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Java Jive at Javits

By Fred Klingener

 

Java Business Conference Show Floor.SUN MICROSYSTEMS came to New York City the second week of December to host the Java Business Conference at the Javits Center. The conference was an multiple opportunity for Sun: to announce the release of major pieces of its Java development software, to run a two-day Java University, and to host three days of conference sessions to present their buzzword-compliant vision of a portable, cross-platform, "Write Once, Run Anywhere"(tm) future of the World Wide Web, and the way the businesses will use it to make money. Oh, yeah. And to party.

Uppers

On the surface, there were plenty of reasons to party. The value of Sun's stock had quadrupled over the past twelve months and split two-for-one Tuesday night. Sun was obviously pleased with the way the government's antitrust action against Microsoft was going. It had used the occasion of the Business Conference to release the latest version of Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and had just released the piece of the Java puzzle most sought after by Web developers-the Java Development Kit for the Linux operating system. Further, Java on the Web had matured past those annoying scrolling banners and had become the basis for sites such as Lands' End, Eddie Bauer, ESPN Courtside Live, and Range Rover. Finally, Sun was surrounded by its partners, suppliers, and a couple hundred Java True Believers in the holiday season in NYC.

Downers

Lurking just below the surface, there were a few downers to temper the partying. Sun hadn't been able (in time for the release of J2EE, anyway) to get its partners (IBM, HP, Oracle, etc.) to sign onto the latest conditions for the branding of the Java platform, and Sun had just pulled out of its most recent efforts to get an international body to declare Java a standard. If the financial analysts at the press conferences at Java Expo were fretting about it, the markets were not. Sun's share price went up about six points that day.

Java Logo.For reasons known only to the marketing people who dream these things up, Java2 is the name of the third major release of the Java platform, and between the second and third release it tripled in size. In private discussions with Sun people at the Javits kiosks, if you use words like "bloat" or "bog-slow," they get defensive. I think that they regard this as a temporary problem to be solved by faster processors, cheaper memory, faster network communications, and advances in Java technology-a predictable attitude for visionaries.

The vision

So the J2EE rollout was supposed to be such a big deal? How come? First, I have to talk about the current Java Platform and how it forms the foundation for Sun to realize its vision. For most of its life, Sun has recognized that "The Network Is The Computer(tm)" (remember that?), and it now sees the rest of the world catching up-just that "The Network" is now called "the Internet." To (maybe) you and me, the Internet is HTML pages delivered to our desktop computers through dialup phone lines. According to Sun's visionaries, this model will be antique in a very short time. To those visionaries, the Web will soon be extended both up and down to include the Enterprise (buzzword for "business") and Consumer Spaces (buzzword for mobile phones, palm computing devices, TV set-top boxes, game consoles, etc.) by people trying to get us to spend money on stuff.

Java2 platform

The structure of the Java Platform reflects this model of the future Web. Java2 Micro Edition supports development of software for the "Consumer Space,"-software that has limited functionality for small or nonexistent screens and tiny virtual machines to run the programs. In the middle is the Java2 Standard Edition, which supports development of the types of programs that will run on our desktops (buzzword = "client"). J2EE completes the triad, intended to build the programs that run on corporate servers and run on or communicate with corporate mainframes.

How to Make Money Giving Away Software.

We've heard that "business-to-business" Web growth is one of the next big things. Sun hopes that it'll sell a lot of its hardware to corporations, and to do this they have to have the software to run on it. So they give Java away free. Contrasting this business model with that of Microsoft, selling expensive software and giving away hardware (well, at least giving away $400 hardware rebates to hook up to Microsoft Network), gives some clue as to why Bill doesn't get along with Scott.

Star Office Deluxe 5.1 Box.Every attendee received a free CD copy of StarOffice 5.1, an office suite that purports to perform the same functions as and be interoperable with Microsoft Office. It's functional enough to compose this report, though I have had to Ctrl-Alt-Del quite a few times lately. It's free. The end of programming (As we know it)

I carefully scanned the glossy press releases, and I couldn't find the word "programming" anywhere except a single occurrence immediately following the words "without complex." In the standard Vision, development of Web behavior in the future will require no programming as we know it. Developers will just use a visual development tool to assemble commercially available components, written by specialists and called JavaBeans.

JavaBeans The unfortunate (but apparently obligatory) coffee pun obfuscates the fact that Beans serve the same function in the Java world as Visual Basic components do in the Windows world (a notion not even whispered during the three days of the conference). Components, or Beans, are objects that encapsulate data and behavior and may supply translation services among the players on the Web. Beans, like VB components, are built to lead at least two separate lives. The first life is called "design time," during which the developer assembles and links together the parts of his application using a visual development tool such as Visual Basic or Symantec Cafe. The second life is called "run-time," during which the application performs its intended function of translating databases, receiving user clicks, or is otherwise trying to get you to spend money. Sun thinks that JavaBeans are cooler than VB components because they run on operating systems other than Windows.

Did I say party?

Judging from the laughter meter at (Sun Chairman and CEO) Scott McNealy's keynote, everyone hates Gates. McNealy's Top Ten theme was Broadway shows he saw during the NYC Java Expo, which included "Little Shop of Horrors" — Microsoft’s e-commerce offerings, “Les Misérables” — Microsoft’s legal team, “Nutcracker” — with a special guest appearance by Janet Reno.
After the roll-out press conference Tuesday night, everyone trooped into the Crystal Palace at Javits — a jazz combo, open bar, a buffet with real food, and a magical view across the river of the sky-line of ... um... Weehawken. Thursday at lunchtime, Penn and Teller performed part of their Broadway show for everyone who had ponied up the price of the conference.

XML is big news

Judging from the attendance at conference sessions and the frenzy for T-shirts (with cool yin/yang graphics on the back — Java: Portable behavior / XML: Portable data,) the big next-big-thing news was XML. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is an emerging Web standard that permits transmission of data along with its context in a platform-independent way. (Sorry. I just can’t write about this stuff without using buzzwords.) One of the reasons for the rapid advance of the standard
is that everyone needs it. When Gates talks about it in his keynote address at Comdex and McNealy pumps it up at Java Business Expo, it’s clear that there’s a lot of pressure behind it.

What is XML?

So what is XML exactly? Well, it’s a markup language (like HTML) that isn’t much like HTML at all. First, your average browser won’t render it without a LOT of help, and second, the user can define her own tags (eXtend the language. Get it?) It’s all in human-readable text, So what’s it good for? Well, because the user can extend it, it can represent data fragments without losing their context. You’ve wrestled with tab- or comma-delimited files? Seen whizzing by, “3.14159, 2.7183” doesn’t
mean much, but an XML fragment such as <mathconstants> <pi> 3.14159 </pi> <e> 2.7183 </e> </mathconstants> starts to make sense, if that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for. To make it all work, though, there has to be a way to express the overall data model. The language to do this is DTD.

DTD

You’ve never heard of DTD (Document Type Definition)? You’ve never heard of something that brings up a half a million hits on AltaVista? Well, never mind, it’s obsolete. Maybe they’ll talk about “XML schemas” next year, and I’ll write it up. Geeky?

Considering that the target of the conference was The Enterprise, the Java Business Conference wasn’t noticeably geeky, and it didn’t have that desperate feel, or the children in polyester suits you see at the PC or the Web Expos. It was kind of subdued with one or two wool suits and two or four wingtips. If the geeks and slash-dotters were there, they wore their denim shirt company uniforms, but they could be spotted because their bosses didn’t make them take out whatever those things are sticking through holes in their skin.

Disclaimer

As intrepid but mild-mannered correspondent for dacs.doc, I was treated like royalty by the organizers, fed hot buffet lunches, escorted to a front row seat for the keynote (I got to sit this far from Scott McNealy before he gave his talk), got to attend all of the conference sessions, and
was given lots of cool stuff like leather notebook binders and rubber balls that blink when you bounce them on the floor. So you won’t get an unkind word about Sun or Java out of me.


Fred Klingener is president of Brock Engineering in Roxbury. He's interested in using Java for technical applications. He can be reached at klingener@BrockEng.com.

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