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JavaOne Report

 
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Hi everyone. I'm off at JavaOne this week. I figured I'd post a few messages under this topic to give people my general impressions of the conference. Feel free to post. I make no guarantees as to how often I'll be able to keep up with postings.
Day 0: Sunday, 6/3/01
I arrived today and checked in. Sun's gotten smarted about letting people pick up registration info on Sunday, to avoid the Monday morning rush.
I went to a "firesdie chat" with some of the Java bigwigs. It was open to JavaOne alumni and there were about 120 people there. Unfortunately, despite some direct questions, they generally seemed to be spouting Sun's party lines and weren't really giving more useful information. I left after about 45 minutes.
Tonight is a sneak peak at the JavaOne pavillion.
Overall, I expect a lot of emphasis this year, on J2ME, XML, and wireless, based on the list of presentations and BoFs.
--Mark
 
Mark Herschberg
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Day 1: Monday, 6/4/01
The keynote was boring.
I met Peter Hagger, so now my interaction with other JavaRanch moderators isn't totally virtual. We talked about the conference, among other things. Peter pointed out to me that attendence was down this year. Nonetheless, they ran late because it took over 30 minutes for everyone to get into the first keynote.
This year there was also a second, technical keynote in the afternoon. I came in when they were talking about the J2ME. They mentioned Personal Profile, RMI Profile, MIDP, but not PDAP. I also noticed this omission in a J2ME architecture talk.
In the technical keynote, they mentioned some long term plans for Java. I list these below.
Platform roadmap:
- 8 month release cycle
- 1.3.1 Ladybird is out.
- 1.4 Merlin Q4 2001
- 1.5 Tiger Q2 2003 (initial planning now)
J2EE 1.3 fall 2001, includes:
- EJB 2.0
- JAXP 1.1
- JMS
- J2EE Connectors
J2EE 1.4 in Requirements phase
MIDP 1.03 FCS target in Sept 2001
As a whole, JavaOne seems more commercial this year. That is, it seems more about Sun putting the right spin on Java, and less about engineer development. There are still plenty of sessions, etc, but that doesn't seem like such a focus. Nothing specific, just a feeling. Also this year, there area number of programming contests, although the winners of each contest generally spend 2-3 days of the conference doing hard core coding, and not really attending the conference.
The coolest product I saw was a cell phone running PersonalJava. It was a small phone, so I was amazed at how powerful it was!
The big topics of the conference seem to be:
1) J2ME and mobile devices
2) J2EE blueprints and designing enterprise systems

--Mark
 
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Great update Mark! Keep up the good work and remember to find time to enjoy yourself.
Please send my greetings to Peter Haggar.
Thanks,
-Peter Tran
 
tumbleweed
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Thanks for the update Mark.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Day 2: Tuesday, 6/5/01
Being exhausted form last night, I skipped today's keynote in favor of sleep. Apparently some bigwig from Nokia spoke (the president or CEO, something like that). He basically pushed J2ME and talked about how many tens of millions of J2ME devices they'll be selling over the next few years. The also showed some products with integrated J2ME support. Most interesting was a demo of a profiler which let you visually see your running code.
This morning I went around the pavillion. Lots of cool new products. I spoke to a number of publishers, getting more deals for future book giveaways for JavaRanch.
I must say I'm a little disappointed with how Key3Media is running the conference. I'm especially disappointed with the lack of beer this year at the BoFs.
The talks this year have been fantastic, many with the right content at the right level. I've been spending about 70% of my time at J2ME talks, and the other 30% at J2EE talks.
- There was a great talk on Java garbage collection in HotSpot.
- There was a talk on the CreditSuite PDA stock trading app. In order to improve performence, they got down to effectively doing assembly programming for crypto and other network layer algorithms. Very good, very detailed talk.
- I attended a SprintPCS talk in whichSprint basically said, they wwant to get into te wireless application space. They went through what they offer to application developers. Basically, phone companies aren't making money on call-time, so they want to extend their services, most notably, billing and application distribution.
Finally, my own JSR (JSR-75 PDA Profile) gave a status report. We're a bit behind where we should be. Fortunately, we only got one hostile question (along the lines of, "what the heck is going on, why aren't you done yet?!?!?!").
And (only because I didn't want Peter to worry :-), I also attended the HP party, which is always fun, and had a good band this year. (Hey, all programming and no beer makes Mark a dull developer. :-)
--Mark
[This message has been edited by Mark Herschberg (edited June 06, 2001).]
 
Trailboss
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What is Ladybird? Merlin? Tiger?
 
Peter Tran
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Paul,
If I'm correct, it's the code name SUN assigns to the JAVA release version.
If you're working on JDK 1.3 code base, then you're working on Ladybird.
It would be cool if the call 1.6 Dragon.
-Peter
 
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Crouching Java, Hidden Version?
------------------
I'm a soldier in the NetScape Wars...
Joel
 
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Any focussed discussions on EJB 2.0 ?
 
Mark Herschberg
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I haven't been attending many sessions today, so I have time to check in mid-day. That's correct Peter, they are Sun';s code names.
Ajith, I haven't been to many J2EE discussions yet. I went to some on J2EE design patterns, and J2EE working with J2ME. Fomr the talks listed, and what I have heard, it seems Sun is really trying to solidify it's enterprise model. They're really trying to get a comphrehensive, high level model as it develops, even higher than what they already have. Java is really getting to be almost a 4.5GL, IMHO. (We're probably a few years away from this, but we're getting there.)
JCA has been the topic of a couple of talks, suggesting strong support for it. Anything in particular I should keep an eye out for?
--Mark
 
Mark Herschberg
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Day 3: Wednesday, 6/6/01
I again skipped the keynote. I spend a good deal of the morning walking around the Pavillion. Lots of really cool new products. I'd estimate 1 out of every 3-4 companies there was involved with J2ME in some way. Even companies like Oracle were promoting their wireless solutions. It's definately the hot market.
I would encourage everyone to look over the vender list and check out some of the companies.
I then had a JSR meeting, and missed a number of talk this afternoon. One that I did catch was on J2ME servers. The talk discussed ways that you could turn a J2ME device into a server. As for why, that's another discussion, although there are reasons,
I also attended a good BoF on application provisioning, now covered by JSR-124.
I was happy to learn today in a talk that MIDP:NG will likely include HTTPS!
--Mark
 
Johannes de Jong
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Mark what does JSR stand for ?.
How about posting some url's here of the interesting products/companies you see at JavaOne? If you have the time
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Johannes de Jong:
Mark what does JSR stand for ?.
How about posting some url's here of the interesting products/companies you see at JavaOne? If you have the time


JSR stand for Java Specification Request, which is part of the JCP. (Wait, let me guess; Java Community process :-)
Basically, any an all changes to Java, including new versions of Java and new APIs go through a JSR process, so the industry as a whole can make Java what it wants. This was started in response to concerns by some major companies that if Sun alone controlled Java, it could become another MicroSoft (not quite, but something alone those lines).
Next week I'll try to get organized with all my notes, and post some info about companies and products and other info from JavaOne.
--Mark
 
Mark Herschberg
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Day 4: Thursday, 6/7/01
It should come as no surprise that I didn't go to the keynote today, instead preferring to sleep. I was up late last night trying to finish up my talk.
Another important theme of the conference is p2p (that's Peer-to-Peer). Sun's support can be found in their JXTA APIs. That's about all I know, since when I tried going to theJXTA talk, I was told it was full. But I'm not bitter. Besides, I'll feel much better once I make Sun pay for this insult! They'll all pay! Ha ha ha! (Boy, it's been a long week.)
Some truly great talks today:
JDK 1.4 will ave loggin support. It's based off of JLog and log4j. I'm thinking Java is really becoming a 4.5GL, what with inherent support for non-critical programmatic features. With support for everything form logging to EJBs, right in the language itself, Java is really moving way beyond what other languages offer.
The cool news is that Sun Labs developed kSSL, a SSL implementation for small devices. MIDP:NG will likely have SSL support! You can already download this today (I don't recall where, but somewhere on Sun's pages).
I went to a talk a J2EE design patterns. They were basically just promoting their book, which they were convienently selling in the back of the lecture hall. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me the J2EE design patterns seem like regular patterns couched in a J2EE context. I don't really see them as new patterns, as opposed to context specific pattern application.
Finally, there was an excellent BoF tonight entitled "J2ME: A Look under the covers." (Although I may be a little biased on this one. :-)
I also went to the B-52 concert. Sun was kind enough to schedule my talk during the concert. (We still have about 50 people, despite this handicap.) I rushed over after my talk, and caught the last 3 songs.
One day left. Really more of a half day, since it's done at 4pm. It's been a fun week, but I'm glad it's over, because it's been pretty tiring. That, and I get to see my girlfriend. (What a way to top off a week full of Java! Does life get any better than this? :-)
--Mark
 
Mark Herschberg
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There was a big announcement at the keynote today, Sun is deprecating Java. John Gage said "it was a good experiment, but we just don't see it as viable; as such we can no longer devote our resourced to it" Instead, Sun is pushing other technologies like C#. Bill Gates was on hand to demo Microsoft's offering. Recognizing that Microsoft often produces vaporware, Sun also talked about how companies can switch to more established languages, like C and Fortran. Java is expected to continue to live on in academia, but that's about it. Check out the Javasoft page for recommendations on what developers should do both in terms of their programs, and their jobs.
--Mark
 
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Mark,
There wasn't any keynote today. Did you stay up too late again?
 
Mark Herschberg
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That's the only thing you questioned in that post? :-)
--Mark
 
Cindy Glass
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I just presumed that they rest of it was Hallucinations / Nightmares caused by lack of proper rest.
Hope that you are on your way to recovery .
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