JAVA is da best

Snac enables bite-size widgets for Java phones

2009-10-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Not everyone has a smartphone, and strange as it may sound for those who can't live without their mini call-placing computers, avoiding an US$80 to US$100 monthly data plan is often driving that conscious choice. But it is possible to get a data add-on to a cell phone plan for as little as US$10 a month. For that set of in-betweeners, a program like Snac could bridge the gap between a modest data plan and accessing Web content like social network feeds and news stories.

Snac, in open beta, provides a dashboard of thumbnail-size widgets that periodically grab content from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail (POP3), the weather, Google Calendar, news sources, and so on. Snac precaches a few layers of content, so that when you click a widget, you'll be able to immediately see headlines, status updates, and so on, on a small pop-up window.

Snac isn't just read-only either. For instance, you're able to update your social networking status and add comments in Facebook. Ditto with Twitter, but Snac isn't equipped for direct replies. Opening a news story pushes you to your phone's default browser, but Snac CEO Mark Caron tells us they'll soon add an in-app browser for reading purposes. At this point, you're unable to configure how often Snac pulls in fresh content, but Caron says they're looking into that, too.

Caron demoed Snac beta on a Sony Ericsson TM 506 phone, and a private beta version for BlackBerry. It works on almost 300 Java feature phones, but also on Symbian and Windows phones. There's no limit to how many widgets you can install from the Snac gallery, and managing the dashboard is straightforward from the phone settings and from the Web.

The free, ad-supported app isn't much of a looker, with a boring background, blocky typeface, and sketchbook widget design. But it worked quickly and well in our demo. We'll be keeping an eye out for future developments.

Oracle gets go-ahead to buy Sun

2009-08-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

The US Justice Department has given its approval for business software firm Oracle to take over computer hardware software maker Sun Microsystems.

The $7.4bn (£4.5bn) deal was agreed by the two in April this year, but still needs approval from the European Commission before it can be concluded.

The acquisition gives Oracle control over Java, a key programming language used in its products.

The takeover had been held up over questions about licensing Java.

The language is used in billions of electronic devices across the world.

The deal is expected to be finalised at the end of the summer.

Oracle is looking to strengthen its position against rival IBM, which abandoned its own attempts to buy Sun earlier this year.

Sun employs about 33,000 people, while Oracle's workforce totals 86,000.

How SpringSource is taking on Java Goliaths

2009-07-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

Some argue that open-source software can't innovate. In fact, one of the industry's former executives, Peter Yared, recently argued that "the only successful open-source companies sell commodities."

Yared clearly hasn't heard of SpringSource, an open-source application platform provider that is redefining the J2EE application server and, quite possibly, the future of open source.

Yared isn't alone in his beliefs. A friend recently wrote me to suggest that open source is at its best when disrupting big, profitable markets:

Commercial open source is a (commodity) replacement market. When it is not (i.e., people are building new, never-done-before cool/future-proof apps with open-source technology), then it is a pure-play Internet-based business model, one that is becoming so specific/demanding that people will want full control and (to) develop their own stuff, e.g., Google, Facebook, and others that heavily use open source to build their Web services.

SpringSource and its ubiquitous Spring Framework, however, promise something different. Something much more ambitious. Not only does Spring challenge the status quo in application development, deployment, and management (Hyperic), but SpringSource is proving that commercial open source can peacefully coexist with community involvement.

In a conversation with Spring creator and SpringSource founder Rod Johnson, he clarified SpringSource's competitive differentiation:

The essence of SpringSource is that we're not a commodity play but have a far more ambitious agenda. We're not interested in replicating what closed-source vendors already offer, at lower price: We are providing a superior experience to developers and operations teams--for example, in our integrated approach to unifying the application life cycle from developer desktop to the data center--which doesn't presently exist in Java.

Of course, our offerings are also leaner (more productive and faster), cheaper and more open than those of the old incumbents, and that's a huge selling point in today's market. But we're focused on being the enterprise Java leader--and not merely in open source.

(Credit: SpringSource)SpringSource isn't simply replacing IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic, or Red Hat JBoss application servers. It is actually doing much more, and it offers, in my opinion, the best example of just how disruptive an open-source vendor can be precisely because SpringSource isn't seeking to be the open-source leader in Java, but the leader, period.

Gartner estimates that there are currently at least 2 million Spring developers, an impressive number suggesting that the Java community is looking to Spring to help it migrate Java applications onto lighter-weight containers (Tc Server), across highly virtualized environments, and ultimately to the cloud. Given SpringSource's strong financial performance, the company seems to be doing a good job of monetizing a significant percentage of that Spring adoption.

Android goes beyond Java, gains native C/C++ dev kit

2009-06-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

Google's open source Android operating system is maturing and beginning to attract a more diverse audience of third-party developers. To accommodate the growing need for more power and flexibility, Google is opening up the platform to additional programming languages and new kinds of development.

The Android userspace is largely dominated by Java technologies that run on top of Google's custom Dalvik Java virtual machine. At launch, Java was the only officially supported programming language for building distributable third-party Android software. That's starting to change as Google introduces new options. On Thursday, the company announced the availability of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) which will allow developers to build Android software components with C and C++.

The NDK will enable developers to code some of the performance-sensitive parts of their programs in C and reuse existing C code on the Android platform. It comes with some limitations, however, and is not intended to serve as a full alternative to Android's Java development model.

The NDK does not provide access to platform framework APIs. It's intended to be used alongside Java to code individual parts of programs that require existing C libraries or higher performance. JNI is used as the bridge between Java and native code.

The NDK includes a cross-compiler toolchain for generating ARM binaries that can be deployed in Android APK packages. Google says that native code should be used sparingly and is not appropriate for the vast majority of third-party Android applications. The company also points out that using it could reduce portability and have other negative consequences.

"The NDK will not benefit most applications. As a developer, you will need to balance its benefits against its drawbacks; notably, using native code does not result in an automatic performance increase, but does always increase application complexity," the documentation says. "Typical good candidates for the NDK are self-contained, CPU-intensive operations that don't allocate much memory, such as signal processing, physics simulation, and so on."

In addition to delivering support for native code, Google is also extending Android to support popular dynamic scripting languages. Earlier this month, Google launched the Android Scripting Environment (ASE) which allows third-party developers to build simple Android applications with Python and Lua.

The ASE provides access to platform framework capabilities through a JSON RPC bridge. This means that scripts which run on top of the ASE can actually leverage other capabilities of the operating system, such as controlling the ringer volume, toggling WiFi, making calls, detecting the user's current location, launching activities, and handling intents. One of the most compelling aspects of the ASE is that it allows users to code new scripts on the device itself.

Object Relation Mapping and Java Persistence: Data Modeling and Legacy Schemas

2009-06-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

These days, it’s essential to have a strong knowledge of object relational mapping. This reflects the need for retaining application data long after the application has run. As the need for data storage grows, so too does the need to work with legacy databases or schemas. A schema is simply a description of a database—i.e., its tables, data types, constraints, etc.

Before working with legacy schemas, it’s sometimes necessary to learn more complex mapping techniques. This knowledge will help you in working around what are often quirky legacy schemas. Very often, it’s simply not an option to modify a legacy schema.

A key concept in object relational mapping is the difference between entity and value types. Let’s now look at this concept.

Entity and Value Types
In Hibernate, types can be either entity or value. An entity type has a persistent identity that can outlive the application that creates it. In other words, an entity is persisted to the database, loaded from the database, updated, etc. A value type, on the other hand, doesn’t have a persistent identity and may be considered no more than a set of attributes that relate to a more important entity. For a developer who’s starting up the object relational mapping value chain, there is a temptation to just lump everything in to the one class definition. Doing so misses an important design opportunity.

In summary, a value type may be a component of an entity. We need to make this more concrete! A typical example of an entity type is a user—e.g., a system user. The postal address of a user is more likely to be a value type. In some ways, you can think of a value type as an attribute of an entity. Let’s now see an example of how to map an entity and value type.

Is IBM (IBM) Deal To Buy Sun (JAVA) In Trouble?

2009-03-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Inevitably, when a corporate buy-out is announced or rumored, the target company’s stock prices trades up to the level of the value of the deal.

Last week, there was news that IBM (IBM) was likely to buy Sun (JAVA) for about $10 a share. Sun’s stock jumped from under $5 to almost $9 in one day. But, since then Sun’s shares have been moving down. They closed the week at $7.83, well below the rumored purchase price.

There could be several reasons that IBM has either lost interest in Sun or is considering lowering a purchase price. One is that Sun has lost money or broken even in several of its most recent quarters. In the periods when the company did make a profit, it was modest. It may be that IBM has discovered that the next several quarters look weak for Sun.

Alternatively, IBM may have found out the the value of Sun’s customer contracts going forward are not as strong as it may have initially believed. Sun may be losing market share to larger competitors like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). If Sun’s piece of the server global server industry is dropping rapidly, IBM may be considering walking away from a transaction or lowering its offer.

Whatever the reason, the fact that no deal has been announced is not good news for Sun.

JSR 223: Scripting for the Java Platform

2009-03-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

We have all heard heated arguments between developers who use scripting languages and developers who use Java. One of the reasons for the war between these two factions is that the process of integrating the two was so difficult that developers on both sides were almost forced to choose one or the other. Java Specification Request (JSR) 223 addresses this issue. In this article, I present examples of how the standard framework and API defined by JSR 223 makes it easy for Java programmers to take advantage of the benefits of using a scripting language while retaining the benefits of using Java.

The Scripting API

The entire scripting API is contained in the package javax.script, which was first delivered with Java 6. This lightweight package contains six interfaces:

Bindings
Compilable
Invocable
ScriptContext
ScriptEngine
ScriptEngineFactory

five classes:

AbstractScriptEngine
CompiledScript
ScriptEnginemanager
SimpleBindings
SimpleScriptContext <.ul>

and a single exception:

ScriptException

Rather than describing each of these interfaces, classes and exceptions, I present a series of five Java programs and five scripts in three languages to show just how little effort is required to make them work together.

Red Hat releases Enterprise Linux 5.3

2009-01-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Red Hat has released the latest version of its corporate Linux distribution, offering enhanced support for virtualisation and an open source implementation of Sun Microsystems' Java platform for the first time.

Available immediately, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (RHEL 5.3) includes over 150 updates, according to the firm, the most significant addressing virtualisation, support for new processors and integration of the open source Java OpenJDK.

"With RHEL 5.3, customers have access to the latest in open source, including leading virtualisation scalability and performance," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president of Red Hat's Platform Business Unit.

Virtualisation support now allows for larger and more ambitious virtualisation deployments on newer and more powerful servers, according to Red Hat. RHEL 5.3 supports up to 126 processors and 1TB of memory, hosting virtual machines with up to 32 processors and up to 80GB of memory each.

RHEL 5.3 also provides support for Intel's Core i7 Nehalem processors, including the Extended Page Tables feature for better handling of memory when operating virtual machines.

The integration of OpenJDK makes RHEL 5.3 the first enterprise-ready solution with a fully open source Java stack, Red Hat claimed.

While early versions of OpenJDK were not guaranteed compatible with Java SE 6, Red Hat said that the version in RHEL 5.3 has passed the compatibility tests and supports Java applications when combined with the JBoss Application Server.

RHEL 5.3 is available in two server variants: a base version for small dep loyments; and Advanced Platform. Client versions are likewise divided into the general purpose RHEL Desktop, with a higher-performance Workstation variant and another with the ability to support virtual guests.

Is Ruby Replacing Java? – Not So Fast

2008-12-28T00:55:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have heard it all: Ruby On Rails (RoR) is so much cooler and simpler than Java EE. It allows you to write web applications 10X faster. And Ruby has nifty language features we can only dream of in Java. So, Ruby must be replacing Java to become the "next" programming language just as Java "replaced" C++/COBOL and C++ "replaced" Fortran.

Well, in my opinion, this kind of talk has some serious logical problems. First of all, as the short history of high technology has proven again and again, the "superior" solution does not always win over "inferior" ones. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. The question regarding to Ruby versus Java is NOT how much more advanced RoR is compared with Java EE -- the real question is whether Java EE is good enough for most developers.

The reason, in economics terms, is that the choice of a technically "better" programming language does not bring you competitive advantage in terms of overall cost and productivity. Instead, it matters far more to have better requirement gathering, better customer feedback, better development process, better trained developers, and better development tools (e.g., IDEs). In software engineering speak, the actual implementation of a system using a specific programming language has the lowest value in the value chain, and can be easily outsourced.

Okay, now you may ask: "If that is true and programming language does not matter, how come Java became so successful and replaced an array of older languages?" Well, did Java really "replace" any other language? I have recently been in graduate school for a science PhD program, and all the new bleeding-edge number crunching software we wrote was still Fortran. It is not being replaced by C++ or Java. Fortran is good enough and switching to a cooler language does not make scientific computing better / faster -- and the re-training cost for the entire team eliminates any potential productivity gain. Another example: for rich UI application developers, the dominant languages are still C / C++ / VB. Even heavily marketed languages like C# and VB.Net have little traction -- let alone Java.

Motorola launches revolutionary m-solution for B2C payments

2008-12-18T04:47:00.001-08:00

Motorola is launching a comprehensive mobile commerce solution for financial and retail merchandising needs. The solution, including an M-Wallet and back-end management platform, has been deployed by Union Mobile Pay (UMPay), a mobile payment company established by China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC) and China UnionPay.

Motorola's M-Wallet solution provides user interface with safe and reliable service against existing technologies based on SMS, IVR, USSD and WAP. The system allows consumers to personalize financial needs such as account inquiries, money transfers, bill payments, and e-ticketing on their mobile phones, eliminating the need to go to banks or carry bank cards. Moreover, the platform provides B2C solutions including merchant membership cards, electronic couponing and prepaid cards, reports Visualization.

A back-end management platform is interoperable with back-office network elements for OSS/BSS for mobile network operators, financial institutions and merchants.

The M-Wallet solution with K-Java technology for UMPay's Mobile Wallet is Motorola's first M-Commerce platform started in China.

In order to use the system mobile users only need to download and install the M-Wallet application on their mobile phones that support Java technology, and register their banking accounts to the mobile phones via UMPay.

JAVA Reduces Headcount

2008-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA) declared that it will shed 15% to 18% of its work force, citing the global financial downturn. The Santa Clara-based computer maker expects this headcount reduction to result in annual cost savings of $700 million and $800 million.
Sun also stated that it is dividing its software organization into three business groups: Application Platform Software, Systems Platforms, and Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms.

Shares of Sun are up almost 4% today.

Java gets a standard REST

2008-10-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Java specification for REST-based web services, JSR-311 – also known as JAX-RS – has been finalised and released by the Java Community Program, after unanimous approval from the expert group. The final specification for JSR-311 is available to download.

The Java platform has had support for web services for some time in the form of SOAP and other RPC services, but REST (Representational State Transfer) is a different form of web service. It was originally defined and explored in Roy Fielding's paper in 2000. REST is an architecture where APIs to web services are exposed as URIs which can be manipulated by use of the HTTP POST, GET, PUT and DELETE methods. It has become popular in part because of this close, natural, mapping to how clients and servers on the web interact.

A reference implementation of JSR-311, Jersey, is also available under a dual CDDL/GPL licence. Jersey has been tracking JSR-311 and has not, as yet, been updated to the final specification, but Jersey 0.9 implements it as of August 2008, during finalisation of JSR-311. A 1.0 release is expected soon. JAX-RS uses Java annotations to allow developers to mark how methods would be exposed as a RESTful service, and because of this it is only available for Java 5 and later. Given that Java 1.4 reaches its end of life on the 30th of October, this restriction seems entirely reasonable.

Chrome and why Gates was right to be paranoid

2008-09-03T13:09:00.001-07:00

When I first heard that Google was going to create its own web browser alternative, the first word that sprung to mind was “why?” As many bloggers and journalists have noted, the web browser market has grown rather crowded of late, turning what many had assumed was a market permanently dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer into one where Microsoft faces real competition. It certainly has caused Microsoft to “jump,” however much the slow and languid fashion software goliaths move can be called “jumping.”

But then, I thought about it a bit more. Many years ago, when flannel was the hippest of hip couture and venture capitalists were discovering how much fun it was to dump gobs of cash down Bay-area wells, there was a runtime created by a company that was making all sorts of money selling UNIX servers to companies who had just discovered this newly popular communications technology called “The Internet.” That company was Sun Microsystems, and the runtime, of course, was Java.

Java’s promise, at the time, was that it could create a software layer that abstracted away ideosyncracies of platforms. Software, in other words, wouldn’t care anymore whether the customer used Windows or a Mac or Linux or Sun’s Solaris. Sun angled to get its runtime onto as many computers as possible, and hoped to inspire waves of developers to write to Java APIs rather than the API unique to a particular platform.

Java applets were Java’s nod towards the browser environment, acting as safe “plugins” which provided more functionality than the basic HTML tools available to browsers of the time. Clearly, though, the central thrust of the Java environment was towards applications that ran OUTSIDE the browser.

In hindsight, that wasn’t such a great idea, as the browser has evolved into THE runtime. Bill Gates, in other words, was right to be paranoid. Most people spend 90% of their time in front of their computer interacting with the Internet by way of a browser. The browser, in other words, is the runtime.

Build powerful Java Applications using SOA with New Book from Packt

2008-07-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a software architecture where functionality is grouped around business processes and packaged as interoperable services. SOA also describes IT infrastructure which allows different applications to exchange data with one another as they participate in business processes.

Through this book, users will learn when SOA is the best choice for their web services-based applications and also to design and implement a sound architecture for successful implementation of any business solution.

Java programmers or architects who are interested in implementing SOA concepts in their applications will learn how to develop web services at all levels of complexity and for all kinds of situations by covering important web services protocols: XML-over-HTTP, REST, and SOAP.

The book is out now and is available from Packt. For more information, please visit:http://www.packtpub.com/service-oriented-architecture-for-java-applications/book

About Packt Publishing

Packt is a modern, unique publishing company with a focus on producing cutting-edge books for communities of developers, administrators, and newbies alike. Packt believes in Open Source. When we sell a book written on an Open Source project, we pay a royalty directly to that project.

Oracle details SOA, Java roadmap with BEA

2008-07-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

BEA customers will not be forced to migrate to Oracle Corp. middleware products, Charles E. Phillips Jr., Oracle's president, said in a Webcast Tuesday to outline plans for the integration and support of the two companies product lines.

Oracle plans to converge the BEA WebLogic and AquaLogic product lines with its Fusion Middleware to provide a comprehensive set of products for service-oriented architecture (SOA), said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of development for Oracle middleware platform products. A new enterprise service bus (ESB) combining the technologies of Oracle and BEA is an early example of the synergy made possible by the acquisition, he said. The BEA WebLogic Application Server will also supplant OC4J as the company's flagship enterprise Java product, though some OC4J and Fusion features will be added to it.

We're introducing a converged product offering consisting of both Oracle's enterprise service bus and the BEA AquaLogic service bus.
Thomas Kurian
Senior VP of development, Oracle

The BEA products supporting SOA will continue to be upgraded for at least nine years and users will not be forced to migrate to Oracle products, the executives promised. Older BEA products that were already in maintenance prior to the acquisition will continue to be maintained for at least five years.

"We have not disbanded the BEA support organization," Kurian assured listeners in a more than 90-minute detailed explanation of the Oracle roadmap for the newly acquired BEA products. Beyond the support staff, he said Oracle planned to retain the BEA software engineering talent.

The Webcast appeared designed first of all to reassure both BEA and Oracle customers that the combined resources of the two companies would be beneficial, analysts who covered the event said.

Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor Solutions LLC., called the Oracle roadmap pragmatic and logical. Bradley F. Shimmin, principal analyst of application infrastructure at Current Analysis LLC., called it "a very mature approach to an acquisition."

Shimmin said the assurance from Phillips that there would be no forced migration was an important message, along with the grandfathering of the pricing and licensing for existing BEA customers, so they will not face sticker shock for their existing products.

Sun Bundles MySQL Database, GlassFish App Server

2008-06-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

In one of the first results of its $1 billion purchase of MySQL, Sun Microsystems has packaged the popular open source database with its GlassFish application server and is offering the two as a $65,000-per-year bundle.
Sun has struggled so far to field a competitive application server, the software that handles thousands of Web site requests at a time, obtaining a response from a running application or database, and feeding it to all the users who wanted it. It's one of the pieces of middleware that makes a common application scalable to Web dimensions. The dominant commercial products are IBM's WebSphere and BEA Systems' (now Oracle's) WebLogic, followed by Oracle's homegrown Oracle Application Server. JBoss has been a fourth contender, dominant among the open source contenders.

But Sun is back, launching a "disruptive" play that seeks to pair up GlassFish with the hugely popular open source database it purchased in late February. Its chief target is not fellow open source supplier JBoss, now a division of Linux distributor Red Hat, but the traditional commercial software providers that charge license fees and maintenance costs for their products.
Oracle has its own ambitions for a greater share of the Java application server market and has invested heavily in Oracle Application Server and in purchasing BEA Systems for $7.2 billion last January. If Sun and Oracle emerge as head-to-head competitors, it will be carefully watched how well they continue to work as partners. Oracle controls one of the key storage engines in MySQL, InnoDB, which it acquired by buying a Finnish firm, Inno Oy, in 2005.

GlassFish is both a standard -- it's the reference implementation of an application server for Java Enterprise Edition 5 -- and it's a popular open source project hosted by Sun at http://java.sun.com/javaee/community/glassfish/.

Google silences Android critics

2008-06-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last month, on the official Android discussion group, David "Lefty" Schlesinger posted a message that questioned the open sourciness of Google's fledgling mobile platform. And he was promptly muzzled by Google developer advocate Dan Morrill.
"Now I'm moderated," says Lefty, an open source guru with Access, the Japan-based mobile software outfit. "I can't post anything unless Google approves it first."
Granted, it wasn't the most diplomatic of messages. It actually quoted from The Reg. And Lefty had been floating such notes for quite awhile. In the end, he was probably muzzled for reasons that extend beyond his views on software development. But his story is still a nice metaphor for Google's relationship with certain parts of the open source community.
Google refers to Android as an open source platform. But at the moment, it's not. The company is privately developing this "complete mobile stack" in tandem with 34 mobile-industry partners, and it won't actually open things up until version one debuts on phones sometime later this year. Lefty, like other hard core open source types, thinks this is a tad disingenuous.
"They want to maintain a facade of being non-evil open source guys," Lefty tells us. "But they really want to retain very tight control over this. They're being proprietary while maintaining an appearance of open source."

Morrill didn't respond to our requests for comment. But last week, during a press conference at the Google I/O developer gathering in San Francisco, when we asked Android product manager Andy Rubin about these claims, he argued that many open source projects start out closed. And he reiterated that once version one is released, the platform will truly be open.
Or at least, most of it will be open. He did say that code related to "certain Google-specific services" will remain closed.

Like many developers who turned up at I/O, Lefty also complains that Android uses its very own Java virtual machine. "So not only have they strayed away from mainstream open source," he told us. "They've strayed away from mainstream Java. They're forking projects all over the place."

Sun: Java ubiquity an advantage in RIA battle

2008-05-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems is counting on the ubiquitous nature of Java to help its JavaFX technology compete in the rich Internet application (RIA) space against rivals Adobe Systems and Microsoft.

A browser plug-in for JavaFX will be featured in the Java SE (Standard Edition) 6 Update 10 release due this fall. Both Adobe, with its Flash platform, and Microsoft, with Silverlight, are offering plug-in platforms for rich Internet applications. But Sun plans to provide the industry-leading rich client with JavaFX, said Param Singh, Sun senior director of Java marketing. The Java runtime helps make this possible, he stressed during an interview at the JavaOne conference on Thursday afternoon.
"The Java runtime is on over 900 million desktops today," Singh said. Every month, there are 40 million downloads of updates to the Java runtime, he said. Additionally, there are more than 2.2 mobile phones with Java on them, not to mention Java's presence in 100 percent of Blu-ray devices, said Singh.

"The notion is, we will take JavaFX where the Java runtime is available," Singh said.
Sun's JavaFX plug-in will enable deployment of applications that can work either in or outside of the browser, Singh said. This ability to run applications inside or outside of a browser is similar to what Adobe is offering with its AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) software.
"In our product design, we have looked at all competing environments. But our focus remains to provide the best RIA," said Singh.

JavaFX, which was first revealed a year ago, features a client runtime for building rich Internet applications as well as the JavaFX Script scripting language. Runtimes for platforms such as the desktop, mobile device, and even televisions are planned.

Skype Offers Half Pregnant Java Mobile Phone Client

2008-04-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

Skype on many leading mobile phones, although depending on where you live you can’t use it to call people.
The java based mobile thin Skype client works on around 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The standard feature set includes chat, group chat, presence, receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn. The half pregnant part: Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls are initially only supported in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
It’s a big step forward for Skype; the company has a partnership with the 3 network and offers Skype enabled phones (and even a Skype phone) in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but Skype on handsets outside of these markets has been the domain of third party go-between services until now. For eBay, getting Skype on more phones means increased use of the service, and hopefully enough profit to keep it from selling Skype at the end of the year.
Skype notes that this release is “expected to last several months, after which a public version of the application will be made available to millions of mobile phone owners around the world,” by which we’d hope is a fully fledged Skype client for everyone.

Defending Java against Paul Murphy

2008-04-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Paul Murphy recently wrote a piece where he made the worst insult a Unix person can make about any technology used in Unix environments. He called Java “Windows on Unix.” Next up, Paul Murphy will call Dallas residents New Yorkers in cowboy hats, and accuse Hillary Clinton of being a fan of William F. Buckley.
But hey, every interest group has an enemy, and for old-school Unix types, hatred of Microsoft is knitted into the fabric of their cardigan sweaters. What moved me to respond, however, was what I consider to be an inaccurate portrayal of the Java environment. Granted, I’m a Microsoft employee and think .NET is the best thing since sliced bread. I am also, however, a programmer who spent seven years on and off doing various kinds of Java work.
The core problem in Murphy’s piece is that he seems to have bought into Sun’s former marketing, believing that Java is merely a means by which to ensure a program can be “written once and run anywhere.” Yes, James Gosling and his team of developers at Sun originally designed Java (then named “Oak”) as a platform to run within Set-Top Boxes with an eye towards making it easy to write one program that executes on multiple types of hardware. And yes, Java has found itself into other devices where cross-platform support is important, such as cell phones, and even Blu-ray players.
Sun did make a pitch to turn the Java runtime into a common layer targeted at desktop computers that would make it easy to run an application on any Java-supporting platform using one common set of “bytecodes” (the object oriented assembly language, of sorts, that defines the instructions in a Java application…not that most people would have to generate that code themselves, as that is what a Java compiler is for). That effort, however, never really went very far.

Day Software to Discuss Java Content Repository Standards and Enterprise Web 2.0 Applications at TheServerSide Java Symposium

2008-03-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS, Mar 25, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) - Day Software (SWX:DAYN) (OTCQX:DYIHY), a leading provider of global content management software and content infrastructure software, will present a session at TheServerSide Java Symposium, highlighting the company's leadership with JSR 170, the Java Content Repository (JCR) standard application programming interface (API) for content access.
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Day Software to Present REST and AJAX Web Development Techniques at AJAXWorld

At the show, Day Software CTO David Nuescheler will lead a presentation, "Kickstarting JCR: TheServerSide.com as a Content Application," which will illustrate how developers can turn an existing TSS Web site into a content repository-based application. This presentation will begin with a brief introduction to the JCR and show how one can leverage the rapid prototyping aspects and flexibility of Web 2.0 within the secure, reliable environment provided by a standardized content repository. By transforming a TSS Web site, Nuescheler will combine the strengths offered by a highly interactive Web 2.0 application, enabling quick and efficient development with the benefits of content repository features, including versioning and full-text search indexing.
"By leveraging the technology strengths in both Java Content Repository and Web 2.0 applications, developers can quickly and efficiently manage content on the Web," said Nuescheler. "Our presentation will not only illustrate the development of a TSS Web site into a content repository-based application, but will also show how every application is a 'content application', and how attendees can accelerate their development cycles by leveraging the facilities that a content repository possesses."

Real-Time Java for the Enterprise

2008-03-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

When people hear about real-time computing they often make the mistake of thinking that these have to be fast systems and are nearly always used for control of mechanical systems. It is true that in most cases the response times required are fast, but speed is not what defines a real-time system. The true core of a real-time environment is that the system will guarantee to perform some task within a pre-defined time so that the system's behaviour becomes fully deterministic.

For enterprise class applications what are the advantages (and possibly disadvantages) of deployment on a real-time system? In many cases there is no great advantage. Once the non-functional requirements of a system (load capacity, average response time, peak-load response time, and so on) have been met the application can be deployed and the customer is satisfied. Should something happen that makes a request to, say, an HR application take rather longer than usual the user simply has to wait longer; there is no measurable impact. However, for many financial, enterprise class applications failing to do something within a given time can easily be equated to a cost, possibly a very large one. Financial markets, by their very definition, are extremely volatile and computer trading systems mean that prices can change at the rate of many times a second. If one part of a system decides to make a trade based on the current price and the actual trade gets delayed for whatever reason even a small change can result in a significant loss of money. If this delay happens frequently the system soon becomes less of an advantage and more of a liability.

The Java Platform

2008-02-28T06:50:00.001-08:00

A platform is the hardware or software environment in which a program runs. We've already mentioned some of the most popular platforms like Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris OS, and Mac OS. Most platforms can be described as a combination of the operating system and underlying hardware. The Java platform differs from most other platforms in that it's a software-only platform that runs on top of other hardware-based platforms.
The Java platform has two components:
The Java Virtual Machine
The Java Application Programming Interface (API) You've already been introduced to the Java Virtual Machine; it's the base for the Java platform and is ported onto various hardware-based platforms.
The API is a large collection of ready-made software components that provide many useful capabilities. It is grouped into libraries of related classes and interfaces; these libraries are known as packages. The next section, What Can Java Technology Do? highlights some of the functionality provided by the API.

The Java Programming Language

2008-02-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

The Java programming language is a high-level language that can be characterized by all of the following buzzwords:
Simple
Architecture neutral
Object oriented
Portable
Distributed
High performance
Multithreaded
Robust
Dynamic
Secure
Each of the preceding buzzwords is explained in The Java Language Environment , a white paper written by James Gosling and Henry McGilton.
In the Java programming language, all source code is first written in plain text files ending with the .java extension. Those source files are then compiled into .class files by the javac compiler. A .class file does not contain code that is native to your processor; it instead contains bytecodes — the machine language of the Java Virtual Machine1 (Java VM). The java launcher tool then runs your application with an instance of the Java Virtual Machine.

JAVA

2008-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

Java is an object-oriented language derived from C++ with strong support for networking, threading, and component-oriented development. Java source code is compiled to a form called bytecode which is platform-independent. The bytecode is stored in .class files which can, potentially, be transferred across a network to machines of different types, and then converted by each machine to its native machine code using a VM (Virtual Machine). The VM may do that either by interpreting the bytecode (classic model) or by compiling and running it method by method (when the VM incorporates a JIT — Just-In-Time compiler).
The key to Java's platform independence is simplicity. It achieves this by discarding some of C++ features and adding some of its own:
Java has no pointers.
Java does not have multiple inheritance. The same effect is achieved by implementing interfaces.
Java has no preprocessor (hence no macros).
Java does not allow global variables.
Java has a singly-rooted hierarchy. (Everything is descended from Object).
There is strong support for exception handling — the compiler checks to make sure exceptions are properly caught using Exception classes.
There is also strong support for multithreading — the Thread class allows the programmer to quickly create and control lightweight processes.
As Java is simpler and stricter than C++ it makes some compromises:
Java is slower than C++. Originally the VM would interpret the code line by line, and it could run as much as twenty times slower. Today most code is run with a JIT compiler such as Hotspot and may approach C++ speeds.
Low-level tasks must be done by interfacing with other languages — native methods.
An application (especially an applet) may be limited in what it can do over a network owing to Java's strong security model. In many ways this is a strength of course

review

2008-01-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

James [Mohit Ahlawat] arrives in Mumbai, hoping to find a foothold in the city of dreams. He starts living with his childhood friend Babloo [Snehal Dabhi] and takes up the job of a bouncer at a popular nightclub.
James meets Nisha [Nisha Kothari], a well-known model, in the gym first and at the nightclub later. The casual acquaintance between James and Nisha develops into friendship.
James finds himself at loggerheads with a drunkard, misbehaving in the club. This guy has set his sights on Nisha too. James sets the guy right, only to find that he is Radhe Narayan [Shereveer Vakil], the younger brother of Shanti Narayan.

James-Movie

2007-12-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

On the face of it, ‘James’ hardly looks like a film from Ram Gopal Varma’s factory. The movie, directed by newcomer Rohit Jugraj, has nothing fresh except its hero Mohit Ahlawat and heroine Nisha Kothari. Mohit chips in action and brooding intensity. Nisha makes sure the audiences are titillated to good degrees. Half an hour into the film, even a squinter can see clearly that the movie has been made with the aim of launching Mohit Ahlawat as a prospective star. Notwithstanding the apparent lack of acting skills in the young man, special attention is paid to his muscle flexing and his brooding expressions.

The story of the movie is banal, beaten to death on the silver screen many times.James [Mohit Ahlawat] comes to Mumbai with hopes of making it in the city of dreams. He chums up with his childhood friend Babloo [Snehal Dabhi]. Soon, he finds the job of a bouncer at a popular nightclub.James meets Nisha (Nisha Kothari), a popular model, at the gym and later at the nightclub he works in. The two get acquainted and become friends.Then one night, a drunkard misbehaves with Nisha in the club. He is smitten by the beautiful girl’s charm and oomph. James shows his muscle power and sets the drunkard straight. But the guy turns out to be the younger brother of Shanti Narayan [Zakir Hussain], a ‘well connected’ underworld guy who has spread terror in Mumbai.