Interview: Ikroop Dhillon on Oracle Solaris Studio

In this interview, we meet Ikroop Dhillon, who is the principal product manager of Oracle Solaris studio. She tells us about herself and about the Oracle Solaris studio.

Speaking with the True Professionals

Anytime we set up an interview with someone in space, we always want to ensure that they are someone with something interesting to say. Believe it or not, that is not always as easy to find as you might imagine. This is why we were so thrilled when we heard back from Ikroop Dhillon about our interview request. 

Dhillon is a great person to speak with about these matters because she is a product manager at Oracle Solaris Studio, and she has overseen countless projects in her time there. Not only that, but we find her insights and information to literally be second to none. It was our greatest pleasure to get to speak with her. 

As someone with a background in computer science, Dhillon is exactly the kind of person that is up-to-date and knowledgeable about the inner workings of computers and all of the latest updates in the industry. She has been continuously learning about how various processes work and what the latest updates are in the world of computers. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we were able to meet up with her and go over the latest as it was developing all around us. 

What we wanted to cover included topics that have not often been discussed by other teams of interviewers before. We knew that Ikroop Dhillon would provide us with the time that we needed to start getting some answers from her about what all of these changes might mean for the brave new world that we are all entering at this time. 

It has been an interesting and challenging time, to say the least, and we can all stand to learn something from those who are tracking the developments as they happen day by day. Dhillon is exactly the kind of person you want in your corner if that is your mission, and that is why we spent such a lengthy amount of time speaking with her at this time. We hope that you gain some useful insights from our conversation. We certainly picked up a lot of information that we wouldn’t otherwise have had access to.

Hi Ikroop, thanks for taking the interview. Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Hi! Thanks for chatting with me today. I am the principal product manager for oracle Solaris studio, and I focus on business development, product strategy, and go-to-market plans.

How and when did you get involved with oracle Solaris studio?

I have an educational background in computer science and was a technical marketing engineer at Intel prior to joining oracle. I have always had an interest in application development and started product management of oracle Solaris studio development tools about seven years ago.

What are the key aims of oracle Solaris studio?

Oracle Solaris studio is an advanced c, c++, and Fortran development environment.

It runs on both Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux operating systems, and with remote development support, developers can build, debug, analyze and optimize applications from virtually any laptop or desktop environment.

Oracle Solaris studio delivers a complete and comprehensive tool suite aimed at simplifying the development of high-performance, secure, reliable, and robust enterprise applications.

So, it doesn't run on windows?

If you go to the oracle Solaris studio download page, then you'll see downloads for Linux and Solaris.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solarisstudio/downloads/index-jsp-141149.html

but a tar file can be downloaded as well, and on any java-aware oses, the user can run GUI tools in "remote mode":

https://blogs.oracle.com/d/entry/using_the_solaris_studio_ide

What do you consider to be the most awesome and unique features of oracle Solaris studio?

Oracle Solaris studio contains some very powerful application analysis tools.

• The oracle Solaris studio performance analyzer helps you optimize your application by enabling you to easily identify and fix performance bottlenecks. It has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that allows you to visualize performance data from various angles and easily drill down and isolate performance issues.
  

•  The code analyzer is another great component of oracle Solaris studio that helps you protect your application from memory access issues, including memory leaks.
  

• In addition to the analysis tools, Oracle Solaris studio also has an award-winning IDE. Based on the NetBeans platform. The IDE is specifically geared for c/c++ developers and is optimized to handle large enterprise applications very well. We focus on making sure that the IDE has a low memory footprint when handling large applications and fast response times.

Under what conditions should oracle Solaris studio be used instead of the c/c++ tools that come with NetBeans IDE?

Oracle Solaris studio delivers advanced performance, memory, and thread analysis tools in addition to those provided by NetBeans IDE. These powerful analysis tools help optimize application performance and improve software reliability and quality.

In addition, Oracle Solaris studio delivers highly optimized c, c++, and Fortran compilers and performance libraries for compute-intensive applications.

If you are looking for a complete and comprehensive c/c++ and Fortran development tool suite, it is recommended that you use Oracle Solaris studio.

What kinds of customers are using Oracle Solaris studio, and what are they doing with it?

Our customers include leading companies in finance, telecommunications, and defense. We also work closely with top oracle ISVs and partners. Our customers rely on oracle Solaris studio for the development of their mission-critical enterprise applications, and most Oracle applications are built using Oracle Solaris studio.

Can you tell us a bit about the social media and related sites that are important for those using Oracle Solaris studio?

The oracle technology network contains the product download (oracle Solaris studio free to use in production) and learning resources, including technical articles, whitepapers, and how-to videos:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solarisstudio/overview/index.html

The oracle.com site includes the datasheet, product briefs, and customer quotes:

oracle.com/goto/solarisstudio

You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter for product and content updates:

https://www.facebook.com/oraclesolarisstudio

https://twitter.com/solarisstudio

Anything else you'd like to share with the NetBeans community?

I just recorded some videos that highlight some important features of oracle Solaris studio.

The oracle Solaris studio performance analyzer also supports java and does a terrific job of optimizing java application performance. It is quite useful if you have a mixed c/c++ and java application.