Moscow JavaDays'98
by Bill Petro
In the one and a half years since I launched the JavaStation in Moscow,
the Java revolution has really taken hold. This high class event,
similar to the annual San Francisco JavaOne event, was sponsored by
the Russian Sun team and a number of strategic partners. The event
attracted thousands of developers, students, executives, and top
management business people. A particularly large number of guests
were from leading Russian IT Educational Organizations, including
Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology,
and Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute. A keynote track,
several parallel break-out technical tracks, aswell as thirty
exhibitors showed off Java solutions. The Russian periodical Computer
Weekly covered the event in the June 18 issue. The Russian Sun Web
site received over 42,000 hits during the event. The English version
can be found at http://www.sun.ru/english/java/javanews/javaexpo/
Contents:
- The Three Day event
- My Talks
- Roundtables Q&A
- Java Developments
- Changing Moscow
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- The Three Day event
This combination conference and expo event was held in the
Radisson-Slavyanskya Hotel in their cinema complex. It was dedicated
to showcasing Java solutions in business, education, finance,
petroleum, and manufacturing. During JavaDays, from June 8th to June
10th, there were approximately 4500 registered visitors, representing
1089 companies.
VIP Day:
The first day was a two-hour event of about 140 attendees, featuring
the Deputy Minister of Education. During this event was the
announcement of the new Center for Java Technology, the Java
competition, and university Java scholarships. This also saw the
launch of the web site http://java.sun.ru
Java for Business Day:
Jean-Paul Bergmans of the Sun Geneva office presented on
"The Java Platform Revolution." The end of the day marked a
retrospective and celebration of Sun's 5-years of business in Russia.
Java for Developers Day:
Gilles Gravier of the Sun Geneva office presented a talk on on
security. Both the second and third days offered multiple parallel
tracks from our partners including Oracle, Netscape, and Novell.
- My Talks
I gave two talks on the second day, "Java in Government" and
"Java: Myth vs. Reality." The first talk looks at how government
agencies in the US, Mexico, Thailand, and Australia are using Java
technology for ID cards, elections, research, medicine, postal service,
social services, motor vehicles, and space science.
There are many expectations that have developed about Java technology,
some realistic and others not so realistic. The second talk is a
lot of fun and explores these and clarifies confusion, dispels some
of the hype, and looks at the current state of Java technology and
the direction of Java application into the future.
- Roundtables Q&A
We had 90-minute roundtable events on both Tuesday and Wednesday. This
took place with questions from press and other visitors directed at
Sun and our partners. Some of those partners included Inprise
(formerly Borland), Symantec, Netscape, Informix, Oracle, IBM, Lotus,
Oracle, Novell, Apple, Baan, Jet Infosystems, Redcenter, Object
International, and Elvis-Plus to name a few. Here are some of the
issues that came up:
Q: Java is too slow
I answered that we were using the new Symantec 3.0 JIT, and talked
about the coming Hotspot technology in JDK 1.2 and fast Solaris
threads among other solutions. More answers were to be found in my
"Java: Myths vs. Reality" talk later that day.
Q: How to create Java applets at Moscow State University?
I told the story of Tony Faustini, who wanted to teach his university
students object oriented programming, though they were programming
novices. He has since joined Sun and productized his technology as
Java Studio.
Q: Java is not employed in mission-critical applications.
Jean-Paul Bergmans pointed out that Sabre airline registration system
is using Java. For them a 1 second a year decrease in call time per
transaction translates to $1M savings.
Q: Where are the office productivity tools?
Lotus talked about their eSuite CorePlace (US$57) and Lotus DevPack
($US1500).
Q: Why push server-side Java?
Jean-Paul answered that the Java Business Revolution requires universal
access to software.
Gilles Gravier answered that a year or two from now when you change
your back-end platform, if you wrote the server-side in another
language it will take you mounts to point, if you wrote it in Java
it will take you only days.
The European Nuclear Research Center has ported its calculation
engine from Fortran to Java.
- Java Developments
Here are just a few of the exhibitors booths I visited.
The ArgusSoft Company (http://www.argussoft.ru) has done a remote
administration tool for Java PCs, i.e., low end PCs running a Java
environment on DOS. The administrator can use a GUI tool to add
services and permissions to groups of Java PCs.
The Moscow Physics and Technologies Institute (MPTI) has developed a
Java-like meta language that describes business objects for creating
dynamic business logic systems.
Physicon Ltd. (http://www.physicon.ru) which came out of the university,
specializes in educational software and distance learning systems and
is part of the Open College system. They've done cooperative
development with San Diego State University and were showing off an
innovative Java-based interactive physics class for high schools and
colleges that includes simulations, video and sound, available in
Russian and English. They also offer courses in math, economics,
statistics, astronomy, and chemistry.
- Changing Moscow
In just the one and a half years since I was last in Moscow there
have been a number of noticeable changes. There are billboards
everywhere, especially on the way in from the airport. One sees
advertisements for computers, cars, and especially tobacco.
US tobacco advertising restrictions havecaused a considerable amount
of relocation to foreign markets. The G.U.M.market, the largest in
Russia, no longer has "local" shops. Rather, it is entirely
Westernized, with shops like Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, etc.
The leading soda, Pepsi, is found now with an English logo, not just
Cyrillic. Automobile traffic problems and smog are increasing. Cars
have the right-of-way over pedestrians. And if you don't believe it,
they'll impress it upon you.
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