Tech Days Events

Sun Evangelist Doris Chen Shares Her Enthusiasm for jMaki

2008-04-15T18:01:01-05:00

Though I had to miss Sun evangelist Doris Chen’s session, “Building Rich Web Applications Using jMaki,” she graciously consented to an interview.

Q: I understand you had standing room only at your session. Tell us about jMaki.

Chen: AJAX Architect for Sun Microsystems, Greg Murray, developed jMaki in 2006 as an open source universal interface to leverage all the best widgets from different toolkits so you don’t have to learn them individually. It’s one of the easiest and most powerful AJAX frameworks to help people get started with AJAX development. It has a lot of momentum behind it – it’s being covered at JavaOne and AJAXWorld, and there is a jMaki Forum with a strong community.

There are a lot of default settings and templates to get started with so there is not a steep learning curve. In fact, you should be able to start any jMaki application with NetBeans’ help within five minutes. The architectural concept is not difficult, so Java beginners and web page authors can use jMaki. We have a saying that all toolkits are good, but wouldn’t it be nice to leverage all the best widgets from different kinds of toolkits and then have a universal interface so you don’t have to learn each one? With jMaki, people need only have to learn one API or one interface and can leverage all the best widgets in the world.

Q: It takes the pain out of scripting languages.

Chen: Yes, the idea is not to make you write more JavaScript -- on the contrary jMaki has a NetBeans plugin, so you can use it in NetBeans in drag and drop. You can use it to see all the JSP code generated in the NetBeans IDE, and minimize a lot of JavaScript writing. Eclipse also has a plugin for jMaki as well. So you have a lot of tools support.

It is also independent, and you can download it from the jMaki site and make it work with Ruby and Rails; with PHP and so on. It doesn’t have to be used with NetBeans or any IDE to develop. Also, jMaki is a framework that is AJAX toolkit based on JavaScript. So it’s not like a pure Java approach such as JavaServer Faces; it’s more like the AJAX toolkit domain.

jMaki on the Server Side

Q: How does it work on the server side?

Chen: jMaki is not just for the client side. It works well with serverside technology. It works with JPA so you can connect it to a traditional enterprise layer for the back-end data, or database, or EJB, or other kinds of back-end layers. So it works well with a database.

Q: How would it work on the back end?

Chen: You have your own tags for your JSP file and then on the middle layer you have the Server Controller or another JSP to take care of the communication between the view layer and the model layer. The model layer remains untouched.

Q: So that simplifies the developer task.

Chen: Exactly. For people who have existing applications they don’t have to touch the back-end development. All they have to do is perhaps use some of the jMaki widgets to make the client side more interesting and interactive, so it’s more like a rich client application.

Also jMaki works well with the RESTful web services, for example, RSS Feeder, and all the Geocoders which will calculate all the geo locations. And it works with the Flickr search in all the RESTful web services. jMaki provides a very good interface, so all the widgets are tuned in such a way so it will be very easy to adopt those servers to go with the widgets. You don’t have to work a lot with your widgets because on the back end all the data models are consistent. The idea is to have a consistent data model and all the widgets, whether a table or menu or a tree, it’s just a matter of the details of the basic widget itself and the data model supports the GUI components.

Q: Anywhere else jMaki is useful?

Chen: There are a lot of simple applications using jMaki in corporate level projects. Especially I heard about a company that has their own customized widgets and wanted to use Dojo or Yahoo or Google and had a difficult time putting all the different widgets together into a nice framework, so they had a lot of integration and resetting problems. They are doing well now with jMaki.

Q: So looking toward the future, how will jMaki evolve?

Chen: I think the technology and architecture of jMaki is a very good design will probably migrate more into the other NetBeans support for Web 2.0. jMaki may work very well with JavaServer Faces Woodstock components.

We have new technology every day. Some of it will survive and some will not. Technology must be simple enough for people to easily get started with it. It must reduce complexity and improve productivity. jMaki does all of this, so I think it will last a long time.

See Also
jMaki
jMaki Wiki
jMaki Forum

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

From Minsk to Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg -- Russian Developers Have Their Say

2008-04-07T01:38:58-05:00

Saint Petersburg, with its immense intellectual resources, has in recent years taken serious steps to develop its IT sector and is now a strategic city in IT politics in Russia. Tech Days 2007, which was held here last year, was the biggest software developer conference in Russia up to that time. While the number count is not in, it's clear this year's Saint Petersburg's Tech Days is bigger, in keeping with the developer boom that is taking place.

I had the pleasure of spending some time talking with developers here, who appear mostly young (males in their 20s and 30s) and very intense and energetic. Many are university students in the IT department at the state university here in Saint Petersburg. I spoke to a couple from Minsk in Belarus who work for computer firms – one of them explicitly thanked Sun for creating Java and said that without it, he would not have his job. Another expressed surprise at what he could do with JavaFX. One of the few women developers, a local student who was here last time, said, "I have a small wish – I want to someday work for Sun and do something great for the company!"

None of the students I talked to seems to have the luxury of being casual about their future in the way that many American young people seem to be. Economic necessity seemed to dictate their technology preferences more than anything else. When I asked about application or language preferences, the requirements of the markets inevitably determined their answers – I had to probe to get beyond that. I got the impression that their likes and dislikes of technology were not something they spent a lot of time thinking about.

A Student from Vladivostok

Of great interest was a conversation with an impressive and thoughtful young man from Vladivostok, on the Eastern coast of Russia, next to China and North Korea where the Trans-Siberian railway stops at the Sea of Japan. It's Russia's largest port city on the Pacific. He had paid his way and had flown 10 hours to get to Saint Petersburg and was speaking with people at Sun about possibly working as a Sun Campus Ambassador at his university. These are paid positions in which students build campus communities around Sun's open source platforms and developer tools. He was also trying to set up Java master classes at Vladivostok. He worked as a developer, and was finishing his degree. He said that students studying math or physics at his university wanted to be developers both because that is where they could get secure compensation and to contribute something to the world.

When I asked about the technologies he studied, he said "The current technologies that are most important to me are the development of C++ and applications for mobile devices. These areas are supported by different companies, like Google with Android, Motorola with cell phones, and many others. So currently I work in these fields. A huge number of my classmates are working on software for operating systems – Windows, Linux and Solaris. I am currently moving to Java, which is why I am here. The market situation is such that you need to know more than C++ -- you need to know Java, JavaScript, JavaFX and more, to be employed."

When I asked him what technologies he liked, he said it was not a question of what he liked but what technologies are needed for a given project. What is the best part of programming for him? "The best part," he said, "is the teamwork that is essential to coding. Working in a team requires cooperation and helping each other. If we fail to help each other the whole project will fail and be canceled and we will fail in the market."

And the most difficult part? "Finding the best algorithm, the best mathematical rules, and calling upon your background from your university. Sometimes people who are fresh from university know the solution to a problem but don't know how to implement it. This is also where teamwork is essential. Developers have to work together."

I asked why he had focused on C++. "At my university we study the basics of C++ programming and each student needs to define whether they need this or not. If you say yes, it's up to you and you must learn it by yourself. Teachers will not influence you or push you and tell you what is important for a future job. I know a huge number of students who don't like this and quit."

His comment made it clear that he was being forced as a student to be his own advocate and an entrepreneur who had to figure out on his own what skills he could develop and sell to the world. He said that 60% of his class of 50 computer science students had dropped out of the program in the last two years.

When I asked why he wanted to become a Sun Campus Ambassador, he said, "The best way to learn something is to teach it to others." He has traveled all over the world, from Europe to China to the US, and feels that something unique is happening in Russia as big companies hire Russian developers.

And why had he traveled here when most of what he wanted to learn could be found online? "I wanted to make sure my understanding was right," he said.

Sun and Microsoft

I had another interesting conversation with a man in his 30s who worked for a big American company in Russia. I asked him why Russians make good developers. "Maybe something in our national character makes it possible for us to dig deeper into some things," he observed. "We have a lot of intellectual curiosity in Russia. For me, it's interesting to learn new technologies and play with new programming languages."

When I asked about his software interests, he said, "I am working in Java EE specializing in servlets and JSP. I am mostly interested in today's sessions on JRuby and Ruby because it's syntactic sugar -- it's very beautiful and powerful. I am very impressed with it. I am working for a big US company in Russia and developing some applications for it."

When I asked what he looked forward to in the future, he said, "In Java SE 7, I would like closures and meta-programming generalization, but not generics, which is quite restricting. I want meta-programming like we have in C++. I'm looking forward to Java SE 7 and a battle between Sun and Microsoft. The competition between Java and .Net is good for developers because it brings new features in languages, new algorithms, and new architectural design. It's a really interesting time to live in."

It's been a while since I've heard someone bring up the battle between Sun and Microsoft. With that, he got back in a long line of people eager for the free beer.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Project Indiana Brings Solaris to Linux Developers

2008-04-07T01:15:37-05:00

Sun’s VP of developer and community marketing, Ian Murdock, invited developers to reconsider the value of Linux in terms of open-source features that have been added to the Linux kernel and to take a look at Sun’s efforts to make Solaris more accessible and appealing to Linux users. Murdock, the founder of the Debian Linux distribution and former CTO of the Linux Foundation, has been with Sun for about a year, during which time he has been asked at least “a thousand times” (according to him), “What’s a Linux guy doing working for Sun?” His Friday morning keynote at Tech Days Saint Petersburg consisted of a detailed answer to this question.

When people talk about the Linux distribution - Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu etc. - they are really talking not about the Linux kernel but the open source software that has aggregated around the kernel and the business model that goes with it. From this perspective, Linux is Firefox and Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, the Gnome Desktop environment, the X Window system, the GNU utilities and system libraries and so on.

Ian pointed to the similarities between Linux and Solaris: both use the same open source applications, the same desktop environment, same graphics subsystems, the same basic interfaces and utilities, but with different implementations and interfaces. Things are dramatically different in the Solaris kernel where Sun drives most of the operating system innovation with ZFS, DTrace and other technologies. In contrast, the innovation that Linux brings to the market is higher up the stack in the desktop environment and user components.

The Linux distribution could be thought of as a cloud of technologies. For instance, Linux distributors such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, or SUSE work with those technologies to build a complete operating system that developers can install and use, and then pull down packages from the open source community to resolve dependencies. Thus, developers can be spared the work of aggregation and integration.

Solaris 10 has a different structure, more like a monolithic product. There are rigorous processes and procedures at Sun that determine how technologies like DTrace and ZFS fit into the product and go to market.

Project Indiana – The “Distro-ification” of Solaris

Murdock then turned to Project Indiana, a part of OpenSolaris, which is an attempt to “take the tremendous amount of innovation we are driving into the operating system marketplace in the Solaris kernel and combine that with the tremendous innovation in the open-source community.” The goal is to combine the best of both worlds by making Solaris into a cloud with a strong platform with innovative features at the kernel.

Project Indiana moves Solaris from a monolithic model to a modular one with a package system and a new distribution model. It creates a small core operating system that is Solaris based, with a Solaris kernel, Solaris utilities, but adds a package system that allows developers to reach out into the cloud of open-source technology, and pull down in a fully integrated fashion. The result is a core Solaris system with a collection of packaged repositories surrounding it that delivers Sun’s Solaris innovation in DTrace and ZFS, plus the non-Sun innovation of the open-source community.

Closing the Familiarity Gap and Taking Advantage of Solaris Innovation

Murdock identified two central challenges for Project Indiana: closing the familiarity gap and taking advantage of Solaris innovation. The project is challenged with making it as easy as possible for users, developers, and administrators who are familiar with Linux to get up and running with Solaris. And it must also enable Linux users to take maximal advantage of the unique capabilities of Solaris such as DTrace and ZFS, which must be woven into the operating system all the way up the stack.

Sun has added a package system to OpenSolaris that utilizes the ZFS capability that enables developers to take a snapshot of a file system and then roll back to an earlier snapshot. So if developers want to upgrade their system but something goes wrong, they can roll back to the point where everything was working – something Linux can't do.

Project Indiana is also working to bring lower-level operating system technologies such as DTrace up the stack to serve the interests of developers building in new environments like PHP and Ruby.

The Project Indiana developer preview is available, as Solaris CTO and Sun Fellow Jim Hughes demonstrated to the audience, who had been given starter kits. Project Indiana is planning a first release of binary distribution that can be downloaded and installed in May of 2008.

Why Project Indiana?

Murdock pointed to fundamental changes in the computer industry that Project Indiana – and Sun’s open source software strategy -- is responding to. One change is bottom up deployment. “It used to be,” explained Murdock, “that when you wanted to deploy a piece of software, you went through a fairly heavyweight top-down process in which you procured the software, requested proposals, budgets, went through committee approval processes and so on. In the last five to ten years, as technology has become more affordable and prevalent, students come out of college understanding how to take technology and solve problems, and administrators are making decisions without going through heavyweight top-down processes.”

So information technology decisions, according to Murdock, take place much earlier in the development cycle. “No CIO wakes up one day and decides that they need to get some Linux,” he explained. “He just wakes up and realizes that Linux is everywhere.”

Sun continues offering the top-down product for enterprise customers who are accustomed to dealing with vendors in the traditional way, in the form of Solaris. For Solaris 10 users, nothing has changed.

But Sun is adding a delivery mechanism for Solaris for the bottom-up deployer market by making it more accessible and familiar to developers in order to create an added business opportunity for Sun. The idea is to make a product open source and free, familiar, usable and accessible and monetize it through services and support, indemnification, hardware, storage and other Sun offerings.

This is the direction software is heading at Sun.

See Also

Ian Murdock
OpenSolaris Community
Project Indiana Developer Preview
Project Indiana

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Programming for Cool Devices Using the OpenSource Java ME phoneME Stack

2008-04-07T00:37:56-05:00

I realize that I haven’t commented on some of the technology here at the actual event. A percentage of the attendees (less than I would have imagined) use headsets to listen to talks via simultaneous translation, which must be challenging for everyone involved, especially given the technical nature of the sessions. It reminds me that code is not about words but about concepts – words will differ across languages, but concepts can remain the same. I wonder what basic concepts a language must have in order for the concepts of Java to be translated into it. I’ll leave that to the philosophers and anthropologists – it’s one more thing that’s way beyond me.

I took in a session by Terrence Barr a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems and Evangelist of the Java Mobile and Embedded Community, who offered an update on Java ME. It’s on two to three billion mobile handsets. Yes, "b" as in billion! Third-world farmers with access to handheld devices are getting climate information via the web to guide their decisions. It appears that much of humanity is meeting and greeting the web through handhelds – and Java ME. It’s kind of thrilling to be the tiniest part of it, even if only as someone who reports on and promotes it.

Barr has been working on various aspects of Java ME for a number of years, is chairman of the EEMBC (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium) Java subcommittee, participates in the Open Mobile Alliance the “industry forum for developing market-driven, interoperable mobile service enablers,” and is co-author of JSR 246, which enables Java ME applications to access device management implementations. So hats off to him and the whole community.

Mobile Services Architecture – JSR 248

Barr first made it clear that the code in the Java ME open-source community is full-blown, compilable, and runnable with a lot of functionality that can be used to build devices and platforms. His goal was to show the large room of developers how they could make use of it for themselves. Currently the MSA (Mobile Services Architecture) is what all the new devices implement and what anyone getting in the game should target. This is JSR 248, an umbrella specification that does not define any new functionality but combines and clarifies existing specifications. While the JSR 248 spec leads are Nokia and Vodafone, Sun is also involved. It’s on a lot of mass market phones now; Sony Ericsson has at least eight devices and Nokia’s popular 40 series also uses MSA.

The JSRs that are combined under MSA cover such things as communications, graphics, security, application connectivity and environment, personal information, and more. It can be used, for example, for mapping, web services, messaging, and camera access. Obviously it’s extremely rich.

Why Open Source

Barr explained what bears repeating: Sun open sourced Java ME, fundamentally, to remove barriers to innovation. Formerly, to experiment with Java ME, developers had to talk to device manufacturers, carriers, and maybe even platform implementers. Because reliable information was hard to come by, and code was not public and could not be seen, it was hard for the community to flourish. Sun is working to bring vendors, software developers, and tool companies together to collaborate as one ecosystem.

The Mobile and Embedded Community

The Mobile and Embedded Community is lively and active with constant news updates. More than 140 Java ME projects are alive there. “One important project that is near and dear to me – because I am the owner of it,” said Barr, “is the ME Application Developer Project which is primarily geared towards the people who want to write interesting applications and don’t want to deal with the virtual machine internals and the stack.”

Why be involved in the open source community? “This is a place like no other,” explained Barr. “It’s the only place where experts at Sun who’ve been working on this technology for years can answer questions in very active forums. It’s the only place where you can get the complete source code of Java ME implementations and answers about how things actually work deep down at the platform.”

There is a lot of code that can be downloaded and used under the BSD license.

The phoneME Project

Next, Terrence turned to the phoneME Project, whose objective is to further expand the usage of Java ME in the mobile handset market. The scope of the project includes a focus on the mainstream feature phone segment with phoneME Feature software, and the emerging advanced phone segment with phoneME Advanced software. By making these technologies available to the Mobile and Embedded Community, the idea is to reduce implementation variation, increase innovation, and enable new devices to leverage Java ME.

It’s technically two things: a CDC-based stack and a CDLC-based stack, which are different owing to different VM functionality. When Sun open sourced Java ME, they had been selling commercial Java ME stacks to licensees, typically handset manufacturers, so Sun had to remove the code bits that they did not have rights to, like third-party plugins. The rest went into the open source repository. Barr took pains to make it clear that this is the actual code of commercial implementations – it’s the real thing. As the code is developed, changes are put back on a daily basis.

He also pointed out that the phoneME Project is not necessarily phone specific; while it started out with mobile phones, people are using it outside the mobile space. He described the dual licensing policy, one for the community under GPL v2, the other for commercial enterprises and proprietary code extensions.

Since the phoneME project began in late 2006, phoneME features have been widely used. Sun’s Project Sun SPOT technology uses all the libraries in the phoneME library.

Barr showed developers the intricacies and complexities of making use of the Java ME code repository, presented a demo, and made a pitch to the thriving and gifted Russian developer community to innovate with Java ME.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

MySQL and Java DB

2008-04-06T09:45:15-05:00

Sun Microsystems' technology evangelist, Chuk-Munn Lee’s session on Java DB and MySQL gave a detailed overview of Java DB and helped developers determine when to use each.

It’s a bit hard to write about Java DB, given the attention that MySQL has received at Sun recently. There's been a flurry of excitement mingled with buzz since Sun bought MySQL for a cool billion. (And fun too: Colorful, inflatable toy dolphins celebrating this twosome “swam” in ponds on Sun’s Santa Clara campus on April 1 in keeping with Sun's traditional day of pranksterism.)

Almost everyone seems to think it’s a good match that brings Sun deeper into the world of open source. MySQL has 70% market share of all open source databases and is present in every web-facing deployment in the world. For more on this story, I recommend an excellent Feb 28, '08, MySQL blog posting by fellow Sun staff writer and all-around great guy, Ed Ort.

Upon the MySQL acquisition, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, commented: “Internally, the more than 10,000 people that make up the Sun engineering community -- of which the MySQL team is now a core part -- have begun to engage across a dizzying array of touchpoints. From diagnostics and technical integration, to performance engineering, hardware and software optimization, and leveraging our large scale benchmarking facilities, going after a few more world records. A breadth of projects are underway to enhance the value MySQL can deliver in a diversity of settings -- and we'll work hard to ensure MySQL flies like a dolphin on Linux, Windows and Solaris, and on systems built by Dell, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Sun, Fujitsu (i.e., everyone).”

At his recent Tech Days Saint-Petersburg keynote address, Rich Green, Executive Vice President of Software at Sun, noted that Sun’s best database experts will be working with MySQL to improve their technology. Words such as “synergy” and “good fit of corporate cultures” have been bandied about. Sun and MySQL have been meeting and launching events across the world. Sun has stated clearly that the acquisition of MySQL will not diminish their support for Java DB. When the Java platform was open sourced, Sun’s software culture had to turn outward and refocus attention more carefully toward the open source community. Now the culture, or part of it, is turning again. A lot of adjustment, but Sun has a gift for turning on a dime.

The point has also been made in so many words that the Sun/MySQL connection gives open source a good name as two major companies join together and monetize free products through support. It makes it harder to continue to see open source in terms of weekend software hobbyists dabbling away in someone’s garage. Open source will become more quickly associated with first-rate performance, which is a good thing.

Java DB

So, finally, more on Java DB-- It’s the Sun-supported version of Apache Derby with all development done with the Apache Derby community. It’s a complete relational database engine, written in 100% Java with a small footprint of 2MB of a JAR file. It runs on Java EE, and Java SE and more. It has a multi-tiered design for different use cases.

Here's where you can get it:

• Download it from the Java DB site:
> http://developers.sun.com/javadb/downloads/index.jsp

• JavaSE 6 JDK
> for testing and for embedding

• NetBeans
> and all previous incarnations of Sun's developer tools

• Glassfish Version 2

• Apache Derby
> http://db.apache.org/derby/

Java DB 10.4: Looking Ahead

And here's what to look forward to in Java DB 10.4:

• Security improvements
• SQL roles
• SQL OLAP functionalities: e.g. LIMIT()
• Table functions (VTI)
• Basic replication
• JMX management interfaces
• Performance improvements

Java DB and MySQL – Where Do They Fit or When to Use Which?

These appear to be two technologies that fit in different niches. I’m sure there are complexities and nuances that are worth exploring, but that is for another time and place. Right now I'll keep it very short with this:

Java DB is for embedded Java applications, multi-tier deployment, measured in terms of gigabytes. MySQL is for client-server applications, where clustering is needed and the database is measured in terabytes.

Participate, Participate!

The final message, as in so many Tech Days sessions -- and rightfully so -- was a call to the developer community to get involved
So, here's how:

To participate in MySQL:

● http://dev.mysql.com (place to start for developers)
● http://bugs.mysql.com (report bugs, submit patches)
● http://forge.mysql.com (MySQL projects)
● http://forums.mysql.com (discuss developer issues)

To participate in Java DB:

● http://db.apache.org/derby (download, read docs)
● JIRA http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DERBY (report bugs, submit patches)
● derby-user@apache.org (discuss experience, get help, give feedback)
● derby-dev@apache.org (discuss developer issues)

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Sun’s Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine on the Future of Java EE and GlassFish

2008-04-04T04:30:20-05:00

After attending Rich Green’s keynote, I found my way to a session with Sun’s Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, officially titled “Java EE, GlassFish, and their Future.” I’ve skirted around GlassFish in articles but never had the chance to attend a session on the subject.

But first, if you'll allow me -- a cultural observation. At our designated Sun work space here at the pavilion, a bevy of Russian women fix home-style meals in a small kitchen for us. In all my state-side experience, such convention-type events always have institutional caterers so this is an added touch of Russian hospitality and personality that's so enticing. Home cooking at a convention - wow! Here, our wonderful hosts make it clear that we are not to jump the gun in scarfing down food though. We must watch our manners. We are to eat only when they say or we get into trouble (as I did). I don’t know why this is so. Is it economically motivated – do they not want to run out of food? Do they only want us to eat at certain times when the food is ready (warm?) so that we will enjoy it, something any proud cook would want? Or, is there a Russian tradition that you insult your host if you eat ahead of time? Or is it something else? I welcome explanations. It’s an endearing form of hospitality to be sure.

From J2EE 1.4 to Java EE 5

Back to Alexis, who first summarized J2EE 1.4, which has been the industry standard for enterprise apps, and enormously powerful. He argued that its power is not as user friendly as it might be and compared it to operating the panel of a cockpit in an airplane with hundreds of dials. You can do what you want with it, but it’s needlessly complicated. I was surprised at how prevalent J2EE 1.4 is still.

The focus of Java EE 5 is to retain its power but simplify development and foster ease of use. So it’s designed for POJO- (Plain Old Java Object) based programming that enhances freedom and has fewer constraints. Annotations are the default way to go and there is a reduced need for deployment descriptors.

As one might expect DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself – is the operative principle. One hears a lot about DRY in Rails development, which is so popular among young developers. I wonder if growing up under the spell of the web and all the fancy computer footwork has produced a generation of restless, easily bored developers...

Before turning to GlassFish, he reviewed the spec changes in Java EE 5:

\* JAX-WS 2.0 & JSR 181
• JAXB 2.0
• Java Persistence
• EJB 3.0
• JavaServer Faces 1.2 – (new to Platform)
• JSP 2.1 – Unification w/ JSF 1.2
• StAX – Pull Parser – (new to Platform)

GlassFish

Allow me to plug my interview with Java Champion Adam Bien, who has expertise in GlassFish and Java EE.

Here’s Adam:

“Many developers tried GlassFish’s predecessor some years ago and found it wanting and now are no more interested. But it’s worth a try. GlassFish's performance and scalability are great. I especially like several features. The web-based admin console makes it possible to complete all basic administration tasks. The documentation -- even free books in PDF format! -- is already available from the first page. I appreciate the ability to configure even the JVM options inside the admin console.”

Alexis’s session echoed and justified Adam’s enthusiasm. I noted in particular Alexis’s remark about the admin console: “People are surprised by the GlassFish admin console and like it very much.” When he asked how many present used GlassFish, a significant number raised their hands. GlassFish is a Java EE 5 open source app server of enterprise quality – a lot of people run production code using it. Basically, it makes life easier for anyone who is trying to build high-powered server-side applications.

GlassFish derives from a long history going back 10 years when Sun created and donated Tomcat to the Apache community. In 2005, Sun announced the creation of a full Java EE app server, and released GlassFish V1 at JavaOne 2006. In September 2007, version 2 was released. The first version was directed to developers and lacked clustering and enterprise performance, which are strong in the current version.

Sun is awarding $175,000 each to six communities, including GlassFish, for distinguished contributions. The awards are subdivided into Bug Reports, Contributions and Honorable Mention. $50,000 goes to the top 3 bug reports in each GlassFish sub-project and the rest to a variety of other contributions. “We like people finding bugs with steps we can reproduce,” said Alexis.

The GlassFish community is interesting. Sun supports it but does not own it. When someone starts using it, they become part of the community. Everything is done live and in the open. All stats, bugs and discussions are public, but at the same time when consensus fails, decisions must be made about its future. So a governance board of five people makes the key decisions -- only two members are from Sun so Sun cannot dictate the revisions. The other three members are from major GlassFish users, Google, American Express, and an online Australian travel booking company named Wotif, who runs Australia’s second biggest web site.

Apparently the name refers to its transparency – you can see through it, so nothing is hidden. Daily news about GlassFish can be garnered at the Aquarium, another name that signifies transparency.

Alexis gave a summary of where GlassFish V3 is heading. It will be small, fast, and modular with a startup of a few seconds, and based on a module sub-system. Alexis touted it as an ideal container for Web 2.0 with a faster, lighter Java server engine, with Java and scripting applications, support for upcoming Java EE 6 profiles and a good fit for SOA/ESB solutions. We are heading with great speed toward a Web 2.0 world where developing gets easier and easier.

A GlassFish V3 technology preview is now available (web container only). It’s scheduled for a beta release by the end of 2008.

Alexis closed with a brief look at where Java EE 6 is headed – but I’m headed to another session so that will have to wait.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Rich Green's Tech Days Keynote St. Petersburg: Creating the Next Big Thing

2008-04-03T06:30:11-05:00

Rich Green's keynote session to a large and lively audience of thousands that reached into the bleachers of the Sport Complex Yubileynity, a hockey stadium in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, provided a concise overview locating Sun's software strategy within a larger framework of accelerating change. Green also gave some hints of what’s coming up at the 2008 JavaOne Conference. His presence here, as Sun’s executive VP for software, expresses Sun’s respect for Russian developers, who are highly regarded and growing in number. Green’s history as a developer, as the head of Solaris and then Java at Sun, make him especially well suited to lead Sun's software division.

He pointed out that this is Tech Days' third year in Russia and the second successive year in St Petersburg after an earlier one in Moscow. He repeated the JavaOne mantra: "Sleep is optional." His keynote made me feel that Sun has been turning into a community organizer of developers, motivating, inspiring and providing the tools for them to do great things. I find it agreeable -- Sun's self-interest is tied to the self-interest of open-source developers and the continuing proliferation of information technology and the web.

Green emphasized the value of face-to-face personal interactions -- obviously Tech Days is about more than conveying information. In terms of technical content, what Tech Days conveys could, for the most part, be done over the web. Maybe the real point of it is to inspire a sense of connection, and out of connection even a sense of loyalty. Do we really know that learning about software face to face adds anything to learning about it via the web? (Some of the youngest attendees I got to talk to, despite their age and all the social networking possibilities that they've had a hand in creating, nevertheless felt that there's still no substitute sometimes for the old face to face.)

Green characterized Russian developers as among the world's elite, a description I've heard elsewhere. The developer economy has shown 66% year-over-year growth -- he did not elaborate precisely how this figure was arrived at. It's clearly a great opportunity for Sun. Russia is entering the early stages of an enormous web-powered economy. I can remember 12 years ago hearing people say very dubious things about the future of the Russian economy; now it's taking off.

He contrasted a traditional model of development with a new one. I've heard many versions of the "traditional versus new" model articulated by leaders at Sun -- what strikes me is how quickly the story changes. The traditional pre-web model, which is still prevalent in many businesses, emphasizes the need to create new, heavy technology, all of which is for sale. This model is desktop-centric and the cycle times are long.

This is fast evolving into a world in which cycle times are immediate and iterative, and distribution occurs through software clouds and downloads. There may not be any purchasing of software per se; if there is, time to market is fast. Monetization is more through ads, subscriptions and services; application types are in the form of scripting, mashups and distributions. Conversation is two-way and community centered. And, I would add, listening -- in the deepest sense of paying close attention -- becomes crucial. It's clear that one of Sun's challenges is to "hear" what's happening outside of Sun in the world of software, especially open source software, and find the sweet spots where Sun can plug in. Obviously, the web has changed everything.

The heart of Green's talk and his appeal to Russian developers centered around one comment where he emphasized that, while web participation may have opened up vast markets for developers, the availability of free, sophisticated open source software has catalyzed innovation:

"The rate of acceleration is not only a function of the number of people who are participating on the web right now," said Green. "It's also a function of the sophistication of the platforms that you as developers can use to rapidly build new applications. And that is all about open source. The rate at which new technology is becoming available to everyone for free in open-source form, with richer and richer stacks of technology available, means the amount of invention that is required to create your next startup, your next big business, your next great idea, is becoming less and less."

The more things change, the more things stay the same. The rapidity of change in the last 10 years writing for java.sun.com makes my head spin -- but there is something basic about Sun that does not change. I vividly remember hearing Bill Joy remark in the early days of Java how, wherever you are, the smartest people are always someplace else. Java's "write once, run anywhere" interoperability enabled it to take advantage of other people’s brains. Now Sun's open-source philosophy takes this to a new level and encourages developers to do the same.

He predicted that in the future we will see even faster acceleration of software development because the open-source community provides so much to work with and build on. He implied that we will see more and more "next big things" and challenged Russian developers to create them through taking advantage of Sun’s open source offerings. If Russia's developer economy is growing at 66% year over year, it must be a great time to be a Russian developer. Developing is basically about logic and Russia has the greatest chess culture in the world. Chess is all about logic.

The rest of his talk, Green spotlighted various Sun technologies and strongly encouraged developers to download and play with them, join their communities, and create something new. I discuss some below.

GlassFish

He called GlassFish one of the most popular community projects in the world, with seven million downloads since July '06. He described GlassFish as "a brilliant piece of technology fundamentally designed to build high performance, highly reliable server-side applications without having to deal with the complexities of reliability, availability, access, and I/O that you typically had to do in a very manual and intensive form."

Green intimated that in a couple of months (JavaOne?) GlassFish will be appropriate for telecom applications using new presence protocols and capabilities. Sun has taken another look at the core of GlassFish and realized it offers a viable abstraction layer for a wider variety of applications that includes the telecom industry where mobile and connected developers can “build the next big thing”.

The Changing Nature of Java

Green reminded us that Java is on 700-800 million desktops, two to three billion mobile handsets, and there are three billion Java cards in the world. I can remember the days in the mid to late 90s when I was tasked with writing stories that were supposed to dazzle readers with what Java could do -- things like organize orders and financial transactions for a flower company. Stop the world, I want to get off! How fast things change is a true cliché.

At the 2008 JavaOne conference, look for more Java structuring to focus on rich media consumer and web apps, to facilitate rapid creation of technologies, and to be a better host of scripting languages. The distinction between the Java language and Java virtual machine has grown clearer as Sun has aggressively been teasing them apart, or encouraging others to do so. Scripting technologies need a runtime platform to efficiently execute on a system, which is complicated business. So Sun is making the JVM more available to scripting languages.

Green emphasized that the Java platform in the future should be thought of as a uniform platform across a wide variety of technologies. He talked about how the advent of Nokia E61 and the Apple iPhone, following Moore's Law, means that the same technology can now be run on desktops and mobile devices. So look for the desktop version of Java to be re-implemented onto mobile devices.

MySQL

Rich pointed out that MySQL, recently acquired by Sun, is the fastest growing open source database in the world and has about 70% market share of all open-source databases. It's present in every web-facing deployment in the world. Their number one platform is Linux, number two is Windows, and number three is Solaris. Green was clear that Sun will keep the same set of priorities going forward. Sun will call upon its database experts to work with the MySQL team to build faster, more scalable and reliable implementations.

Virtualization

Virtualization, according to Green, is a "hot topic across the planet." The appeal to developers is that it enables them to "be able to run multiple instances of operating systems so that you can use your laptop to mirror the environment that you will be deploying to." Developers face the challenge of developing on one operating system and deploying on another. Virtualization enables the environment they are running on their laptop to be identical to the deployment environment you are running on the server environment. Sun's acquisition of the German company Innotek, with their VirtualBox technology, addresses this need.

NetBeans 6.0.1

Rich closed with an update on NetBeans 6.0.1 which, among other things, offers enhancements to support Ruby and other scripting languages.

His talk reiterated in several different ways the point that not only is the network the computer, but the developer is the community. With so much software freely available, innovation should flourish. His talk was a challenge to Russian developers to take advantage of what's out there.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Snow and Vodka: Preparing for Sun Tech Days in St. Petersburg April 2-4, 2008

2008-03-28T12:54:53-05:00

I'm preparing for Sun's St. Petersburg Tech Days, scanning the weather reports, remembering Russian movies I've seen, staring at a Google satellite view of the city and then remembering that although I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, I have not walked on ice or snow in more years than I want to count. I have no idea what to expect.

St. Petersburg is on the Baltic sea, contiguous with Finland, and heavily Europeanized, with river inlets and canals flowing all through it. Its history is beyond my comprehension. Back when it was called "Leningrad," about 40% of the 3 million people in the city died from starvation, violence, and disease as the Nazis surrounded, bombed, starved, and laid siege to it during WWII. Hitler’s explicit intention was to commit genocide. What would San Francisco (where I've been living long enough to be called a native) be like if 40% of the people here had been killed in a war 65 years ago? The reverberations would go on for many generations.

Yet St. Petersburg is a place of great culture, beautiful architecture and it's thriving. It's the beer capital of Russia, due to the poor water quality -- unfortunately I don't like beer. It's sometimes called the "Venice of the North" because of the canals. There are more than 1000 bridges! And the Hermitage is one of the world's greatest museums.

I'm looking forward to blogging on Solaris, hearing Rich Green's keynote, which I imagine will further clarify Sun's software strategy which evolves and twists and turns rapidly in response to emerging technologies. I'll hear Simon Ritter, a fun-loving Java evangelist, whom I've worked with over the years, give an update on programming for cool devices using the Java ME PhoneME Stack. I hope to wander around and find some Russian developers whose English is good enough that I can interview them and get a taste of how they view Java, software, and more. Most unfortunately, I don't speak a word of Russian so we'll see if I can learn it in a week, ha ha, or how good the Lonely Planet English to Russian phrase book I just bought is. (Any ideas about what I should ask the Russian developers? I'm all ears.)

It's not surprising that Russian developers have such a good reputation -- this is a country of great chess players. Former Sun engineer Victoria Livschitz, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing twice, was a chess player in the Ukraine before immigrating to the US. James Gosling blogged about all the great Russian engineers he met in Moscow. A tour of the web suggests that Russian developers are well-paid, well educated and constitute the third largest developer population in the world, a figure I can't vouch for.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

I Get Stars in my Eyes over Sun SPOTS

2008-03-09T14:51:59-05:00

I just returned from talking about Sun SPOTs with the vibrant Sun Technology Evangelist Angela Caicedo whose expertise includes: Java ME, Java SE, Java EE, and the entire Sun Java Enterprise System. She loves spending time in new and cool technologies such as: Game developments, 3D, Bluetooth, and -- Sun SPOTs, (Sun Small Object Programmable Technology). She is originally from Colombia and graduated from the University EAFIT of Medellin Colombia in 1998 with a B.S. in Computer Science. She spent a year at MIT studying computing, worked for three years as a software developer and researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), in Lausanne Switzerland, and now lives an adventurous life as an evangelist for Sun.

Sun SPOTs are a magical technology (at least to yours truly), based in Java ME and developed by Sun Labs, that have vast potential – a claim that has credibility given that more than a billion cell phones run on Java ME. Sun Labs developed Sun SPOTs in an effort to make sure that the gadgets of the future run on Java as well. It’s an experimental platform designed to make it easy to create the next big thing, or more likely, things, whether it’s a toy, communication device, sensor, network of communications – virtually anything that can be enhanced through a smart wireless network. It’s the most recent celebration of Sun’s motto – the network is the computer – only it’s the wireless network that makes for this computer.

It’s all about using wireless sensors to gather data and send it to a central source which can enable interaction with the environment. The Sun SPOT Device is a small, wireless, battery powered experimental platform programmed almost entirely in Java that allows programmers to create projects requiring specialized embedded system development skills. It fits in the palm of your hand. The hardware has built-in sensors as well as the ability to easily interface to external devices.

Each SPOT kit contains two complete, free-range Sun SPOTs (with processor, radio, sensor board and battery) and one BaseStation Sun SPOT (with processor and radio). Also included are all the software development tools and cables required to start developing applications. The BaseStation connects to a development machine -- a PC -- and allows developers to write programs that can run on their PC and use the BaseStation's radio to communicate with remote Sun SPOTs. The development tools also make use of the BaseStation to deploy and debug applications on remote Sun SPOTs. The initial Sun SPOT development software has been tested on Windows XP, Macintosh OS X 10.4 running on both PowerPC- and Intel-based hosts, Linux (Fedora Core 5, SuSE 10.1 and Ubuntu 6.06), and Solaris x86.

I was intrigued when Angela said that Sun SPOTs are being researched by industry for uses that remind me of 1999 and the fantasies of the smart home. I remember the days when Jini technology was being considered as an extension of Java that would enable everything to be networked, so if you have access to one entry point of technology on a network you have entry and control over all. You could turn off the lights in your house from your computer, or use your stereo to defrost your refrigerator – go figure. Your light bulbs would inform your computer when they were getting dull. (There’s a joke or a parable there somewhere but I can’t quite figure it out.)

People used to wonder if anyone would really want a smart home. It’s the old problem with technology: Because you can do something, does that mean you should? Well Angela informed me that industry is using Sun SPOTs in cars so that if you rush off to work in your car after quickly ironing your shirt, and suddenly panic that you didn’t turn off the iron, you can use Sun SPOT technology from your car to connect to sensors in your home to assuage your fears and, if need be, turn off the iron to prevent your house from burning down. Sun SPOTS here I come! This is perfect for someone like me, someone who could leave the iron on and then worry about it the rest of the day.

Sun SPOTs can be used wherever wireless sensors are needed to gather and transmit information. The hardware and software for Sun SPOTs has been open sourced, much to the delight of students, who Angela reports are very enthusiastic about Sun SPOTs. They want to be able to modify the hardware and software infrastructure and extend the functionality to meet their needs. So they want nothing to be hidden.

Sun Labs staff engineer, David G. Simmons, has an extremely helpful Sun SPOT blog that is worth checking out. And even YouTube has some 40 Sun SPOT videos with slot cars, a pumpkin that screams and talks when shaken, video games and more to check out. Also, for more on Sun SPOTs check out Roger Meike’s blog; he’s senior director of area 51 and director of operations at Sun Labs.

Down the road look for a java.sun.com article on Sun SPOTs. It should be fun.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Sun's Chuk-Munn-Lee Troubleshoots Java SE 6

2008-03-05T18:56:03-06:00

I attended Chuk-Munn Lee’s informative Java SE 6 troubleshooting session designed to help developers identify the source of a problem during deployment. It’s impressive how much he covered in less than an hour. He radiates energy and is a pleasure to listen to. It seemed that the standing-room crowd felt the same.

It was so neat to meet Chuk in person, as I interviewed him in July of 2005 for java.sun.com. He has programmed in Java since 1996, when he first joined Sun in Hong Kong. He currently works as a senior developer consultant and technology evangelist for Technology Outreach at Sun in Singapore. Chuk's focus is: Java APIs, Java EE, Java SE, and Java ME. He has worked with key Asia-Pacific independent software vendors (ISVs) during the last six years to help them design, prototype, develop, tune, size, and benchmark their Java applications. Chuk appears quite at home in Australia, having graduated in 1987 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

I remembered that Chuk is also an avid gamer and was experimenting with game creation in his spare time back in ‘05. It’s clear from his session that he loves to have fun, which is not unusual for developers. In my experience the stereotype of the nerdy developer just doesn’t hold up – developers are usually charming and fun, though it may be that their idea of fun is out of reach for some people.

Another observation and then I'll get on with the session - I promise. This is my first developer event outside of the U.S. In many ways, it could have been a small JavaOne judging by the look, manner, and even dress of the developers. Has code become the universal language?... :)

Chuk began the session by reviewing JVM improvements in Java SE 6 and referenced Mandy Chung’s blog which I strongly recommend if you want more details.

With JDK 6:

\* You are no longer required to start your application with any special option to be attached by JDK 6 tools. The Attach API enables you to build your own tool to attach to a running JVM and load a Java or native agent.

\* Memory problems are easier to diagnose. The HotSpot VM enables you to request a heap dump on demand from the jmap tool. A heap analysis tool (jhat) was added in JDK 6 to browse the heap dump snapshot you obtain.

\* It’s easier to diagnose OutOfMemoryError thanks to a stack trace where the allocation failed. Also the new -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError option tells the HotSpot VM to generate a heap dump when an allocation from the java heap or the permanent generation cannot be satisfied. In addition, a new XX:OnOutOfMemoryError=<command> option is added, enabling developers to specify a command that the HotSpot VM will invoke when the OutOfMemoryError is thrown.

\* The JDK 6 HotSpot VM provides built-in DTrace probes which means developers can now trace the whole stack of any running Java application on Solaris 10.

In addition the Java SE Troubleshooting Guide, has been updated to include troubleshooting information for JDK 6.

JDK Tools

After briefly reviewing the basics of garbage collection, Chuk turned to the JDK tools, starting with the Java equivalent of Unix PS, lps, which is typically the first stop in diagnosing troubles. It lists the running VMs, including embedded ones, gives them a process number, the name of the application or class, and will dig down to differing levels of detail with command lines.

The second stop is jinfo which extracts information from the VM or core file. It will list configuration information from a running VM or a core file that includes VM properties and command line flags.

Third, jstat displays potentially detailed performance statistics for the JVM.

jstack provides the stack traces of all the threads attached to a virtual machine. It also will perform deadlock detection and will do a stack trace if the VM is hung.

jmap prints memory-related statistics, provides the details of the overall memory configuration with detailed info on space capacities – what and how much is free or used.

Chuk pointed out that HPROF has been around a very long time. It collects information on CPU usages, heap dumps and thread states. It uses the JVMTI interface to gain heap dump info. He showed how to use HPROF and explained that in running HPROF, it will only dump out the information after you exit the application, which can be gotten in text or binaries.

jhat (Java Heap Analysis Tool) allows you to interactively work with a memory snapshot captured by jmap, HPROF, or jconsole. jmap and HPROF collect the same information that jhat analyzes. jhat is much faster than HPROF and goes into the VM and extracts information from it directly, bypassing standard interfaces. HPROF can take a much longer time to provide information.

jhat has a set of pre-defined queries to show all the classes, objects and instances, reachable from the root set. Chuk insisted that when tracking down memory, do not look at the classes – look at instances. He recalled his first experience using jhat when he looked at the classes and was unable to identify the problem area.

When you start jhat standard queries operate. jhat enables developers to run custom queries with relatively easy functionality. Chuk offered one warning: On a big chip, if you are running a complex query – make sure you have a fast machine, or you may be in for a long wait.

He moved to the visual tool, jconsole, which is bundled with the JDK and offers a graphical console that enables developers to monitor and manage Java apps. An API enables developers to create their own plugins. jconsole provides info on:

\* Memory usage and GC activities
\* Threads, thread stack trace, locks
\* Objects pending finalization
\* Runtime information such as uptime, CPU time
\* JVM information such as classpath, properties, command line arguments, etc.

He mentioned another visual tool – visualvm, an open source project that is rumored to be headed for inclusion in the JDK. Chuk pointed out that for a long time people have used the NetBeans debugger to identify memory problems. The visualvm project has taken up that element of NetBeans and made it a standalone that looks better than jconsole, with a plugin architecture, and has the NetBeans window functionality. It runs only on JDK 6 and later. The idea is to encourage developers to develop their own tools as applications grow in sophistication.

“Standard tools will only take you so far,” remarked Chuk. This seems to be the wave of the future: application tools that enable you to fine tune with greater detail and specificity.

The rest of the session focused on common problems, primarily related to insufficient memory.

In watching Chuk’s session, I couldn’t help thinking of Java Champion Cay Horstmann who, in a recent interview, spoke at length about the “stack trace from hell” problem in relation to JavaServer Faces, which he perceives as fundamentally flawed. He seemed to believe that no matter how good your tools for identifying the problem, “When something goes wrong, the app server just belches and whines -- it has no pathway to propagate an error with file name and line number to the development environment.” NetBeans scrapes the stack trace for clues, but as Horstmann puts it, “they can only report what the app server tells them. The app servers need to have a development mode that tells the IDE the precise file name and line number that caused a failure.”

In a discussion of this issue on theserverside.com that had 13 responses, Horstmann displayed a “stack trace from hell” with more than 700 lines. He concludes: “There simply has to be a better way to get this report back to the IDE than scraping the stack trace. I am not sure who should take ownership of this issue, but there sure are a lot of people who say ‘it's not my department...’"

Horstmann was focusing on NetBeans operating at a different level of analysis, but I wonder if the principle applies equally here. Perhaps in software applications as in life, doctors are only as good as their patients.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

The Java Jacket Giveaway Contest Winner Is...

2008-03-05T16:33:46-06:00

I attended my first Java Jacket giveaway this morning during which folks volunteered to come on stage to demonstrate their “strange and unusual talents” to compete for a Java jacket. After years of hearing about this now ritual, it was fun to finally be there. If Tech Days is an embarrassment of technological riches, the Java Jacket competition is a richness of embarrassments. Have you ever noticed that when someone is embarrassed and admits it openly, you start to like them more? Why do we all laugh when embarrassed? Historically, the most "strange and unusual talent" to manifest at Tech Days was a contortionist in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who demonstrated a bodily flexibility rarely seen by most attendees. Brazil has a well-earned reputation for some of the most passionate Tech Days developers - one revealing a Java tattoo on his arm. Other past winners have included hip-hop routines, kick boxers, kung-fu demonstrations and Balinese dancing.

Australians have a reputation for high spirits and may we even say sometimes rowdiness. Today was no exception. The inimitable Reggie Hutcherson, MC extraordinaire and manager of the Sun Technology Evangelism group, was master of ceremonies for this unique talent show. Five guys came forward to compete.

Jacob Juggled some cute Duke dolls with disco music in the background, starting with two and moving up to three. (He tried. I certainly could do no better and a lot lot worse.)

Next, Jason claimed his talent of a strong throwing arm and displayed it by throwing (was it paper? I couldn't quite make it out?) into the top balcony of the fairly large auditorium. The crowd oohed and ahhed jokingly at his efforts, none of which quite made the upper deck.

Richard Morgan promised to say the alphabet backwards in approximately three seconds. Reggie suggested he first do it slowly so they would know what it sounds like – how would we know he was saying the alphabet backwards in three seconds if we’ve never heard it in 15? He then did it in about 10 – and then in about three. And each letter was clearly pronounced. It sounded impossible when I initially heard it, but it’s actually not that hard to say 26 letters in three seconds. A useful reminder here: our intuitions about what is possible may not rest on solid ground and have to be examined. I can now say the alphabet forward in three seconds, something I would never have done were it not for Richard.

Then a man - sorry, I couldn’t catch his name - juggled more Duke dolls with reasonable competence. Duke got quite a workout during this talent contest I must say.

Finally, Derrick came up and ominously pronounced that he had a “small variety of bodily tricks to perform” which put me in mind of stories I heard in college emanating from frat houses I didn’t care to set foot in. He encouraged the camera to “focus very closely because one of them is very subtle, but it’s very impressive”. When Reggie requested a menu, Derrick said he would demonstrate flexible fingers, would wiggle his eyebrows independently, and wiggle his ears while wiggling his entire scalp. He accomplished all with brio.

Reggie heard someone in the audience say, “I can do that,” and looked out to locate said person. It was Nichole, a Sun employee,unfortunately not eligible for the jacket. (At dinner the night before, I had witnessed Nichole's amazingly flexible digits and, wow, I bet she would have won hands down - pun intended - had she been eligible!)

Richard won the jacket, which was fair enough, while the others won dukes and tee-shirts. Reggie asked him to repeat his rapid backwards alphabet recital a couple of times, after which Richard said, “My mom taught me that many years ago. I don’t know why…” I don’t know either, sounds like the sort of thing you learn when recovering from an operation and the painkillers leave you floating in the haze… Oh well. Dear old Mom, ha ha.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

JavaFX: The Future of Client Java

2008-03-05T15:54:07-06:00

On yet another balmy, gorgeous and now officially Fall day (I think) in Sydney, Sun’s Josh Marinacci and Jim
Weaver, an independent JavaFX consultant and founder of the Java consulting company, jMentor, gave an absorbing
presentation on JavaFX at their tech days session, "A Rich Application Platform: JavaFX."

Josh is an impressive developer who I interviewed in August of 2006 for java.sun.com’s “Meet the Engineer” series. He’s
made valuable contributions in Swing, NetBeans and JavaFX tools, and is the author
(with Chris Adamson) of Swing Hacks published by O’Reilly.

When I interviewed Josh in 2006, he told a great story about demonstrating Aerith, a road-trip slide-show application: “When we demoed the Aerith application for Jim Gosling to include in his JavaOne conference keynote, he was very impressed. He said to give serious props (proper respect) to whoever built the mapping component, which is the part of Aerith I had focused on. I nervously said it was me. Jim said, ‘That's worth a dollar,’ and actually took a dollar out of his wallet and handed it to me! To have Jim Gosling, one of the inventors of the Java language, give me a dollar is worth more to me than any accolades from the press. We now have that dollar, signed and framed, hanging on the wall of the Swing team's common room.”

Josh, who has been applying his gifts to JavaFX tools of late, presented most of the
session until the end when Jim Weaver came on stage to offer a demo. I’ve been a bit confused about what’s happening lately with Java SE and ME. Gosling has been saying for some time that they would eventually converge. JavaFX Script, Gosling has noted, is unlike other scripting languages in that it is oriented not towards creating web pages but livelier, highly animated interfaces, in particular in those parts of the world where a cell phone functions as a desktop computer. I can recall hearing about farmers in India who have only cell phones and rely on them to get weather information to guide their farming. It’s enhancing agricultural production. It’s increasingly common for people to access the web through mobile devices. JavaFX technologies are intended to be compatible with Java ME whenever possible and to coexist on the same device, so a mobile phone running JavaFX APIs would be able to run Java ME apps as well.

The session helped put JavaFX in a clearer perspective. JavaFX was announced at the 2007 JavaOne Conference as a family of products, technologies and tools based in Java SE – not Java ME -- and targeted for consumers. It seemed more like a promissory note than a reality at the time. Josh and Jim spoke of JavaFX as part of an attempt to prepare Java for the next decade. The past decade has been one characterized by a proliferation of client desktop apps. Java ME was released in the late 90s.

We now have:

1.8 billion cell phones

5 billion devices,

7 million set top boxes

4 million developers creating software for these devices.

Roughly two thirds of new PCs have Java pre-installed; 91% of PC’s – 540 million have
Java; 77% of PCs have Sun’s Java; and there are 50 million Win JRE downloads. Client Java today with Java SE 6 is the best ever. Devices keep getting more powerful and sophisticated. There is improved look and feel for Windows and Linux operating systems, better startup and execution, and a host of graphics improvements.

JavaFX consists of:

•JavaFX Mobile

•JavaSE 6 Update N (Note: If I heard correctly, Josh said the actual number is to be determined so he's calling it “N” or “10” for now.)

•Designer Tools

•Developer Tools

JavaFX Mobile

JavaFX Mobile is the first in a line of systems designed to bring Java SE to everyone, with a desktop-scaled operating environment for phones. Like desktop operating systems, it will have the same JavaFX OS on all phones. But it would still run existing Java ME applications, plus new apps written using Java SE APIs. So Java FX script can be used both to write applications or any other JVM language.

New client Java projects are hosted on the Java desktop site. Their basic message: Java technology has been massively successful on servers, cell phones, and in enterprise computing – it’s time to create success on the desktop. But: desktop Java needs to be faster, quicker to download, easier to install --- and it should be easier to create great looking and feeling applications.

Mobile Java has suffered from device fragmentation, weak native access, old APIs. It needs unified APIs, advanced graphics, animation, tools for designers and developers, and speed. They went on to detail a vision of a new installer, a better quickstart, a Java deployment toolkit, and more…

JavaFX Script

The session turned to open source JavaFX Script, which is designed to enable developers to create great looking Java apps. It’s designed for creative professionals so designers can build and deploy on Java and be more productive with Java SE. The mention of another scripting language seems to be wearying for some developers. Java Champion Cay Horstmann
remarked in an interview recently: “I think it's great that people come up with new programming languages for research purposes. But these languages ought to die a quick death. What is the point of having Python and Groovy and Ruby and PHP and Perl? I want to learn one scripting language really well rather than dabble in five of them.”

After expressing regret that JavaFX is yet another scripting language Horstmann said, “It drives me crazy to see yet another language.” Scripting languages all aim to make complex coding a lot simpler and easier, yet having so many seems to exasperate some developers by giving too many options. So JavaFX has to cope with a certain resistance
in the form of “scripting language burnout”. But if JavaFX Script can enable more developers and designers to utilize the immense resources of the Java language and community, and move the desktop to more devices, the potential seems vast.

JavaFX Script:

• Runs on the JVM;

• Is object-oriented with declarative syntax, statically typed, type inference;

• Compiles to bytecode;

• And more, lots more

It’s in open source alpha release with the interpreter and demos available now.
Tools are on the way with a prototype compiler now available. Neat side note: it makes it easy for designers and developers to work together.

Java 6 Update

Java 6 Update N will entail a new installer, deployment toolkit, quick start service, Java kernel, browser plugin and something called “Nimbus” – a new cross platform Swing L&F (look and feel). There will be new SwingX components, Painters and SwingX-WS components and more coming down the pike. The prototype slide looked really cool. You can get all this in beta form.

Tools

An updated release of the JavaFX Script plugin for the NetBeans IDE 6.0 and the newly released NetBeans IDE 6.0.1 are available for download. The release includes several bug fixes and functionality improvements made to the plugin.

Developers are working on tools for designer content creation that will enable designers to create JavaFX apps that run in a browser, cell phone and everywhere else. They envision a world where developers and designers can work together.

Demo Time

The session closed with what Josh called a paper doll demo, which he likened to a build-your-own avatar. He said it took him 10 minutes to create this demo on the plane from Seattle, Washington and that most of the time took in drawing the simple figures. Pretty impressive! Josh said that to do this in Flash would have taken so much more time. He quipped: “Now I can spend all my time getting to be a better artist rather than coding!”

Next Josh did his Santa's Super Status System demo which he hopes to make an annual occurrence. Check it out; find out if you're naughty or nice! It's really fun!!

Josh'es final demo was a live Flickr Search illustrating that you really can talk to web services.

To close the session, Jim Weaver did his WinnerWheelJFX demo, a compiled JavaFX Script example, Spinning Wheel Got to Go 'Round. Jim's passion is contagious. His mission: To teach people how to compile JavaFX Script. In his own words: “The code is very declarative. If you've been a Swing developer, looking at FX is like, wow, so much easier. What a relief.”

JavaFX is a leap into an unknown future. One big question about technology on mobile devices: how far can it go – both in terms of acceptable functionality and monetizing it? Will Google be able to sell advertising on mobile devices? Is the interface too small for companies to sell ads that will enable them to monetize new technology on the mobile
desktop? And what other scripting languages will suddenly get hot and appear out of
nowhere?

See Also
• https://openjfx.dev.java.net/
• http://java.sun.com/javafx/
• http://weblogs.java.net/blog/joshy/
• joshua.marinacci@sun.com

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

TechDays: Solaris in Sydney

2008-03-05T04:31:27-06:00

Sydney is an amazing, beautiful city. I am staying in a lovely hotel at Darling Harbour, near the Opera House and The Rocks. Tech Days are located in the Sydney Exhibition Center, just a few brisk blocks away. In the 24 hours I have been here, I have discovered that everything is just a 'brisk' walk away.

I'm covering the Solaris Track but I have to say, the Demo Showcase is well worth mentioning. The Compiz desktop demo especially was impressive. Imagine a terminal window becoming bendy and 3-dimensional and cubist....

"What Makes Solaris Interesting"

Chris Armes did an terrific job of covering the high points. One of the battles I always find with Solaris is there is so much to cover it's difficult to do it all justice. You want to stop and enjoy each intriguing feature; ZFS, SMF, DTrace, Sun xVM, et al. Since Solaris has gone open source there have been so many strides made in performance, especially on x86 that I want to jump up from the audience..."but don't you want to talk about this and what about that and you didn't mention Project [Insert any one of the multitudinous OpenSolaris Projects here]." All the while realizing that there is only so much time (30 minutes to be precise) and no one could cover it all. You just hope that it's enough to intrigue the attendees to the point that they log on to the Tech Days site, download the presentations and investigate the links.

In the meantime, here are some thoughts I had.

Chris was running Solaris on a bare metal Mac laptop! On top of that, he was running Windows XP and Vista Business using virtual machines. You can do that on an Intel box, as well. Most SXDE downloads are installed on Intel boxes. How cool is that? The desktop has gotten decidedly more interesting with 3D workspaces (see Compiz desktop for information on installing Compiz on the Solaris OS). Network performance has doubled since Solaris 8.

Of the 11.5 million Solaris downloads, 70% are Solaris x86. I have believed for a long time that if developers understood just how powerful and flexible and amazing Solaris was, there would be no contest. Now there with a solid desktop version, it's not only possible, developers are finding out in droves.

Do you have legacy programs in Solaris 8 that you can't port? Run them in a container on Solaris 10 and you have access to all the Solaris 10 features (DTrace, SMF) with zero source code changes required. You can thank Project Etude (official name: Solaris 8 Migration Assistant) for that.

There was one question that came up during the Q&A that I think bears repeating. "If I develop on SXDE (or SXCE or Nevada) how do I deploy on Solaris 10?" In some instances where you have implemented something only available in that build, you can't, true, but there is something called the Sun Ready Test Suite that will test your application and let you know if you've implemented anything that will come back to bite you. What you do from there is what makes being a developer fun, is it not?

"New Security Features in Solaris and Open Solaris"

So, I'm kind of a fool for security. I love the crypto stuff and Wyllys Ingersoll did not disappoint. SolarisTrusted extensions, Secure by Default, IPsec, and the Key Management Framework, these are all new or updated in the latest versions of Solaris. Again, too many things to cover in 30 mere minutes. It begs for more of a deep dive. That's where the resource links come in. Trusted Solaris was integrated into Solaris as Secure By Default in build 42 of Nevada which became SXCE (from build 42 on) and Solaris 10 11/06.

Trusted extensions are available in add-on packages and soon will be built in. Keystore independence, Abstracted APIs, Extensible framework for legacy and proprietary systems, SMF for IPsec and ZFS on disk encryption are just a few of the strides being made. It's a fiesta of innovation. For more information see the OpenSolaris Crypto site, the OpenSolaris Security Community site.

Download SXDE 1/08 or the OpenSolaris binary distribution and I defy you not to have a good time.

Learn more at the Tech Days and OpenSolaris Days sites.

-cs, managing editor

Arriving in Sydney for Sun Tech Days -- and what a city!

2008-03-03T13:55:37-06:00

Sydney this time of year feels like two seasons, spring and fall, converging. (Or is this just because it's my first time in the southern hemisphere?... It's warm and balmy at the same time some foliage is turning an electrifying yellow. The harbor is as breathtaking as all the pictures I've seen. Gosh, is this the most beautiful city I've ever laid my eyes on? Could be!

I arrived in Sydney, some 19 hours ahead of San Francisco time – who says tomorrow never comes? The time just flew by! I’m still trying to figure out what happened to all those missing hours. (My days as a stand-up comedian come back to haunt me -- or you.) Luckily, my body thinks Sydney is 5 hours behind San Francisco, instead of 19 hours ahead, so it’s less confused than I am.
This is my first Tech Days ever and my first any-kind-of-day “down under” in Sydney, Australia (I can’t escape the illusory sense that I’ve traveled downward). After seeing pictures of the Sydney harbor for years, I’m not far from it. Nothing disorients like experiencing reality you’d only previously imagined.

I’m scheduled to meet Java Champion, Michael Cannon-Brookes, mid-week, who, along with Scott Farquhar, set up their Java EE IT company, Atlassian in 2002 when they were fresh out of college. By 2006, they were turning over $15 million a year at the ripe old ages of 26 and 27 and had won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Cannon-Brookes is the most famous Java developer in Australia.

Atlassian is a Java EE software development and professional services company based in Sydney, with more than 10,00 customers from 98 countries who collaborate and develop using their software. Clients include Reserve Bank, NASA, Telstra, and even Microsoft. Atlassian specializes in issue tracking and collaboration software. Their main products are JIRA, an issue tracking and project management system; Confluence, an enterprise wiki; Bamboo, a continuous integration system, and Crowd, a single sign-on identity management system.

I’m planning to interview Cannon-Brookes eventually for the Java Champions series on java.sun.com. I'm so fortunate to get to hobnob with this tech-savvy generation who are making such big contributions at such a young age.

Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Author of ”Java Open Source Programming”, and a mover and shaker in open source.

On his blog, he lists the 5 “Atlassian Values”:

\* Open company. No bull\*\*.
\* Build with heart and balance.
\* Don't f\*\*\* the customer.
\* Play, as a team.
\* Be the change you seek.

(Forgive me the asterisks; they're mine – I consider this a family blog. :) ) I can see why they’re successful. I wonder if their saucy style results more from being founded by young people, or being founded by Australians. Probably both.

Developers may have heard of JIRA, which, three years running has been recognized by the Jolt Awards for its excellence in helping users track and manage issues in their software development tasks.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

Community Day in Hyderabad

2008-03-01T23:16:29-06:00

The Community Day that followed the two-day Sun Tech Days event in Hyderabad India was a hectic day for me but exhilarating. I sat in on a keynote by Ian Murdoch, Sun's Vice President of Developer and Community Marketing, attended a number of sessions in the University Day track of Community Day, spoke with a lot of attendees during breaks, and did two podcasts. What I found exhilarating was the enthusiasm of the attendees, most of them University students.

Ian Murdoch

Community Day is a great opportunity for attendees to get "up close and personal" with Sun engineers and other Sun insiders. In fact, it's that personal angle that came across vividly in Ian Murdoch's talk. The focus of the talk was on OpenSolaris and the key role that the community plays in open source efforts like this. In fact, a significant message in the talk was that open source is changing everything in the software business. Murdoch noted that open source isn't really about source code, but rather it's about choice, flexibility, and a growing ecosystem that enables that choice and flexibility. The community is driving a lot of the innovation in this changing environment.

Murdoch observed that the open source world of today reminds him a lot of the free software world of the 1990s, something that stimulated his success in the software business. "The beauty of open source is that there are no barriers to what you can do." Murdoch is probably best known in developer circles for putting together Debian, a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. Thinking back to the events that led up to his work on Debian, Murdoch recalled that when he got started he was only a 20-year old college student. "I got involved in the community. The community pulled me in. I wanted to give something back to the community. I identified a need and I threw myself into it." Encouraging students to be the next success stories in this open source world, Murdoch told them to "Find something that interests you and start using it. Clearly, it will be obvious to you how to make your mark and what your contribution will be. Then just do it. You'll be amazed at the places you can go."

Murdoch's talk ended with the announcement of the award winners in the Code for Freedom Contest. The contest, sponsored by Sun India, encouraged students in India colleges and universities to participate in open source projects. Murdoch said that 179 different contributions came out of this program across a number of different Sun open source projects.

Angad Singh

Three grand prize winners were announced, one of whom was Angad Singh, a student at the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology in Noida outside of Delhi. Angad won the award for his contribution of a NetBeans plugin that makes it simple to include regular expressions in a program. I subsequently got a chance to interview Angad. That interview will be available as a podcast on the SDN Channel.

It's really delightful and encouraging to speak to someone like Angad. His enthusiasm, energy, and intelligence shows. I asked Angad about his experience in being a campus ambassador. He explained that Sun trains the campus ambassadors in various open source technologies like NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenSolaris, and JavaFX. In return, the campus ambassadors are supposed to introduce those open source technologies to students on campus by conducting demos and workshops. The key thing is to build a community on campus around those technologies. Although this requires some effort (Angad said the extent of that effort depends on the motivation of the campus ambassador), it's a very exciting opportunity for a techie student like himself. He went on to say that it's not only an opportunity to learn the technologies, but it's also a great opportunity to work with a company like Sun.

You can learn more about Angad's activites as a campus ambassador as well his winning entry in the Code for Freedom Contest in his blog.

Matt Thompson

I also got a chance to interview Matt Thompson, Senior Director of the Sun Developer Network and Technology Outreach. Thompson's group is responsible for providing content for the Tech Days events as well as Community Day. He said that the Tech Days event in Hyderabad was extremely successful. "We had over 4000 attendees on the Day 1 morning, which was phenomenal, and we had an extra couple hundred that showed up on Day 2 in addition to the 4000 we had on Day 1, and another 1700 in satellites [locations outside of Hyderabad], as well as another one or two thousand that showed up today for Community Day that didn't show up the previous two days." Thompson said that last year's Tech Days event in India was a bit larger, but only because there were more satellite cities. But for a single city this is the largest Tech Days event ever run in India. The only larger Tech Days event worldwide was an event held in China.

My interview with Thompson will also be available as a podcast on the SDN Channel.

Aside from the numbers, which as Thompson pointed out were terrific, this event was extremely successful because of the enthusiasm and interest of the attendees. Every technical session, every keynote, every lab was well attended. The pavilion floor, which included booths set up for various Sun and partner technologies and tools, was crammed with people. And these were not casual observers. These were interested, engaged developers with lots of questions and lots of opinions.

I think my lasting memory of this event will be doing short "man/woman on the street" interviews on the pavilion floor. I did this with Liana Vagharshakian, a member of the SDN staff. As we set up the camera, people started milling around, and within a minute we had a huge throng of people wanting to be on camera, wanting to tell us about the technologies they're using and the projects they're working on. Sun Tech Days and Community Day in Hyderabad were definitely stoked by lots of very enthusiastic people. It's this kind of enthusiasm that left me with the urge to come back to India. If I do get a chance to return to Sun Tech Days in India I definitely will.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Ed Ort

On Your Mark... Get Set... Go! to Sydney Tech Days

2008-02-29T20:05:58-06:00

My excitement grows day by day as I prepare for my first Tech Days (and Australian) experience. I’ve been looking at pictures of the famous Sydney Opera House, remembering kangaroos at the zoo, wondering what Aussie food is like (yes, am one of those: a foodie). I hear that Sydney is a real foodie paradise, that it's gone way beyond bland English fare but for that matter so has England I hear though I haven't been there in years. My brother goes there a lot and foodie-ism runs in my family. Thus, he tells me there's great eating there. So, enuf of this food jag I've gotten on. I will STOP right now.

The Tech Days agenda looks lively and rich. I’ll be doing a vodcast with Angela Caicedo on Sun SPOTs (Sun Small Programmable Object Technology), an exciting technology from Sun Labs that offers the possibility of opening up the wireless and embedded space and sounds like great fun. Sun SPOTs rely on sensor networking based in Java technology. Sun offers a development kit for wireless sensor development and has open sourced the Sun SPOT libraries, as well as the Squawk JVM and the hardware.

Here’s what Sun Labs’ Arshan Poursohi says about Sun SPOTs in a Campus Technology interview: “You can put them into buildings to monitor, for instance, temperature conditions so you can fine tune the air conditioning and heating. You can deploy them on volcanoes and see what the eruption conditions are in a flow from top to bottom -- so you can see what happens as it's beginning to erupt. Robotics is another example. The embedded computer is so small and powerful enough now, that it can do a lot of really diverse tasks. So, if you can dream it up, you can probably attack it with a Sun SPOT.”

One of my favorites: An artist in residence at Sun Labs (yes, they have artists in residence!) placed sensors in the Park View Hotel in San Jose. People are invited to stand in the park across from the hotel where there are pointing devices that resemble telescopes that optically "ping" rooms in the hotel. Once sensors are found and contacted, properties are released into a wireless network that releases colors into the street-lights in the park below. Stay tuned for more about Sun SPOTs.

I’m also looking forward to catching the famed Tech Days spirit that leads people to embarrass themselves showing off strange and unusual talents and indulging their impulse to be outrageous in search of a Java jacket. Australians have a reputation for being spirited, fun-loving, playful, gregarious, people.

And I expect to cover Chuk-Munn Lee’s Ruby session, the amazing Michael Cannon-Brookes session on Rails, Joey Shen on troubleshooting tools for Java SE, and much more.

Finally, while I'm at it (this blogging business), I also finally got around to posting my first more general blogs here too http://blogs.sun.com/janheiss/ just fyi. I'll be blogging about everything AND the kitchen sink on this blog. For instance, the title of one of my first two blogs there is: Why are there so few women programmers? I have received some most thoughtful comments. So, please visit me over there too if you wish.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Janice J. Heiss

The MySQL Story

2008-02-28T00:27:51-06:00

You've heard the story. Two young guys have an idea about computing, turn it into something tangible, become wildly successful, and change the computing culture in the process. No, I'm not talking about the story of Apple, Inc. I'm talking about the story of MySQL. When MySQL co-founders David Axmark and Michael "Monty" Widenius started writing code, they were teenagers. They wanted to make some money on what they did, but had no inkling of the tremendous impact their work would have.

David Axmark

In his keynote talk kicking off Day 2 of the Sun Tech Days event in Hyderabad India, Axmark recalled that the first database code that he and Widenius worked on was written in 1995. That code would ultimately become part of the world's leading open source database management system, MySQL. Axmark said that when the code was initially released as a usable package in 1996 it immediately drew a lot of interest. "In the space of a few months there were several hundred people on the mailing list and thousands of downloads. It was amazing."

Thousands of downloads is certainly a good start for two young and ambitious developers, but it doesn't necessarily imply a wildly successful outcome. Today's reality is that 66% of the world's enterprises use or are planning to use MySQL in their applications and some of the most popular sites on the Web, including Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook, use MySQL. It's a light year's jump from the early days. So huge a jump that Sun Microsystems recently bought MySQL AB, the company that owns MySQL, for $1 Billion. Axmark asked the rhetorical question "How did we go from that humble start to this pretty hefty price tag?" The answer is simple: innovation. In the talk, Axmark outlined many of the innovations in MySQL, some of them made by people who worked for MySQL AB, but many created by the community.

Those innovations were fostered by some fundamental philosophies. Axmark stressed that from the beginning lots of people working on MySQL really cared about databases, especially databases for web sites. There was also more focus from the very beginning on implementing a few features that worked well and were supported well compared to lots of features that almost worked. Ease of installation also was ingrained early into the work ethic. Axmark said "We had this 15 minute rule. Back in 1996 we tried to make a package that would install and compile in 15 minutes. We always had the idea that if you wanted to get MySQL and try it out, and if you spent a couple of minutes and got it working, you might use it 10 years later. If you didn't get it working in the first 15 minutes, you're likely to go somewhere else."

Features like optimization for the Web made MySQL a natural for today's Internet sites. In fact, Axmark pointed out that MySQL has always had a faster connect time than traditional database systems. This is very important for web applications, considering that a web application needs to connect to a database much more often than a traditional application.

Some of those features took on a life of their own. MySQLProxy is a programmable layer in MySQL between the client and the server. Axmark noted that people came up with so many ways to run this feature that it became a product in its own right.

But it's the huge community of MySQL users that really does the heavy lifting. Axmark showed a chart the listed all of the languages that MySQL supports -- it's a long list -- however, only a few of those langauges are maintained by MySQL AB. The rest are maintained by the community. Axmark also noted that this thriving community enables a lot of significant advances. He cited the case of a student who developed a JDBC driver for MySQL. Not only did the driver work, but it outperformed commercial JDBC drivers in competitive tests. MySQL AB knew it had a good thing going and hired that student. In fact, one of the benefits of an engaged community is that it identifies the people who have the skills that MySQL AB needs. Axmark stated that "We can hire people who have shown that they already know the code."

Axmark and Widenius took a big business risk in the early days. "Back in 1996, we decided to do business in a very different way." That way was to give away everything for people who wanted to use MySQL internally, but charge for people who wanted to include MySQL in their closed source solutions. Clearly that risk payed big dividends to the founders, their team, and to the community. Axmark stressed that a free database system such as MySQL gets better all the time because the community is attuned to coming up with fixes to problems, fixes that go into a public bug database. Some other payoffs are faster developer feedback than closed source, testing by the community of all the code, and a low total cost of ownership.

With a $1 Billion buyout, you would think Axmark would be worry free, but he ended this engaging talk by saying "My biggest challenge now is working in a huge company [that is, Sun]." No doubt Sun is very happy that he's here.

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Ed Ort

A Return to India

2008-02-27T06:00:43-06:00

Rich Green

It's been said that once a visitor goes to India he or she can hardly wait to get out, but that once out, can hardly wait to get back. In just such a return to India (he was there last year), Sun Executive Vice President for Software, Rich Green gave the opening keynote at Sun Tech Days in Hyderabad.

Of note is the fact that Green also made a return to Sun after a foray into the startup world. "I rejoined Sun about a year and a half ago. It was a really deeply personal decision to come back to Sun after working for Sun for 14 years." Green went on to say that "being invited back by Jonathan [Schwartz] to run the largest open source software company in the world meant that we would have to induce some very significant changes to our fundamental culture and attitude at Sun Microsystems." Oh, you didn't realize that Sun is the biggest open source software company in the world? Well I didn't either until Green mentioned it. In fact, Sun had attained that distinction even before the acquisition of the open source MySQL product.

And what of those fundamental culture and attitude changes? Green explains "we [Sun] sat back about a year and half ago and said you know we have been focusing for the past four or five years on providing world class tools for all the platforms that we have invented, whether it's Java or Solaris or other platforms like that. We were very proud of the fact that the number of users of those platforms was enormous. And the acceptance of the tools that we have provided was enormous as well -- commensurately large with the distribution of those platforms."

Green went on "But we also realized that the world is a lot bigger than that which we have invented, and one of the great things that we can do for the developer community is to partner with them and assist them in developing and evolving the technology regardless of whether or not Sun has invented it. Because it's all about choice. Your goal as developers is to bring new innovations and features to the market as quickly as possible. And we know you don't care where it comes from. We wish it was all Sun all the time, but you need the right tool, and the right platform, at the right moment, in the right ecosystem to bring that technology to market. So we sat back and said what can we do to help? Whether it's a technology that we have built or its a technology that exists in the world of Ruby, Python, PHP,etc., we are changing our position . We have some great proof points to say that we will help you with everything that you need. And certainly we'll continue to innovate on the core platforms and create new platforms that we think are going to be relevant." Green followed, "our strategy is all about providing the expertise and catalyst and acceleration to help you get your innovation done more quickly. So it's all about your choice not ours.

This was only part of a wide-ranging and expansive talk by Green that covered many of the new and innovative things happening at Sun. In fact, Green apologized up front for the length of the presentation, but he said that it's length was due to the tremendous rate of innovation engendered by Sun's partnership with the community. "This last year marked the fastest rate of growth of all software activities in the history of Sun Microsystems. And as that largest open source software company in the world we have larger and closer relationships with the software developer community than any company in the world. As a result, the rate of change, the amount of innovation is the sum of the work we do and the sum of the work we think you do. That innovation is occuring at a rate never seen before. You are making my job so hard because it's impossible to keep up with all the innovation." But Green made it clear that it's a problem he's happy to have.

Some other items of note:

Approximately 4000 people are attending Sun Tech Days in Hyderabad and another 2000 are listening in at satellite locations in Bangalore and Chenai.
Green said that yesterday's announcement of the completion of the deal to join MySQL and Sun was really big news. 66% of all the enterprises in the world either use or are planning to use MySQL. In addition, MySQL is the first database system that was built in the Web age and as a result is optimized for the Web.
Green called up Sathish Vaidyanathan, a Sun Employee from Bangalore India, to demonstrate some virtualization capabilities offered by VirtualBox, a product that Sun acquired when it acquired Innotek. The virtualization capabilties will now go into OpenxVM. The demo showed how a developer could build an application on one operating system and then simulate a deployment of that application on other operating systems, all of those systems running on one machine.

There was much much more in this talk -- everything from discussions of India as a remarkable growth area for developers - to some tantalizing look aheads regarding the JavaFX Mobile platform for handsets - to GlassFish - to NetBeans - to Blu-ray Disc Java - to the Campus Ambassador program. Clearly, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on at Sun, a lot to learn about, and a lot to leverage. And so Green ended his talk with the following call to action to the developer community: "participate, learn, thrive."

Learn more about Sun Tech Days.

Ed Ort

On the Way to Hyderabad

2008-02-26T05:46:08-06:00

It's 10:25 A.M. I'm in my hotel room in Hyderabad India. It's the day before the start of the Sun Tech Days event here. I'm thinking about yesterday -- or was it two days ago, or three, or a day and a half? Crossing the International Date Line has had a interesting effect on my reckoning of time. In any event, I took the longest trip of my life in terms of distance traveled: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. to Hyderabad, India. Trips like this that cover almost half the planet can't be done in one direct air flight unless you're flying one of those super sleek spy planes. Rather, this is a multi-flight experience, with each leg of the journey having its own feel, its own story. I'd like to share with you some of that story, so here are some random thoughts abut the trip, one leg at a time.

Las Vegas to Los Angeles

Zoning in. It dawns on me as I board this flight that I'm starting the longest trip of my life, longer by more than 5 time zones than a trip my wife an I took to Australia in 1999. Hyderabad is a half hour off the hourly time zone scheme. Does that add to the time zone count? I wonder why there are some places in the world, like Hyderabad and the Northern Territories in Australia, that choose to be skewed a half hour off the rest of the world. Strange.
Full flight outta town. Why are so many people leaving Las Vegas on a Saturday night? Was there a terrible run of luck at the craps table? Did everyone lose their bankroll at the same time and now have to head back to the humdrum of real life? I get into a conversation with the fellow next to me. It seems that he's part of a large group on the plane from Sao Paolo Brazil and they attended a shoe convention in Vegas. Show's over. Now many of them are heading to Los Angeles before heading back home. I start thinking about the word shoe and how it also means the holder for decks of cards dealt in blackjack. Also the great jockey Willy Shoemaker was known as "The Shoe". With that thought in mind I feel the tires hit the ground at Los Angeles International Airport.

Los Angeles to Hong Kong

Crossing the Pacific. The pilot announces that our route will take us up the Pacfic coast to Alaska, then across to Siberia, then down the coast of Asia past Korea and China to Hong Kong. I'm sort of stunned that we're going to fly over Siberia and Korea. Thoughts of the Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Kim Il Jong zap through my brain. And I'm thinking that I want the pilot to get to Chinese territory as fast as possible. I certainly wouldn't have thought like that in the days of Mao. The geopolitical realities of the world have changed.
The woman across the aisle. The flight is scheduled to take 15 1/2 hours. I try to sleep but do so fitfully. So I turn on the overhead light, take out my notebook, and start writing some random thoughts, some of which you're now reading. A young woman in the next aisle asks if she can borrow some paper, and that leads to a long conversation. I find out that she's a graduate student in music at Redlands University. She tells me that she's also writing a novel and the novel is based in large part on cultural clashes she's experienced in her life. She's Chinese, born in Hong Kong. In fact, she's going home to visit her parents who still live in Hong Kong. Her husband is French. He's an anthropology professor at the University of Redlands. And they're raising their children in Southern California. We talk a lot about cultural differences in her family and mine. We also talk about music. I ask her if computer software plays a large part in the music curriculum. She says definitely yes. In fact, she says that she wished that some of the computer software for music was available when she was younger. She explained how many of the musicians at her school who deal with percussion instruments use a terrific program that allows them to simulate an entire spectrum of percussion instruments. They use a headset to hear the sound. If you had an instrument like that just think of all the arguments you would have avoided with your parents about playing loud music in the garage.

Hong Kong to Bangkok

Hong Kong airport, shhhhh. The Hong Kong airport is ultramodern and very quiet. It has the feel of a very new and very hushed hospital. Here's a photo.
The Olympics are coming. The airport is full of signs like this:
Looking out the mamoth glass windows of the airport (which you can't see in these photos) it looks a lot like San Francisco. Fog, mountanous islands in a large bay. An almost dreamlike setting.

Bangkok to Hyderabad

A sightseeing tour of Bangkok. I had a great time today. I had a long (almost 10 hour) layover in Bangkok and decided to put some of that time to use. So I decided to take a tour of the city. I was worried about how I was going to get into the city and even more worried that I wouldn't get back in time to catch my plane for the flight out. But everything turned out fine. Walking through the exit doors of the Bangkok airport, I'm accosted by hordes of taxi and limo drivers, each claiming to provide the best service for the cheapest prices. Some were way too aggressive for my taste. But one of them caught my attention -- I don't know why. He turned out to be a wise choice. For an agreed upon price of 2000 Baht (a Baht is worth about 3 U.S. cents), my driver "K" gave me a 4 hour tour of the city, showing me everything from the Golden Buddha, to the King's palace, to a snake farm run by the World Health Organization. In some cases he accompanied me in these places, explaining some of their contents, in other cases he waited patiently for me to do my own thing. We even shared two Singha beers. Here are just two of the many photos I took during the tour.

The photos might make Bangkok seem golden and serene, but the fact is it's a noisy, dirty, crumbling in parts, yet new in others, city. It's full of cars, scooters, motorcycles, three-wheeled pedestrain cabs called tuk tuks, and trucks of every state of brokendownness. Drivers appear to stop at red lights but apparently follow no other rules. It's a crazed city and exhiliarating at the same time.

Next stop Hyderabad

If Bangkok is crazed, Hyderabad is certifiably mad. But I'll wait to tell that story on another day.

See you all (at least virtually through this blog) at Sun Tech Days.

Ed Ort

Hyderabad Preview: Interview with Jayashri Visvanathan

2008-02-20T14:32:20-06:00

Sun Tech Days are coming to India next week. I sat down with one of the presenters, Jayashri Visvanathan, to ask her about her presentation and the NetBeans IDE. Jayashri is an Engineering Manager in the Tools group. Her area of expertise is in client-server technologies, particularly JSF, Ajax, JSP and servlets.

What do you do at Sun?

I manage the team responsible for developing the Visual JavaServer Faces(JSF) framework in the NetBeans IDE and tools for popular web frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate, JSF and Struts. Before that, I led the development of the JavaServer Faces-based component library that was bundled in the Java Studio Creator IDE.

Ajax is hot! What is your definition of Ajax?

Ajax is standards such as XHTML, CSS, XML coming together to provide a more interactive user experience on the web. Response to user action that doesn't require a trip server such as data validation happen asynchronously, so users are not waiting around for the server to respond.

What kind of Ajax support is in NetBeans?

Visual JSF framework in Netbeans provides two approaches to Ajax-enable JSF applications (1)Using Dynamic Faces and JSF. There a great tutorial on our wiki (scroll to the bottom and grab ajaxchatroomtutorial.zip). (2) Using Ajax enabled components from Project woodstock. You can see NetBeans in action at my presentation.

What are you presenting at Hyderabad?

I'm making a presentation at NetBeans Day on 29 February entitled "Rapid Application Development Using Visual JSF framework in NetBeans." Basically, I'll start with a short overview of the NetBeans IDE. The rest of the talk will focus on the Visual JSF framework, which is one of the key features in NetBeans. JSF support in the NetBeans IDE provides a rapid application development(RAD) environment for building standards-based web applications. I'll be demoing:

the comprehensive library of Ajax-enabled JSF components
the Visual Editor for laying out components
Drag-and-Drop binding of components to JavaBeans, database tables, and web services
the navigation editor for graphically configuring page flow for your application

Besides your presentation, when can someone talk to you at Tech Days?

Anytime you see me! Also, I'll be at the NetBeans booth Wednesday night during the reception, and again on Thursday afternoon.

Is Hyderabad your first time at a Sun Tech Day?

Yes! I'm really looking forward to it. I'm originally from Chennai; I moved to the United States 13 years ago, before the IT boom. Every time I go back, things have changed so much.

What should developers know about the NetBeans IDE?

It's the "Only IDE you need!"(laugher). Seriously, it's one integrated tool which supports multiple languages (like Ruby, C, C++ and Java), and multiple frameworks (like Spring, Hibernate, JSF and Struts).

For more information

Hyderabad Tech Days

NetBeans Visual Web Wiki

Project Woodstock

NetBeans IDE

Tech Days in Australia!

2008-02-20T06:00:00-06:00

Tech Days in Australia are March 4-6 in Sydney this year. Sun was kind enough to send the managing editors for dsc and jsc into the field this year to scope it out. I manage the Solaris Developer Center, Sun Studio and SXDE websites. I have never been to Australia. A match made in heaven. [Following Tech Days I will be taking some time to visit the many and varied places in OZ and my boss, the amazing Jill, will be taking care of the sites. If you are a regular visitor, be nice. She is a very busy woman.]

The schedule is pretty exciting.

The Solaris development track will cover sessions in the following areas:

\* What Makes Solaris Interesting?
\* Sun Studio Tools

\* New Security Features in Solaris/OpenSolaris
\* Parallel Application Development

\* Solaris Networking Infrastructure

There is also an OpenSolaris Day planned, as well, on March 6th. It will feature the following:

\*OpenSolaris, a Definition

\*What is Solaris Nevada?

\*Solaris Networking for Developers
\*OpenSolaris Virtualization Technologies

\*Discovering Open High Availability Cluster

If you will be in the area, stop by and check it out.

Tech Days are free but we encourage you to Register.

I'm looking forward to it and hope to see you there.

Biryani Anyone?

2008-02-15T16:24:14-06:00

A few weeks ago as I was driving to our local library here in Las Vegas -- yes folks there are a few of us in Las Vegas who actually frequent libraries -- I heard a radio program about the foods of Hyderabad India. My ears and stomach perked up. Not only do I consider myself a "foodie" (my expanding waistline attests to that), but I'm heading to Hyderabad India in eight days to cover Sun Tech Days.

The host of the radio program explained that Hyderabad is something of a food capital of India. Apparently when their empire was waning, the Mughals (did you know that Mughal is the Persian word for Mongol?) fled south from their capital of Delhi to Hyderabad, and much to my delight brought their Northern Indian style of cooking with them. Apparently Hyderabad offers a unique mix of Northern and Southern Indian cooking, with Biryani a most notable example.

Wikipedia describes Hyderabad Biryani as:

a traditional celebration meal made using goat meat and rice and is the staple of a die-hard Hyderabadi.

The Wikipedia entry also includes this picture:

I'm usually hesitant to eat something that's described in any sentence that includes the word die, and frankly, the photo doesn't make Biryani look all that appetizing. It sort of looks like the leftover Rice-A-Roni dish that's been sitting in my refrigerator for the last week. But I will try Biryani. In fact I'm looking forward to all the food delights of Hyderabad.

Of course this trip is not all about the food. It's really about the Tech Days event. I've covered two Tech Days events so far, one in Milan Italy last September and the other in Frankfurt Germany last December. I enjoyed both events, learned a lot, and met a lot of interesting people. However, I've been told that the Sun Tech Days event in Hyderabad might very well outshine the others. It's huge -- I've heard numbers like 15,000 or more attendees -- and it's very high energy. So I'm getting myself charged up and soon will be on my way to Hyderabad.

Here is the agenda for the event. I plan to cover most of the keynotes. I also plan to focus on technical sessions covering JavaFX. And I intend to spend a lot of the Community Day in the University track. As I've done at previous Tech Day events I'm going to do some video interviews and maybe an audio podcast or two. So stay tuned, or better yet, let's meet in Hyderabad at Sun Tech Days. We can learn about some of Sun's terrific technologies and tools, hear from Sun evangelists and other Sun insiders who are close to the action, exchange ideas and experiences, and perhaps share a bowl of Biryani.

Learn more about this event.

Sun Tech Days at a glance.

Ed Ort

Happy 10th Anniversary, Tech Days

2008-01-25T11:39:41-06:00

Happy 10th Anniversary, Tech Days
Tech Days, which began from a night's brainstorming among Sun employees, is now bigger and better than ever as it celebrates the 10th year of its storied history.
Read the article.

Hold the Date - Feb 29, 2008, GlassFish Day is coming to India

2008-01-22T10:00:00-06:00

What is GlassFish and Why GlassFish ?
How community is an important aspect ?
How is it different and better than other alternatives ?

If you would like any (or more) of these questions answered, then the upcoming GlassFish Day in Hyderabad, India will provide answers to all of them. This is our first such event in India and we are excited! There will be presentations and demos highlighting different aspects of GlassFish.

Date: Feb 29, 2008
Venue: Hyderabad International Convention Center, Hyderabad, India

All you need to do is Register for the Tech Days and then you get to attend GlassFish Day as an extra bonus day. The Tech Days Session also provide a wealth of information ranging from Java SE 6, Java Scripting, Project Metro, Java ME and many others.

Community is an overarching aspect of GlassFish. Let us know if you have been using GlassFish and would like to talk in front of audience. Just leave a comment on this blog to get in touch.

Read about success stories, see how GlassFish is used in your geography and how it has been gaining adoption. You can also subscribe to the weekly highlights.

I'll be there, will you ?

Technorati: glassfish glassfishday suntechdays india hyderabad

Doris Chen Explains and Demos jMaki

2008-01-13T15:05:48-06:00

On the second (and last) day of Sun Tech Days Atlanta, Doris Chen, who starred with Sridhar Reddy in a previous posting of mine, was at the podium for a 6:00 p.m. jMaki session. The turnout was impressive for such a late talk and I hastened to take a front-row seat for an unobstructed view. Here’s a summary of what I learned.

What Is jMaki?
According to Doris, jMaki, which first started as a wrapper for JavaScript technology, was invented by Sun senior staff engineer Greg Murray, who’d spent many years in Japan. The lowercase j stands for JavaScript; maki means “wrap” in that language.

jMaki as an open-source project has evolved to be a model for creating widgets and is now much more than just a wrapper, supporting both the server and client sides. The server side is a runtime with JavaScript libraries and resources; the client side manages the widgets and services. The name jMaki, however, sticks.

See www.jmaki.com for details.

Why jMaki?
Why build Web applications with jMaki? The reasons are many—

Universal interface by means of tag libraries with popular widgets
Generic, shared libraries
Standardized data model
Support for tools
Support for multiple servers and languages, for example, JSP pages, portlets, PHP, and Ruby

In short, jMaki makes the development of Web 2.0 applications easy, seamless, and flexible. ajax.dev.java.net contains the details.

What’s the Architecture?
The components of jMaki include the model, client services, layouts, client runtime, server-side runtime, and XmlHttpProxy. Through a NetBeans 6.0 application, Doris demo’d the ins and outs. Choosing a layout and dropping widgets there, for example, involve only a few clicks. Sheer magic!

Doris pointed out that Ajax applications usually call for numerous scripts, which makes debugging a pain. Plus, Ajax is not standard and must be implemented differently for the various browsers. Testing on those browsers is a labor-intensive chore. jMaki boasts an effective debugging mechanism that takes care of cross-browser issues by wrapping the widgets from Dojo, Yahoo!, Google, and such, which already work across browsers.

What About External Resources?
With jMaki’s XmlHttpProxy, dubbed “a window to the world,” accessing external resources, such as RSS, REST, and JSON, is a breeze. XmlHttpProxy enables access to RESTful Web services and enterprise resources. You can also customize jMaki components, a simple task that Doris showed the audience. A couple of minor changes in the code did the trick—truly amazing!

jMaki can also work with enterprise resources, like retrieving data from a database or other persistence data sources.

What About Communications Among Widgets?
Doris assured everyone that the widgets can talk with each other and proved that with code examples. For details on the widgets, see widgets.dev.java.net.

What an illuminating session! Toward the end, Doris gave out her email address and invited feedback. One participant after another approached her with questions. The enthusiasm was catching. Take a bow, Doris.

Do visit the Sun Tech Days site.

A Technical Visionary Talks About the Present and Future

2008-01-10T16:46:09-06:00

Earlier today, I ran into Rags Srinivas, CTO of Sun's Technology Outreach team, who graciously agreed to chat with me for a few minutes for the benefit of my Sun Tech Days Atlanta blog. That means the Star of the Wonders of Spontaneity is shining on me today: He and I corresponded before but never had a chance to talk at length. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat: Rags is ever-enlightening, pleasant, and so down-to-earth that he reminds me of a well respected manager at Sun before, whom everyone described as being "always capable of calming you down."

"So, tell me how you came to join Sun--10 years ago, you said?--and what makes you tick?" I asked, to set the stage.

"I taught computer languages courses--C, C++, and Java--before joining Sun as a technology evangelist. See, I enjoy trying out technologies and explaining them in simple terms. The Sun job opened a big horizon for me and gave me the opportunity of presenting to easily 500 people at forums like Sun Tech Days instead of only 20-25 students in a typical class," Rags said.

As for his key responsibilities, Rags cited three major bullets:

Think ahead: What's down the road?
An example is JavaFX technology, which wasn't even known this time last year but is now becoming a household word among developers. Rag demonstrated JavaFX [technology] a year ago, however. "That was its first-ever demo," he added.

Help steer along technology releases.
An example is Java SE 6, Update N. An early-access release will be available soon.

Support the technical evangelists, program managers, writers (such as yours truly), and such in reaching out to developers.
An example is Sun Tech Days. Rags sets the technology priorities and determines the content agenda with developers in mind: "I constantly remind myself that what's relevant to Sun might not be relevant to them."

I asked Rags to flash his crystal ball. "Technology has gotten out of hand, no doubt about that," he remarked. "There are way too many ways to do the same thing. Developers tell me that all they desire is one robust solution for a specific problem. And why not? If the cost of maintenance is going through the roof, as it sure is in the software world nowadays, the business suffers."

That's no surprise, though, according to Rags, because technologies must evolve and growing pains abound. Ultimately, balance is the key. "As my manager tells me, 'You're the BS filter.' So, given that Ajax offers 15 frameworks, I pick two or three and tell the world. One word of advice: Don't spread yourself too thin as you scramble to learn all the cutting-edge stuff."

As for the future, Rags says that even though evolvement will go on, software complexities will multiply and cost a bundle to maintain. So, we must cut the redundancies and ineffective ways. "But we're nowhere near that goal," he concluded with a smile.

And life will continue to be challenging and full for CTOs.

Do visit the Sun Tech Days site.

A Snapshot of the JavaFX World

2008-01-10T08:37:35-06:00

After the keynote this morning, I went ahead and attended a technical session on JavaFX, the new rich client development platform developed by Sun, given by Sun tech evangelist Inyoung Cho. It was a pretty full session, with a lot of people who have heard about JavaFX, but not many people using it yet. In short, a couple hundred of people who are very curious to find out what's happening in the JavaFX platform world.

Now, I should point out that JavaFX Script is still a moving target, so the final technology is still up for grabs. However, Inyoung started by talking about the rise of scripting languages with the latest generation of programmers, largely (and I agree) because they are rapid development environments. However, one of her key points was that there are different scripting languages for different purposes, of which JavaFX is one. JavaFX is dedicated to rich client interfaces.

Note that if you download the JavaFX libraries right now, you'll get a scripting interpreter. Scripting support was introduced back in JDK 1.5, but Sun is currently working on a compiler for JavaFX so that the language can be compiled directly into bytecode, which will make the resulting GUI programs much faster. In addition, she mentioned that the designer tools are currently being worked on by Sun, similar to what you might get with Flash tools.

Since I'm a techie guy, I was very interested in hearing about the new Scene Graph. This part of the javaFX architecture forms the “guts” of any animation. In simple terms, a scene graph keeps track of each of the objects that will be displayed, or “painted,” in a scene. However, since JavaFX is largely about animation, the scene graph must keep track of each of the graphical objects so that it can animate those objects over time. You can think of it as a big clipboard that keeps track of all the items that are shown on the screen over an animation.

Now, I should point out that one of the key ideas behind JavaFX is that there are two different types of developers: one who is a visual designer, and another who is a programmer. The workflow output of both of these can be used to create a rich client platform (it's unusual to have both done by the same person). However, JavaFX helps both get the job done. The workflow allows content to be compiled and distributed with a runtime on a variety of platforms, from desktops to Blu-Ray disc players, to mobile phones and TV platforms.

From there, Inyoung hinted on a number of features, including my favorite: automatic data binding using the “bind” keyword. Data binding keeps two variables in sync, such that when one changes, the other is changes as well. For those of you that use model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern, you'll recognize that automatic binding is a feature worth its weight in gold. In JavaFX, you'll often be using model classes and view classes that must remain in sync.

Of course, the underlying technology of JavaFX is the Swing and Java 2D libraries. If you haven't used the 2D libraries lately, you'll be in for a shock (a pleasant one, incidentally). Most of the features that animations depend on, such as translation, opacity, and timing, have been simplified for use in JavaFX, although those features are still in active development.

All in all, a great presentation, highlighting some of the great new features in JavaFX. I also appreciated the detailed examples on how to invoke JavaFX script from within Java.

Swing Application Framework and Beans Binding

2008-01-10T06:12:42-06:00

Okay, I admit it. I was the co-author of “Java Swing,” a book which was published by O'Reilly ten years ago. I also admit that I've had several ideas throughout the years as to what would make a decent framework for Swing applications, including support for cataloging actions and resources, and cacheing of session state (window size, position, etc.). So, it was with great relief that a few years ago, I found that Hans Meuller on the Swing team was taking on this task in the new Swing Application Framework (JSR 296). I was equally glad to see that the scope of this project was something that “could be learned in a day.”

If you've ever worked with threads in Swing, or even the SwingWorker class, you probably know that it can be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, JSR 296 will allow you to create tasks that can be started and monitored with the use of a TaskMonitor. In addition, there is a TaskService class that can help you organize each of your tasks and fire them off.

The Swing Application Framework also supports various lifecycle methods that you get when extending specific framework classes, such as initialize(), startup(), ready(), and shutdown(). Just extend the appropriate class, override these methods, and you won't have to worry about trapping any obscure events and reacting to them again.

I was also very impressed by the resource injection. Basically, this means that you can do something like:

Resource file:

btnShowTime.text = Show current time!
btnShowTime.icon = refresh.png

Java class:

btnShowTime = new JButton();
btnShowTime.setName("btnShowTime");

And at this point, the resources are injected into the btnShowTime class automatically. In addition, you can even do something like this:

Resource File:

MyPanel.greetingMsg = Hello, %s, a string was injected!

Java class:

@Resource
String greetingMsg;

ResourceMap resource = ctxt.getResourceMap(MyPanel.class); 
resource.injectFields(this);
String personalMsg = String.format(greetingMsg, txtName.getText());
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, personalMsg);

There is also a new API out there for beans binding. If you've never heard of beans binding before, the idea is that two properties in two different beans need to remain synchronized. This is actually part of JSR 295. In short, this means you can do something like this:

Property property1 = ELProperty.create(“${faceStyle}”);
Property property2 = BeanProperty.create(“value”);

Binding binding = Bindings.createAutoBinding(
UpdateStrategy.READ_WRITE,
object1, property1, // source
object2, property2); // target

binding.bind();

This will create a binding between the two objects such that if a value on either side changes, the other value will instantaneously be changed as well. It's simple, elegant, and it works! Kudos to Shannon Hickey and Scott Violet for a great addition to the Java APIs.

The People Behind Java University at Sun Tech Days Atlanta

2008-01-10T04:40:53-06:00

Over breakfast yesterday morning, I met up with Stacy David Thurston, whom many called Stacy, and Joe Boulenouar, both long-time lecturers from Sun Learning Services here to teach classes at Sun Tech Days Atlanta. I’d worked with them on a couple of occasions before and much admire their breadth of knowledge, not only on Sun’s products and technologies, but also about the high-tech world at large.

Stacy Thurston, soft-spoken, charismatic, and unassuming, is multitalented. Besides excelling in software, he also specializes in localization and has published a poem about Canada, where he grew up. His blog details many unique projects he’s undertaken and his extensive travels. Thanks to his Chinese wife, he can enviably converse--to an extent--in Cantonese (without an accent!) and is familiar with several Asian languages, including Chinese, Thai, and Japanese. Stacy recently taught at Beijing University and wowed many a student there. Hectic schedule notwithstanding, he takes things easy: “Don’t get stressed out--it’s bad for you.” Sage advice.

The hot topic of Web 2.0 was the focus of the Java University class Stacy taught at Tech Days Atlanta. In the class, he demonstrated how to build interactive Web sites with Ajax, the Dojo Toolkit, and jMaki. Wonderful turnout!

Separately, I cornered Joe Boulenouar, ever cheery yet also serious and no-nonsense, and asked him what he liked about working at Sun. “I architect and design Java EE applications and hold classes for established, new, and potential customers,” he responded. “The opportunities to present the latest technologies--Java EE 5, EJB 3.0, Web 2.0, and Sun’s Java middleware, such as Java CAPS [Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite] and GlassFish--are invaluable to me. I feel that I make a difference.”

Joe’s class in Atlanta was on how to design robust enterprise applications through SOA on the Java EE platform. Almost 90 students showed up.

Stacy and Joe are respected trainers for good reason!

Marty Lovings, sales support specialist for Sun Learning Services, works in a marketing and delivery capability. He’s been with Sun for seven years: “Sun has been good to me and I love my job.” To Marty, training is critical. All too often, however, “you don’t realize you need it until you do need it.” Better not get yourself into that bind and grasp every opportunity to reinforce your skills and knowledge, such as through the many classes offered by Sun, either instructor-led or self-paced.

Chris McDonald, Americas business development manager for Sun Learning Services, is responsible for a territory that encompasses the United States, Canada, and Latin America. He manages the Java and Solaris curricula and will soon oversee the virtualization curriculum, that is, xVM Server and Ops Center. Chris’s job takes him to numerous customer and community events, such as Sun Tech Days, JavaOne, and Java University.

“I love my job,” Chris echoed Marty. “Sun is still an innovator. I enjoy working with the latest and greatest hardware and software and staying current with the new technologies. My job affords me that opportunity.”

A side note of gratitude to Chris: Thanks for grabbing me a lunch box as I caught Joe for a brief interview. Very thoughtful of him.

Do visit the Sun Tech Days site.

New Features In NetBeans 6.0

2008-01-09T18:24:40-06:00

You can always tell that you're at a technical conference when you first enter a dimmed room that's playing that modestly energetic "we'll-be-starting-soon" music. You quietly take your seat, and then--after your eyes adjust to the dark--you glance around to see if you know anyone in the room. That's pretty much how I feel right now (except that my laptop is so bright that my eyes are not adjusting). In my earlier blog, I noted that these conferences are much more intimate than, say, JavaOne in San Francisco. Well, that's certainly the case right now. I would say there's about 200 people in the room so far, and I don't know anyone.

If you haven't been to one of our free Tech Days recently, they're usually divided into two or three days, based on discrete topics. Here in Atlanta, the first day gives you a choice of attending tracked sessions on either NetBeans or Solaris. Since I post articles for java.sun.com, I chose NetBeans. However, I should also confess that I just finished an article on Solaris, I'm an avid NetBeans user, and I'm curious to get a hands-on demonstration of what's new in NetBeans 6.0. So, it was an easy choice.

And NetBeans evangelist Gregg Sporar is now here to deliver. So, after a short barrage of hurled T-shirts and other trinkets from Gregg and Sun VP Jeet Kaul--who nearly hits my video camera with a T-shirt after disclaiming any liability--Gregg dives right in. The first topic that he shows is improvements in the NetBeans editor, which he claims has been a sore spot for programmers so far. Here's a quick summary of the improvements, courtesy of the my hand-scribbled notes and, where that didn't suffice, the official NetBeans documentation.

Smarter code completion. NetBeans provides completions for keywords, fields, and variables. It also lists the most logical options at the top (for example, if it knows the method you're currently typing return an int, those methods that return an int will be shown first above what Gregg called "the seven-foot line").
Highlights. Here, the IDE tracks the position of the caret and, based on it, highlights parts of the code. So, for example, if you hold down the Alt key, you can highlight a field name in a class and then type a new name for the field over it. The changes will automatically propagate to each of the uses of that field throughout the class. Cool! An inline refactoring tool!
Compiler Errors in Task List. This was a neat addition that Gregg showed. All of the compiler errors were shown in a table format, instead of outputting raw javac output. This gives you can easier method to hunt down your errors.
Runtime Configurations. You can assign a class a certain runtime configuration which, among other things, lets you specify what parameters can be passed into a static main() method.
Dedicated Game Designer for Java ME. It just looked fantastic. Need I say more?

Sone afterwards, Gregg also covered items such as:

Unified installation experience. No more downloading and installing separate packs (profiler pack, ME pack, etc.). Now you can choose the download that best suits you and install the features and runtimes you need in one installer. You can add functionality later by re-running the installer.
Swing Database Applications. NetBeans now has more advanced use of Beans Binding technology (JSR 295) and the Java Persistence API. Using the new Java Desktop Application project template, you can quickly set up a form that displays a database table and enables you to modify the database. Bind a database table to an existing form by dragging a table from the Runtime window onto a form.

We took a quick break at this point, at which point Gregg will come back and discuss Beans Binding and Swing Application Support (JSR 296) support. More later....