Java jolts Jacob Javits: A high-caffeine tour

The buzz is back.

During the last few years we’ve seen some pretty dry Unix conferences, some boring NT shows and some who-cares database exhibitions. Meckermedia’s Internet World, held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City December 9 to 13, shook off the industry-conference malaise and welcomed back that good ol’ trade show buzz.

There were new products, new technology announcements, new Internet and Java start-ups, snappy animated demos, and animated sales folks; practically every vendor or product had some current or planned association with Java. Even at the Microsoft ActiveX Pavilion, many participating vendors like Java/VRML mavens Dimension X and Java desktop publishers FutureTense were giving potential customers their Java slant.

Sun-Day morning news

Monday and Wednesday were of particular importance to the Java community. Monday was Sun Microsystems Developer day (yes, let’s get it over with: “Monday was Sun Day”). Sun took the opportunity to make several significant announcements:

• Java Developer Kit (JDK) 1.1 availability
• JavaBeans Development Kit (BDK) beta availability
• The “100% Pure Java” initiative
• JIT Compiler for Solaris availability
• JIT Validation Suite
• New Java Transaction Services API
• New Java Speech API
• New Java Media Framework API (Media Player, Media Capture and Media Conference)
• Java Web Server (formerly Jeeves)
• New Java NC Server
• Java Commerce API beta 1/97
• Java Management – Early Access availability
• New Java Server Toolkit
• Netscape’s Internet Foundation Classes certified “Pure Java” compliant
• New Sun Internet Associate Program

Whew!

For specific details of some of these hot items, see Kieron Murphy’s JavaWorld article “Java undergoes purification ritual at Internet World.”

During Sun Day, speaker Matt Thompson, market development staff engineer with Sun, announced JavaBeans would be available in beta along with the JDK 1.1 when 1.1 was available. His statement seemed to be a bit premature, however, as all Sun press releases stated the Beans Developer Kit (BDK) would be available December 16. Apparently there was some confusion with the release dates of JavaBeans, even within Javasoft.

Cup runneth over (and out)

Another interesting speaker on Sun Day was Alex Zoghlin, president of Neoglyphics and Java proponent, who relayed a story on how he shows his customers the lax security level of ActiveX. Alex said one of his developers created an ActiveX program that, once downloaded to the user’s machine, pulls out all of the Microsoft Word documents in the “My Documents” directory, uploads them to the Neoglyphics server, converts the Word documents to HTML, and then displays them to the user. This little control scares the bejeebers out of his clients. Alex pointed out that he has a legitimate digital signature for his “Word to HTML” service and noted the digital-signature service companies will give you official digital authentication if your program is not “malicious.” The hard part is determining what “malicious” really means.

Breakfast blend and evening espresso

Wednesday was the official appointed Java Day of the week (although it seemed like every day was Java Day), and it didn’t disappoint. From Sun’s El Excellente James Gosling’s keynote “State of Java” in the morning to Marimba brewmeister Arthur van Hoff’s “Future of Java and Next Generation Information Distribution” delivered to the JavaSIG in the evening (with Starwave’s Patrick Naughton in the audience), Wednesday’s presentations were filled to the brim with caffeinated discussions.

Gosling was interesting as always and full of useful and controversial tidbits. After conventionally saying that Java was a fusion of Smalltalk, Simula 67, FORTRAN, C and some distributed features, the demanding Juan surprisingly said that “there is a high density of drivel in Java books.” (You got that right, James! Wish most of those Java authors would stress an object-oriented mentality more than they do.)

Gosling also offered these other comments:

• “Java 1.0.3 was never released outside of Sun. It was primarily for NCs.”
• JavaOS is very lightweight. “Calling it an operating system is an insult to real OSs. It’s more a context switcher and framework for device drivers.”
• On the recently announced Microsoft/SAP standardized inventory record format: “Microsoft should not be in that business.”
• On Linux licensing: “The Linux community is a mixture of public-domain and commercial interests. It’s hard to come up with a license for that. But we do want to help the Linux folks.”
• Biggest advantage of Java: “Portability.”
• Biggest disadvantages of Java: “Maturity and possible Balkanization.”

Shocklet beans

The Java Fab Four at Marimba announced that their innovative push product Castanet will be used by Macromedia to distribute Shockwave programs. Director content developers can now use the Java-powered Castanet to distribute multimedia apps and keep them up to date.

Borland: Still percolating

Open JBuilder (nee Latte) was shown in what looked to be an early beta. Despite a few crashes at their booth in the Java pavilion, Open JBuilder looked promising as a contender for the Java IDE crown. I guess marketing was not eating its brain food when Borland renamed Latte. (Open JBuilder is such a nondescript name. What was wrong with Latte?)

Borland’s booth representative claimed Borland is responsible for much of the design of JavaBeans. Apparently much of Open JBuilder was written with the JDK 1.1 and already is JavaBeans-compliant. Without the new Introspection features and revamped event model in the JDK 1.1, it would have been very difficult to create Open JBuilder in the image and likeness of Borland’s dynamic Delphi product. Delphi certainly has many fans, but its popularity would have been greater if it weren’t for the stigma of using Object Pascal. Like Objective C, Object Pascal is an excellent language (superior in many ways to C++), but because it is Pascal, many corporations rejected using Delphi in many enterprise-wide applications. It’s as if a critically acclaimed film directed by Martin Scorcese featured Pauly Shore as the star. Now with Java as the implementation language, JBuilder has a good chance of success, although market timing and the financial health of Borland are two of its drawbacks. Also with JavaBeans, there’s going to be plenty of upscale competition in the component-glue business.

I want you to javant me

It appears Sun Microelectronics is putting the pedal to the metal on speeding development of new and faster Java chips. The newest Java hardware chip, UltraJava, will handle 2D graphics and MPEG video directly on-chip. Its design was recently licensed to NEC, Samsung Electronics, LG Semicon, and Mitsubishi. It will be interesting to see how the UltraJava fares against true multimedia chips like the Mpact chip from Chromatics. We might be seeing SPARC vs. MIPS again….

Sun’s Solstice WorkShop now includes the Java Management API, which was adopted by Apple, AutoTrol, Bay Networks, Cisco, Computer Associates, Legato Systems, Novell, OpenVision, Platinum Technologies, Tivoli, and 3Com. Not bad company to be networked with.

Light and sweet

One of the most important GUI objects is the spreadsheet or table object. In the financial community, a table object is probably the most important GUI object. I tried for years to convince Sun Microsystems’ GUI developers to create a table or multi-columned list object in each one of their GUI toolkits without much success. Thankfully there are several vendors selling table objects for our favorite programming language. One of the vendors at the Java Pavilion, Stingray Software, demonstrated its own functional table object called Objective Grid (based on their MFC table control), and is pricing it at a very attractive 95 for full source code. In addition, Stingray is offering a pack of other Java GUI classes (tabbed windows, tree view, progress bar) for 95, again with full source code. Sounds like the other table vendors may now have to restructure their pricing.

Javant a job?

It seemed that everywhere on the exhibit floor, vendors were making half-disguised inquires about the whereabouts of Java developer talent. “You wouldn’t know where I can find a few good Java programmers, would you?” was the chant of the day. Seems like the combination of a low supply of available Java developers and companies flush with cash from the buoyant equity markets is raising the demand for Java talent. But remember: It takes more than knowing the syntax of Java to be a strong Java developer. A good grounding in object-oriented methodology is a necessity.

Cup of regular

If you are a Visual Basic programmer, TV Objects’ Applet Designer might be the tool for you. As an “add-in” (love those technical terms) to Visual Basic 4.0, you can create Java programs from within the VB environment and generate Java source code. Check out TV Objects’ Web site at https://www.tvobjects.com. (I enjoyed a good laugh from that image on this home page.)

Novera’s Corporate Coffee

Novera used the conference to make its first public appearance. Novera’s new product, EPIC (Enterprise Platform for Internet Computing), is a series of high-level Java APIs designed to help MIS departments quickly leverage the cross-platform advantages of Java. EPIC includes event-oriented Java APIs for file access, printing, e-mail, telnet, 3270, usage metering, user-defined services, etc. EPIC relies on the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) as a core technology to implement much of its functionality.

Coffee makers

Competing with Sun’s JavaStation Network Computer, Wyse Technology showed its implementation, the Winterm 4000. According to the spec sheet, it uses the 200 MHz StrongArm 110 CPU to run a full implementation of the JVM and comes with Citrix and 3270 client software to run Windows and legacy applications (albeit remotely); X Window support is due in mid-1997. IBM showed its NC, which looked like one of their extremely popular and ultra-thin laptop PCs without the LCD screen.

One of the more interesting NC companies, Flat Connections (Fremont, CA), described its embedded NC strategy as promoting a “flat architecture.” Instead of being subservient physically to PCs and thereby employing a “hierarchical or star-based architecture,” Flat Connections proclaims all devices should have (Java) intelligence and exist as “flat” peers. Its first NC, called Sumba, includes the JavaOS (licensed from JavaSoft) and uses the National Semiconductor NS486 as its CPU. Flat Connections has high hopes for embedding this core into low-end printers, digital cameras, and set-top boxes. Its high-end embedded NC architecture uses a PowerPC 403GC processor on an ISA card with a 33kbps DSVD modem to power its Java VM. Also included on this card, called Bali, is a micro-firewall that provides encryption and real-time virus checking. Keeping with the Indonesian island theme, Flat’s third product is called Madura and is a Java-based communications processor. Sounds like some very interesting products in the embedded network computer market are starting to appear; along with Flat Connections, there is the ever-present Larry Ellison and Oracle, Diba, and of course Sun Microelectronics.

Select taste_of_java from Oracle

Oracle announced several tasty Java gems at the show. J/SQL, which one representative described as embedded SQL for Java, was shown. J/SQL creates JDBC interfaces to Oracle databases in a concise manner. The database mavens also announced that they are embedding the JVM into their database so that Java stored procedures can be executed directly within the database. Sounds like servlets to me.

You can smell the coffee from here

Contigo Software demonstrated a very useful Java program called Itinerary that allows distributed presentations over the Internet. Need a user to see on his screen exactly what you are seeing on your screen? Or want to give a distance-learning course? Need a distributed help desk where you are driving the software and several users on your Intranet need to watch? Itinerary is Contigo’s answer. Looks very promising.

House blend

Art Technology showed an interesting Java IDE called Dynamo. As a proof of concept, the Artisians created some other products using Dynamo: Ad Station for web advertising, Retail Station for Internet storefronts, and Dynamic Profile Station for real-time demographics collection.

Dancing goats

RandomNoise showed one of the more exciting Java development products at Internet World. Its exciting Coda product allows Web developers to create Web pages that are 100 percent Java (almost said “100% Pure.”) With Coda, you no longer have to use hackish and gruesome

convolutions to get page elements exactly where you want. Since Coda is written in Java, Web developers get pixel-based precision of all on-screen elements. Similar to Dimension X’s Liquid Motion Pro animation tool for Java, RandomNoise’s content tool offers many different types of animation styles on your pages. The package even includes some spiffy-looking GUI controls. Beyond simple looks, Coda facilitates the creation of interactive pages so that attractive front ends to commerce sites can be built. Looks like a hot product.

Java and doughnuts

For those corporate types still concerned with applet security, check out SurfinGate from Finjan. SurfinGate is a multi-level security product that checks Java applets (and ActiveX controls) and warns you if a rogue applet is performing some undesirable file or socket I/O. The client-side program retails for a nifty 9.

Next cup

Some exciting Java stuff was shown this year at Internet World. Purportedly, there are already more than 100 Java vendors registered for the Java Pavilion at the upcoming Spring Internet World in Los Angeles (March 10-14). Looks like 1997 will be a good year for Java!