What to expect from Sun's JavaOne 2009

Sun Microsystems didn't let a little thing like being acquired by Oracle get in the way of hosting its annual JavaOne developer conference in San Francisco from June 2 to 5 this year. Thankfully, it is pretty much business as usual, so I jumped at the chance to attend for a second time after my first visit last year.

Just to clear the air straight away, in pre-event meetings in London last May, Sun executives refused to be drawn on any Oracle-related questions for legal reasons, so you'll see none of that in my reports. Even relatively logical conjecture as to whether Sun might be jostled into putting more effort into Jave EE (enterprise edition) now rather than the SE (standard) and ME (mobile) iterations drew no response. So let's get on with the show.

Before heading to the US I met and spoke with John Pampuch who is director of software engineering in the Java Platform Group at Sun. He told me that the focus of this year's event will be more heavily angled towards hands-on sessions and that there will be a lot of JavaFX updates. JavaFX is currently available for both browser/desktop & mobile – my guess is that mobile will be the most newsworthy area, but we will have to see.

Jonathan Schwartz's 'meet the press' session will no doubt be peppered with plenty of Oracle-themed questions. My best guess is that he'll echo the statement I heard from an Eclipse employee back in London who said, "We don't think Oracle would have acquired Java with the intent of harming the ecosystem in any way." We honestly hope that that's true.

Just how many of the planet's 7 million Java developers will be here is hard to guess, but all eyes will be on Java SE 7 and its development into a more 'compartmentalised' technology to facilitate more modular intermixing of its components so that it can be diversified in its use. This modularity is also argued to suit a more optimised approach to computing so that execution can be separated into distinct threads. This way, applications never have to execute now, what they could execute later.

Sun's GlassFish offering will inevitably feature quite heavily in this year's event. This open source application server project for the Java EE platform is currently at version 2.1 due to updates announced in January of this year. Whether version 3 will arrive this week is anybody's guess, but there are 20 technical sessions, 16 birds of a feather sessions and 7 hands on labs devoted to it this week.

If there was any criticism to be made of last years event it was the interminably long queues for these sessions and the slight 'over-billing' of the content they feature. Any industry conference always runs the risk of presenters 'selling' to the audience rather than passing on knowledge transfer (like they are supposed to). Sun suffers from comparatively little of this, but it still exists in pockets.

I questioned Sun on strategic planning advice for attendees that might pick this blog up before the show and the company told me that the best way to avoid the long queues for sessions is to use the 'schedule builder' tool where attendees can pre-register for sessions online and guarantee themselves a seat.

Partner news will no doubt feature too - and Red Hat executives chose the day before the event proper to unveil the company’s strategic direction for JBoss and enterprise Java. Expect announcements regarding OpenSolaris & Cloud Computing too. There is a tip off and link here to OpenSolaris events at CommunityOne – the show's preview day zero.

Oh OK, there will be talk and talk about what Oracle's impact will be on of course not only Sun as a company, but the future for Java itself. An anonymous Slashdot reader wrote last week the monetisation of Java may have begun after Sun released the Java 1.6.0_14 JDK and JRE, which include a new garbage collector called G1. But with a possible catch. Even though G1 is included in the distribution, according to the Slashdot comment, “The release notes state that although G1 is available for use in this release, note that production use of G1 is only permitted where a Java support contract has been purchased.”

Whether this is the Oracle factor surfacing already may well be prematurely negative speculation. But this is the kind of thing that we'll all be looking for in case (as previously suggested in this blog) Java SE gets to sit in the limelight now and the OpenJDK is left to flouder with a muted set of features and ongoing support.

Finally, those of you who, like me, take a connection to Twitter seriously might like to know that Sun's JavaOne Twitter Tweeter is @JavaOneConf . Right then, just time for a quick walk through Chinatown for a plate of 'potstickers' with half a tub of chilli sauce before tomorrow's keynote.