Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Wednesday 7 May 2008, 11:55 PM
JavaOne: the ‘best of the rest’ awards
If you’ve been digging into ZDNet.co.uk’s coverage of JavaOne in its entirety by now you’ll know that alongside news, there has also been show blogs (such as this one), video content, technical session overviews, Q&As and a variety of images to view taken at the event itself.
To really earn a couple of hours off tomorrow for a walk down to Fisherman’s Wharf and a ropey old ten dollar boat ride around Alcatraz before the evening bash with Smash Mouth playing live – I thought I’d put out a few extra notes that haven’t made it into our core reports so far. For my own amusement mainly, I thought these “extras” could each be awarded a mention in a special prize category of my own design.
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Best use of ‘vendor-speak’ soundbite:
"Everybody communicates in their own way," said James Mustarde, director of corporate marketing, Twisted Pair Solutions. "Like individuals, companies leverage different combinations of technology to achieve their communications requirements. Fortunately, today's Unified Communications solutions are enabling businesses to unify these disparate technologies into a single platform for increased user productivity.”
Best use of ‘try too hard’ press release:
Britney Spears beats out Paris Hilton in Open Source Code Popularity – Code search company Krugle’s story was based around a list of top Java queries that developers world-wide have submitted during the last month at Krugle.com, as well as the number of times various celebrity names are included in the billions of lines of open source code the company tracks. As for distinctly non-Java searches uncovered by Krugle management, “Knuth” returned the highest number of hits in honour of leading computer scientist and ‘father of algorithm analysis’ Donald Knuth, far outstripping Satan in a close second place. Next on the list, George Bush was edged out Britney Spears, with both dominating the fifth-ranked Fidel Castro – all of whom were behind Paris Hilton who rounded out the bottom of the rankings.
Best example of a hardware company trying to position itself as a software company to coincide with JavaOne:
AMD made much of it the fact that it says it has armed the developer community with the tools, resources and hardware-assisted technology they need to develop software more easily. The company has announced a specification for software parallelism to help a managed code environment (like Java) run more efficiently. It has also provided a new plug-in called “Code Sleuth” that provides the Eclipse community with increased performance management and monitoring of Java software code.
(This is a bit unfair of me; Intel talks on software a lot too of course and had a huge booth here at the show – but you get the spin idea I hope.)
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Picture source: courtesy of the Moscone Center
Best middleware announcement (in a supporting role):
Red Hat used JavaOne this week to announce the release of JBoss Operations Network (ON) 2.0, an integrated middleware management platform that it says simplifies application development, testing, deployment and monitoring. Red Hat’s Katrinka McCallum was quoted as saying, “Our customer base is getting more sophisticated and specialised within their IT operations environments when it comes to middleware management."
Best pressroom sandwich:
Wednesday’s roast beef with onion jam on ‘tiger bread’ with mayo and French’s mustard. Best enjoyed with Mountain Dew fizzy pop.
Best attendee quote:
Richard Foxworthy, student from nearby San Carlos, California.
“JavaOne has been great for me as a student, it’s really interesting and I have learned a lot. The only problem I’ve had is with sessions that have been more technical than I had thought they might be from the way they were described in the show handbook and guide. It would be great if the presenters asked the room what the spread of competency is on the subject they are about to talk on before they kick off so that they can perhaps tailor what they say slightly on each occasion.”
Most insightful analyst quote:
“The world is going multi-core, but parallel programming skills are thin on the ground. The market is slow to adopt new programming models and some of the traditional parallel programming tools are (possibly unfairly) seen as old hat,” said John Barr, research director with The 451 Group, a technology industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation, in his report. “Pervasive Software's development of DataRush – a Java framework for highly parallel, data-intensive applications – could be in the right place at the right time.”
Best geek giveaway:
James Gosling (all hail the father of Java) firing t-shirts from a giant rubber band catapult at the audience in the day one keynote session.
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No really, he did, look at the picture. I can’t top that or say any more really.
So I won’t.
Wednesday 7 May 2008, 11:37 PM
JavaOne from the inside
In addition to my general reports and news on Sun’s JavaOne developer conference this week in San Francisco, I also have the chance to feature some comment from inside the technical sessions. Although I am not attending these myself, I’m able to provide these opinions by virtue of the fact that my wife Terry-Lynn (a senior Java developer in her own right) is attending these meets. Below are her thoughts:
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Picture source: courtesy of the Moscone Center
Session TS-6271 Java Platform, Standard Edition: A Youthful Maturity
This session was an excellent kickoff to my 75 hours of learning activities at JavaOne this year. In this session, several essential (Standard Edition) SE technical initiatives were conveyed. For example, I was pleased to learn that the JRE6 Release 10 is currently available. This release is designed for the 64-bit platform and it is also now bundled in with Ubuntu 8.04.
In answer to my deepest technical desires, this release focuses on improvements in performance, optimisation and tuning. These improvements can be seen in the Java classes (XML Parsing, TreeMap etc.), the Java libraries and the Java VM. Also, as a Swing developer, I was very excited to learn of the 'Nimbus Look and Feel' for Swing that has been incorporated into this release.
Other notable improvements with JRE 6 Release 10 that I became aware of in this session included a new plug-in architecture that allows each applet to have its own VM process outside the browser and a seamless Java Deployment Toolkit.
Another interesting topic in this session included a demonstration of Visual VM. Visual VM is a diagnostic tool that aids in assessing garbage collection routines and it is perfect (in my humble opinion) for determining memory leaks. With the aid of this tool, I really think I am finally through with those dreaded 'out of memory' exceptions that are sometimes thrown at me.
Lastly, in this session, I was very excited to be enlightened as to the future plans for the Java SE for the SE 7 version (which is to be released in mid 2009) and beyond. These future releases intend to focus on modularity, closures, extensions to annotations, improving type references and string insulation. I can't wait!
Back to Adrian…
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To conclude, one aspect of JavaOne that struck us both was the scale of the event and the mammoth queues that formed for each meeting from the general keynotes, to the classes, to the birds of a feather sessions. We heard figures around the 15,000 mark for the number of attendees, so perhaps it’s no surprise.
What this did mean was that classes were on the large size and arguably slightly more impersonal than at similar events. For more reaction on the individual sessions please visit Terry-Lynn’s own blog.
Wednesday 7 May 2008, 1:20 AM
Adding flavour to the Java brew
Although Sun clearly takes on the role of lead ‘barista’ at the Java coffee brewing pot, it would be hard not to notice the small army of partners, sponsors and industry ‘friends’ that comprise the total offering that is JavaOne.
Given the buy-in to the general ethos of the open source initiatives driving much of this event, only the most cynical observers might argue that these companies are piggybacking along for a piece of the Java pie. That said, Sun is resolutely ‘open’ over where it is positioned to make money from the current state of the market with its, ‘When you want support and service, just give us a call’ message. So it’s for sure that the other players present aren’t just here for the good of their health.
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So who is adding flavour to the pot right now and is it all enrichment – or could any of these vendors be making the taste a little sour? A quick buzz around the show floor helped collate more than a fair share of opinions as to what we might be able to expect from the rest of the week.
Open source web infrastructure management may sound like a long-winded term, but a number of companies are pleased to label themselves thusly. One such vendor is Hyperic whose CEO Javier Soltero went on the record with ZDNet.co.uk to say, “With so much buzz around the acquisition of MySQL, we think a lot of companies will be watching to see how much Sun will showcase its one billion dollar investment at this year’s JavaOne show. Beyond that, we imagine with ‘cloud computing’ set to take over from ‘virtualisation’ as the ‘hot’ new technology, there’s bound to be a lot of vendor discussion about who has the most cloud competent strategy - and of course, curiosity regarding how Sun will tackle the issue.”
Hinting at an area we’ve not heard much about yet at the end of day one, I spoke to Jim Cook, Java product manager at Infragistics who said that, “I will be watching for news of Project Caroline, a grid computing effort from Sun. It is widely believed that Sun will have a major announcement about Caroline at the conference. Beyond that I’ll also be looking at new directions in open source and new developments in the Java Mobile market.”
Telling it pretty straight from the off was the affable Asad Ali, from GemStone Systems. Ali speaks volubly on virtualisation and brings life to potentially mind numbing concepts such as dynamic scaling and high resiliency. “The renewed focus on application performance will be a focal point at JavaOne 2008. We expect architects and developers to look for new design patterns, methodologies and solutions (both software and hardware) to increase the application throughput to meet the current enterprise needs. Along with new methodologies, the visitors at JavaOne would also focus on manageability tools to easily deploy the new technologies in mission critical applications,” he said.
Almost certainly winning the award for ‘best name for a spokesperson in a supporting role’ is Ms Stormy Peters of OpenLogic. Peters formed part of the opening address yesterday (on day zero) for the CommunityOne day where she said that she would be focused on discussing open source support and community models at JavaOne. “The question of whether there is a particular 'right' or successful model has been a hot topic recently, but I don't believe that there is one ‘right’ mode. We are seeing companies succeed with several different business models and new models are still emerging. There's room for more than one approach to succeed.”
Almost rounding up an exhausting lap of the show floor (JavaOne is held in the Moscone Centre, the largest column-free space in Los Angeles I think) was Adam Lieber, CEO of Webtide. Lieber addressed the cost vs. perfomance discussion very prevalent at this year’s JavaOne by saying, “This year people will see that the technologies that are developing in open source (and the licenses they are under) provide not just cheaper solutions, but technically superior ones, too.”
Rounding us up here with a nod to the software engineer T-shirt addiction mania that sweeps these events (I have plenty too – I’m guilty) is Debbie Moynihan, director of open source at Iona Technologies. “The crowds will no doubt be excited to hear about projects that are implementing the latest open standards and why they are important. We’ve seen a large interest in JMS, JBI, web services and OSGi and we expect huge booth traffic to hear the latest - and of course to get those free goodies that developers love.”
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There are more vendors and more opinions that could productively be fitted into even the most expansive blog, but hopefully this snap shot is somewhat illustrative of the general look and feel.
Tuesday 6 May 2008, 11:51 PM
Keep on rocking in the free code world
It’s not everyday that you get to meet a rock legend. It’s certainly not everyday that you get to go to a software development symposium and meet a rock legend. But after covering some general session keynote highlights this morning I got dragged (willingly) into a restricted meeting with veteran rocker Neil Young – he of ‘Heart of Gold’ and ‘Keep on Rocking in the Free World’ fame – as he (and his production company) have used Java technology to build a career retrospective archive project.
After a flurry of Java-themed presentations from the guys behind the Kindle e-book offering at Amazon.com and Sony Ericsson telling us how they now employ 'emotive design' (I mean come on, honestly!) into their products, we got to hear from Mr Young himself who has used Sun technology to build a Blu-ray Disk based archive of his complete works. Volume one (I think there about nine more to come) was shown in the demo today.
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Rich Green, Neil Young, & Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne - Image courtesy of Sun Microsystems
In a later press meeting, Mr Young (Neil to his pals) enthused about the aims for his project explaining that he’d had the idea back in the eighties, but had been waiting for the technology to come along to make it possible. Detailing the decline in sound quality that he recognised when we moved to Compact Discs, he said he was happy with the current state of ‘24/192 resolution’ sound quality now available.
I asked him if he has used The Beatles Anthology work as a reference point in any way - and he gave me a rather flat, “No.” But he did follow it up (dark sunglasses firmly in place the whole time) with a more charitable, “But I guess music is global.” As well as a rock star style, “The ears are the windows to the soul!”
Sitting alongside Young in our meeting was Sun CEO and president Jonathan Schwartz who was at pains to emphasise his company’s relationship with the ageing rocker who once wrote a song about not selling out to the so-called ‘system’. “Whether you are a bank or whether you are Neil Young, this is about us providing Java as a means for communication with an audience,” said Schwartz. “In the same way as Java helps banks talk to their customers, we’re helping Neil talk to his audience and then we step out of the way.”
Hugely enjoyable though it was to meet a living legend, I couldn’t help feeling my questions on infrastructure and navigation features weren’t as interesting to him as the questions he received on his back catalogue from the Rolling Stone Magazine journalist on the other side of the table.
Schwartz used the meeting to reaffirm what he had earlier described as, “The 50,000 foot view of what we expect will be the next great developer platform.”
For Schwartz, there are four factors:
He wants to reach more and more devices across the planet, no matter what form factor – and he wants to reach them with Java.
The content has to be compelling and terrifically fast. It has to accessible to developers and accessible to consumers.
The Java platform, says Schwartz, will give developers more insight into the applications they build in order to allow them to understand the way users interact with the resultant technology.
Lastly – and for Schwartz most profoundly, the code will be free to travel where the market best demands that Java should run. “We’re not necessarily the people to make that decision, we are merely a technology provider,” he said.
Back with Mr Neil Young, he insisted that he is not selling out to Sun, instead saying, “I’m selling myself!”
“Originally the problem I had was that the sound quality wasn’t good enough, but the really cool thing now is the way Blu-ray technology works and the way you can navigate around the music I have created. The Java powered navigation system has made it possible to do things that would have never been previously possible in the music world,” said Young.
Slightly sardonic to the last, Young’s approached his earlier keynote demo with a playful smirk at the camera. After a number of demos had failed to work perfectly first time in the live stage environment he smiled and said, “This demo is fake, so you know it’s gonna work!”
Tuesday 6 May 2008, 1:47 AM
Sun kicks off JavaOne with OpenSolaris
How many cards Sun is keeping up its sleeve for the rest of this week’s JavaOne developer conference is anybody’s guess. Day zero was presented as a pre-show community day with its own keynote address, during which the company’s executive VP of software Rich Green announced a newly packaged version of the OpenSolaris operating system.
Amid much debate over the commercial end of open-source technology and the potential for ‘closed code extensions’ for customers that are prepared to pay for them, Sun is no doubt releasing this open-source version of Solaris with an eye on the development community’s ability to produce applications that run within the realms of its own software and hardware systems.
Propagating the ‘adoption-led’ model of software distribution described by chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems UK, Simon Phipps, this announcement brings together many of Sun’s recent efforts to foster a more vibrant developer community. In his address, Green explained that this news is, “Not just about the operating system - although that is certainly the centre of gravity that builds the mass from which we can extend outward from – it is now all about the incremental value that individuals bring to the total development effort in the open-source arena.”
In a later Q&A session Green explained that Sun views this release as something far beyond a test-bed scenario insisting that the software will now experience rapid development in the adoption-led model. Joined by Debian ‘inventor’ Ian Murdoch who now fills the role of Sun’s VP developer & community marketing, the pair explained that essentially OpenSolaris is out there as open-source, but it has the backing of Sun as a company behind it to provide support when needed. In Murdoch’s own words, "When you need help scaling, that's when we make our money."
Sun’s official statement describes this announcement as the result of its community having taken a fresh look at OpenSolaris over the last year and adapting the best parts of the other open-source distribution models into the operating system. According to Sun, “The most significant improvement is a new installation and packaging technology that evolves the operating system into a structured set of components. The new distribution includes a small core operating system, a network package repository, application packages and the Sun-developed Image Packaging System (IPS) to hold it all together. IPS lets users easily download and install only the OpenSolaris components they want, rather than a monolithic bundle.”
Questioned as to whether OpenSolaris is now enterprise ready, Green responded by trying to draw a new line of distinction for gauging and measuring corporate technology deployment, “There is no longer a firm line between enterprise grade and non-enterprise grade technology. Facebook enjoys many enterprise-level deployments, yet may not be outwardly perceived as inherently enterprise level.”
Solaris 10 will still exist alongside the opensolaris.org community, as Sun says some customers will want what is arguably a more fully supported and tested version of the product - while others will be open to the wider possibilities at the cutting edge of open-source. Putting some extra weight behind the move to open-source, Sun has also specified that future versions of Solaris will be based upon technology from the OpenSolaris project.
Bringing some extra balance to the debate over the future for commercially developed versus organically grown open-source technologies, the morning’s opening address featured a number of guest panel speakers. Among these was Jeremy Allison, lead developer for the Samba open-source free software suite at Google who said that, “Samba is just a bunch of guys and we've never tried to go down the commercial route. But if we had done I don't think that would have broken the model. The problem occurs when companies try and capture and enclose a [open-source] project. However, due to legal issues that I don't want to go in to, we absolutely refuse to allow corporate contributions into our code base,” he said.
Live Twitter questions or ‘tweets’ posed to the presenters during this morning’s opening address featured some distrust among the audience for company-controlled open-source projects. With many attendees seemingly sceptical that this may be an inevitable slide back towards the Microsoft model, Sun today is insistent that it is firmly routed in the move from so-called ‘monolithic to modular’ software development and that this represents its open-source dream.
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