Java's Role Continues to Develop
nytimes.com
By PETER WAYNER
When James Gosling steps onto the stage to give
the keynote address at the beginning of the fourth
JavaOne technology conference in San Francisco on
Tuesday, he will be facing an audience that is larger
and more serious than ever before.
Gosling was one of the engineers at
Sun Microsystems who began
developing a computer language,
then known as Oak, for writing
software to control small computers
like the ones that might run an
interactive television. Today, the
Java language is being touted as one
of the foundations for crucial
operations on the Internet and a
lingua franca for knitting together the
various post-PC devices like smart
cell phones and pocket organizers.
In fact, one of the top announcements
at the conference is expected to be a
version of Java known as the
"Micro" edition, which will allow
devices like the Palm Pilot to run
Java code like their bigger PC
cousins. Attendees at the conference
will be able to download the Micro
version and several applications at the conference.
Alan Baratz, the president of software products and
platforms at Sun Microsystems, said in a telephone
interview on Monday, "We have recognized the need to
have a version of Java with a very small footprint
under 100k, particularly for the cell phones, the pagers,
or the 3Com Palm computing device."
Java technology's trip from the lab to an established
part of the Internet and a ubiquitous vehicle for
distributing software has been strange and filled with
many paths. When it first emerged, it was a tool for
putting dancing icons on Web pages. Then, a storm of
hype engulfed it as people began to speculate that it had
the power to dethrone Microsoft by letting people
download software at will. Today, it is the darling on
undergraduate computer science courses and one of the
trusted building blocks for creating serious Web sites.
Although certain roles for the language have faded,
others are emerging. Lately, Web designers have not
been using Java to add animation and basic interactive
features like roll-over buttons because simpler
technology like Dynamic HTML can accomplish the
job. But more sophisticated users like game developers
continue to embrace it.
For example, the Casares World casino, based in
Gibraltar, offers Java-based gambling games that can
be played either for fun or, in countries where it is
legal, money. A tool like Java allows the users to
download the gambling game software by just visiting
the company's Web site. There are no complicated
installation procedures and Java includes strict security
features that help prevent viruses and worms.
Downloading the software and running it locally lets
the programmer add more interactive features. Trivia
fans, for instance, can tune to Uproar.com, which uses
Java to add a timer and test the speed of the player's
response to Jeopardy-like trivia questions. Players that
answer quickly get higher scores. Features like this are
impossible to use without a tool like Java because the
Internet is too slow and fraught with random delays that
would impede the timing.
Many of the latest applications, however, are more
serious than games. An academic conference, Java
Grande, ran on Saturday and Sunday before the
beginning of JavaOne. The attendees, who include
professors and students, are studying how to use Java
for high-performance computing applications like
weather prediction and studies of the structure of the
atom.
The fact that users with
high-end needs are
interested in the language is
surprising, in part because
Java has always been known
as a bit slow. The language
is designed to be "portable,"
so programs written in Java
can run on machines built by
different manufacturers. This
feature, which Sun bills as
"Write Once, Run
Everywhere," requires an
additional amount of
translation, which can often
slow down each step.
Bill Pugh, a professor of computer science at the
University of Maryland in College Park and a presenter
at the Java Grande conference, said that speed is not
much of a problem anymore because the performance of
Java programs has improved.
Pugh said today's fast computers remove some of the
pressure on performance, adding, "Having programs
that work well, are easy to write, don't crash, are often
considered to be much more valuable than having
something that runs 20 percent faster."
Marc Snir, a manager at IBM and one of the organizers
of the Java Grande conference, said that new research
shows that Java can be as quick as other
well-developed tools like Fortran if a few minor
changes are made in the language.
"I'm not telling you that these compilers are available
as products, but research indicates that it is do-able,"
he said.
Sun itself has been working heavily at improving
performance with tools like their HotSpot compiler.
The company is expected to announce that it will ship
this compiler as the standard part of desktop versions.
Java is also well known for providing a clean model
for creating programs that are easy to modify and
extend. This is one reason that many computer science
departments in universities have switched over to
teaching their basic computer science courses with the
language.
In the last year, Java began attracting more attention as
a platform for what is known as "enterprise"
computing, the projects used to maintain large
databases for businesses. Car manufacturers, for
instance, need to track the flow of parts from supplier
to assembly line to dealer. Human resource managers
need to follow the benefits for all of the employees at a
business.
Many companies are interested in using Java to attack
these problems because the same software can migrate
easily between machines from different manufacturers.
It is not unusual for a programmer to have to link
together PC's, minicomputers and mainframes in one
enterprise-wide project. These challenges make the
Java language very attractive for companies like IBM,
which make many different models of computers that
would not normally run the same software.
"We've come a long way from Java as a cool
technology for creating flaming logos to one that solves
mission critical problems," Jason Woodard, a manager
for Java technology at IBM, said in a telephone
interview last week. "People are doing things with Java
today that no one imagined 3 years ago."
At the conference, Sun is
expected to announce a new
Enterprise Platform that
bundles together several
previously announced
solutions for businesses.
These include better
database connectivity and
better tools for converting
this data into something that
can be read from a standard
Web browser.
Scott Preble, a
vice-president at Citicorp, has been using Java to knit
together enterprise-wide systems that process
mortgages for the company. These tools operate on
servers and ship their results to the browsers.
"We've really embraced it all the way," he said.
"We've really bet our business on it. We've done a
number of prototypes and decided the technology was
ready and the benefits were there."
Sun's enterprise tools allow companies to build and
maintain complicated, interactive applications that
juggle data. The Web site JavaLobby.com, for instance,
uses a Java-based program on the server to post news
articles and let readers add their comments in
discussion groups.
Sun is expected to announce on Tuesday that they will
be working with the Apache Web server project to
integrate their new enterprise technology with the open
source software. This is a crucial move for increasing
the acceptance of the technology because Apache is one
of the most popular Web servers.
The JavaOne conference is expected to include plenty
of companies that are developing small applications
that can be embedded in appliances like stoves or
televisions, or hand-held devices like the Palm Pilot.
This was the original domain for which Sun engineers
developed the technology.
Sun is offering several small versions of Java like Jini,
a tool for shrinking Java programs and embedding them
in appliances. The company envisions that digital
cameras, dishwashers, and other appliances might
include the ability to link up and run software with each
other.
While Sun continues to dominate the desktop and
enterprise marketplace, it is getting a fair amount of
competition in developing versions that will run in
appliances and other tools. Several companies, from
the very big Hewlett-Packard to the very small
Wabasoft, are creating their own small editions of
Java.
Wabasoft's software is attracting attention because it
allows programmers to create software that runs on
very limited machines like the Palm Pilot. The company
accomplished this by keeping only a small fraction of
the entire Java language. Programs written for
Wabasoft can run on both small palm-sized machines
and full-fledged PC's.
Rick Wild, a developer at Wabasoft, said the tool has
mainly been used for games, although there has been
some interest in developing medical tools. These
programs will run on Palm Pilots, Windows CE
devices, and desktop machines without modification.
Other companies are building larger versions that
emulate all of the Java language. Tim Wilkinson, the
chief executive of Transvirtual, said that his company
will announce that it is converting its Kaffe software
programming tool to the Windows platform. "We're not
into Java flavors; we do 100 percent full Java," he said
in a telephone interview.
Wilkinson said Transvirtual was extending its software
to embrace both Sun's and Microsoft's definitions of
Java and it was releasing this work as open source,
making it available for other platforms like Linux.
"We approached MS for this project. We wanted to
support Java and their extensions on all platforms. We
agreed to do it and they agreed to pay for it, but the
agreement was that it would be put into our open source
and given away," he said.
Other companies like Patriot Scientific are making a
Java-specific embedded chip that they believe will run
Java code in situations with very low memory.
Manufacturers often try to reduce the size of the
memory to save costs and prolong battery life.
Sun itself intends to fend off this competition with the
Micro version of the language being announced at the
conference. This small version will include a novel
feature that allows software to migrate between the
small, palm-sized device and larger desktop or server
machines. This tight coupling will make it easier for
programmers to develop applications that use the local,
small device to interact with the user while using the
large server to do some of the more complicated
computation.
Baratz predicted that this new innovation would make
clones from competitors like Transvirtual or
Hewlett-Packard irrelevant.
Baratz also dismissed the importance of these clones
and stated that Sun was continuing to dominate the
marketplace.
"Our surveys tell us that the developers want the
branded Java technology," he said. |
