Canonical tops open source list

The latest version of Canonical's Linux distribution, Ubuntu 8.10, still outshines the Linux desktop offerings from Red Hat and Novell, and is the best open source alternative to Microsoft and Apple operating systems, according to eWeek.

However, both Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and Novell's SUSE distributions are ahead of Ubuntu 8.10 in the server space.

Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10, the latest version of the Linux-based operating system for desktops and servers, hit the Internet in early November bearing a modest assortment of updates to its open source software components.

TeraRecon, a provider of advanced visualisation software, is integrating the company's Aquarius iNtuition visualisation solution with many Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (Pacs) vendors. Pacs are used for the storage, distribution and interpretation of radiological images in healthcare, says MarketWatch.

The latest release of Aquarius iNtuition is a thin-client server-based solution, which offers a full suite of workstation-class clinical tools, including cardiac and vascular analysis, endovascular aortic repair planning, lung and colon review, and time-density analysis.

These applications can be integrated into Pacs using TeraRecon's client-server architecture, which places minimal demands on the Pacs workstation's processing resources or an institution's network infrastructure.

By exploding an enterprise's monolithic applications into smaller services that can be used in different contexts, service-oriented architecture (SOA) opens up new security holes, CIO India reports.

Many organisations are embracing SOA as a way to increase application flexibility, make integration more manageable, lower development costs, and better align technology systems to business processes.

The appeal of SOA is that it divides an organisation's IT infrastructure into services, but the SOA approach also turns on its head the traditional security approach used by many enterprises today.