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The Carnival is Over....
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| Well, it's over for another year. JavaOne, the annual conference for Java developers, has been and gone. One of the biggest and most successful events yet, over 20,000 developers attended the conference. In this article, we'll offer a wrap-up of what the conference offers, for those who could not attend. -- David Reilly |
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This year's conference was full of announcements from Sun Microsystems, and other vendors. In contrast to previous conferences though, there wasn't a showstopper that would blow everyone's minds away. In fact, one might be tempted to say that this year's JavaOne wasn't so much about innovation and new technologies, as it was about celebrating the Java platform itself. The reasoning for this is clear, it's about reassuring developers, analysts, managers and the media that Java is alive and kicking, and that Microsoft .NET isn't going to win over the Java faithful.
This message isn't just aimed at application developers anymore either. High profile was given to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition, and its advantages for business and web services. J2EE is gaining strong industry support, and leading development tool vendors such as Borland, Oracle, WebGain and Rational are integrating support for enterprise development with J2EE into their products.
We also saw the release of Forte for Java v 3.0 (now available under early access), and a slew of product releases from third party vendors. If you found support for J2EE to be rather lackluster by tool vendors before, things have changed considerably in recent months.
| Another area of the Java 2 platform that gained high profile this year is the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). I'll have to admit that I've dropped the ball on this one myself.... with the speed and performance problems that initially plagued Java, I'd completely discounted the possibility of running under tight memory and CPU speed environments. At the conference, Sun really pushed the J2ME platform, and offered a very promising view. Did you know that over three million Java-enabled handsets have already shipped, and that it's estimated it will reach 20 million by the end of the year? (Source Sun Microsystems) |
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Now that's what I'd call rapid adoption. Imagine an entirely new class of user - one that isn't computer literate, isn't aware that he or she is really using a computer, and is running Java software that you developed. Now imagine a rapidly expanding potential customer base, one that might just eclipse the number of active Internet users. That's pretty cool!
One of the most exciting part of the conference, however, is occurring AFTER the conference. For all those who missed your choice among the hundreds of technical sessions presented this year, or who were unable to attend the conference at all, Sun Microsystems is now offering you the chance to access them, through the Java Learning Center. With courses ranging from $29-$39, you can access these classes whenever and wherever you want, over the web.
This seems to be an excellent opportunity for people to catch up on classes, and to learn at their leisure. I'm also hoping that the idea catches on for other conferences, and for other courses. If Sun decides to publish more material like this, during the year, the Learning Center could be a big success. I'm a little concerned about the price point though - that's pretty steep if you want to see more than a few sessions. Hopefully as more people use the system, Sun will be able to lower the price.
Summary
This year's conference offered a fitting tribute to the Java platform, in all its forms. Here's to the next JavaOne conference in San Francisco 2002! For those who missed the conference, keynote speeches are available via streaming video from the JavaOne site, at http://java.sun.com/javaone/ and technical sessions are available from the Java Learning Center at http://java.sun.com/learning/ .About the Author
David Reilly is a software engineer and freelance technical writer living in Australia. A Sun Certified Java 1.1 Programmer, his research interests include the Java programming language, networking & distributed systems, and software agents. He can be reached via e-mail at java@davidreilly.com or his personal Web site.
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Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 David Reilly
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Last updated:
Monday, June 05, 2006
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