy integrates cloud infrastructure with the Google V8 virtual machine, allowing developers to develop locally and deploy globally.
Built on the same systems as Deno CLI, Deno Deploy is free for developers to use during Beta 1, with users able to sign up to use it via GitHub. During the past eight months, Deno’s developers have been designing the hosted service to supplement workflows with the open source Deno CLI.
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