JavaOne: an inside/outsider view
by Bill Petro
While I am frequently asked to speak about Java wherever I travel
worldwide, this Spring I went to the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco
as an attendee... I just got to soak it all in. Though it would be
impossible to describe all that happened, I'll relate some of the
more exciting events. Many of the keynotes are available on the Web at
http://java.sun.com/javaone
Java is:
...a gas
...cool
...hot
...small
...big
...out of this world
...out of sight
General:
This was the second general JavaOne conference held in the life of the
two-year-old technology. And this event was one of the largest of its kind,
attracting over 10,000 people and 300 exhibitors to San Francisco. The
mayor even declared it Java Week! It was the place to be. (But there are
other exciting opportunities coming up, which I'll mention at the end.)
Our master of ceremonies was John Gage, Director of Sun's Science Office.
He officiated at an event that was neo-religious without being sectarian...
talking about something that is open to all people, all platforms.
John mentioned that there will be 100 million PCs manufactured this
year, not counting computers installed in cars. And there will be 50
million cars manufactured. Ironically, shortly after the event, I
met a gentleman in the Tokyo airport lounge with a JavaOne bag. When I
asked him why he had been to JavaOne, he said that he worked for a major
automobile manufacturer and his job was to figure out how to put Java
chips into cars.
Java: the new Silicon
In many ways JavaOne is a matchmaker conference where developers can get
together and in some cases form partnerships. Indeed, one of the most
popular talks was that given by venture capitalists. This conference
gave direct, immediate and palpable return of value to attendees.
Java is:
James Gosling, the lead engineer and key architect behind the Java
technology took the podium and discussed how the new Java Compatibility
Kit's test suite has over 8,000 test programs. And he was very excited
about JavaBeans, Sun's component architecture for Java.
You Never Run Out of Gas with JavaBeans
(No he didn't say that, I did.) But he did say that JavaBeans can make
people functional programmers [check out Sun's Java Studio], others do the
low level components... software Legos(TM), critical mass for a real
market. The test will be if developers can figure out the way to correctly
charge for their Beans... per seat, per usage, partnering, etc. You can get
to market 10x faster than C++.
I'll get back to some of the other keynotes later.
Arrangement:
JavaOne was comprised of six tracks: three technical, with a Java
computing, industry, and business tracks to round things out. I spent
almost all of my time in the business track, "Java in the Real World".
This track was very practical, and was introduced very clearly by Lew
Tucker, Director of Developer Relations in Sun's JavaSoft division. He
said that Year 1 of Java was "Java as Language" characterized by animated
Web pages, whereas Year 2 (now) is "Java as Platform" when developers
create and deploy real world applications. In Year 3 we'll see "Java as
Industry" with embedded functions "under the hood" and ubiquity. "As new
trees take root and hold the soil," Lew said, "Java is moving upstream
into Application Servers... where the complexity is hidden from the user."
This show certainly gave us a peek at what's coming next year.
As mentioned above, the most popular session in this track was the
standing room only "Java Venture Capital" event, featuring venture
capitalists Kevin Harvey of Benchmark Capital, Ann Winblad of Hummer
Winblad, and Ted Schlein of Kleiner Perkins. With money as the subject,
people were quite keen to hear what the VC were interested in, and
what they don't want. In the "Do" category: great people, unique market
opportunities (tell about the opportunity - not technology), credible
business models... and spelling "internet" correctly in the Business
Plan. In the "Don't" category: me-too companies, direct translation
of Windows applications into Java, self-described "Java companies",
and old architectures for Java apps (i.e., replacing C++ code without
architecting fat pipes). These VC see themselves as coaches - not players,
wanting to grow the whole "pie", not just their slice.
Java is small
I did get away to hear technical presentations on SmartCards, something
very new in the US, but well know in many other parts of the world.
With the introduction of the JavaCard 2.0 API specification, we're at an
"inflection point" for the introduction of SmartCards, as we were 20 years
ago for microprocessors. SmartCards are used for mass transit, telephones,
Internet payment, loyalty programs (airline frequent flyer clubs), and
identification. The manufacturers of 90% of the world's cards (Schlumberger,
GemPlus, Seimens, etc.) have endorsed the JavaCard specification, which
extends Java to devices with displays but not keyboards, such as television
sets and photocopiers.
Java is big
Java touches the future of telephone and television. Diba (from Oracle
NC), PowerTV (set-top box OS vendors), and WebTV (TV-based Web browsing,
recently bought by Microsoft) all endorsed Java, and the PersonalJava
specification in particular. Nortel, Nokia and Lucent talked about their
intention to use Java in smart phones and cell phones. And Psion of the
UK, a leader in the PDA market (and the one I write these articles with)
discussed their plans to use Java in their new Psion Series 5, which
has a 32-bit processor and OS. They have powerful objects in ROM which
Java classes and JavaBeans will expose and exploit. They also plan to
have a Java Virtual Machine.
Other keynotes:
Dr. Alan Baratz, President of the JavaSoft division of Sun introduced
the new "100% Pure Java" program, co-sponsored by Apple, Netscape,
IBM, Novell, and Oracle. This is a way of insuring that there are
no proprietary extensions in one's code that would tie it to a
single platform's native code and limit it from running everywhere.
Scott McNealy, Sun's President and CEO later quipped, "A company may
say that they're `100% committed to Java', but they're not pure Java.
How would it be if I said to my wife, seated in the audience, `I'm 100%
committed to you, but not pure'?"
Alan went on to point out that Java is the "universal fuel" for computing,
not requiring different gasoline for each platform. He gave the following
statistics.
Serious Java programmers: 400,000
JDK 1.1 downloads: 300,000 (just in March)
Web pages with Java: doubles every 6 months
Universities offering Java programming classes: 162
Books on Java (just in English): 150+ (surpassing C++).
Eric Schmidt, outgoing Chief Technical Officer at Sun (and incoming
CEO of Novell) sees the Internet as the world's "largest experiment
in anarchy" and "the first thing that humanity has invented that we
don't understand." After talking about the future of the Internet,
he introduced and interviewed Vinton Cerf, Senior Vice President,
Data Architecture at MCI; Robert Kahn, President the Corporation for
National Research Initiatives; Steve Wolff, who led the evolution of
the NSFNet Consortium, now at Cisco Systems; and Hans-Braun, Chief
Engineer at Teledesic Corp... all pioneers in the history of the
Internet over the last 25 years. This was a rich treat. Check it out
at http://java.sun.com/JavaOne/java1-97-cerfkeynote.html.
Java is cool. Java is hot
The musician Thomas Dolby Robertson demonstrated the future of interactive
Java-based sound. His company Headspace (http://www.headspace.com)
introduced a new sound format, Rich Music Format (RMF) which looks to be
the future "PostScript(TM) of sound." Sun has licensed this and two other
pieces of Headspace's technology for inclusion in a future version of
the Java Virtual Machine and class libraries: the Headspace synthesizer
and a content store with thousands of songs and audio clips.
Java is Out of This World
Jeff Johnson is lead engineer for Graphical User Interface on the NASA
Hubble Space Telescope project. It took 10,000 people 20 years to build
the space-based telescope. It has 7,000 telemetry sensors that are now
monitored by a Java-based interface. It was originally scheduled for a
later upgrade as part of the Vision 2000 project to lower costs, but
it was delivered in Java so quickly that the schedule was moved up.
It can deliver incredibly "dense" information in a moment-by-moment
display of engineering telemetry and scientific data, displayed both
qualitatively and quantitatively. It used to take 24 hours to get
historical data from an off-site tape, but not with Java. The NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland considers this
the "most successful software system ever delivered." See more at
http://java.sun.com/features/1997/july/hubble.html
Paul Backes, Ph.D., NASA engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena,
California spoke of the Mars Pathfinder project scheduled for July
4 touchdown. The project features a remote-controlled robotic rover
called Sojourner, which is navigated by an interactive Java applet.
As you know, this has landed successfully and has transmitted back
terrific information. Backes said, "Today, we're using Java's interactive
capabilities to make the Mars mission a great learning experience for
our kids, as they plan their own mission and see what it feels like to
control the rover directly from their computer. "It is a great educational
and awareness-building tool for NASA." Learn more and play with a demo
at http://www.sun.com/mars/default.html
Java is out of sight
>From the telescopic now down to the the microscopic level, the
BioInformatics group at the University of California, Berkeley is using
Java in its Human Genome research. They want to make sense of the
3 billion base pairs of human DNA using the somewhat smaller number
of DNA pairs in fruitflies. Java shows links and hypertext links to
these with multiple resolutions. The Genome Browser is a Java-based
user interface into their vast database. Using a 3D-structure viewer,
they can view the DNA strains and proteins. The Annotated Sequence
Viewer uses Marimba's Castanet to allow annotation of other scientists'
publications which permits global collaborative annotation. See more
at http://fruitfly.berkeley.edu
Don't Miss Out:
In Berlin 5-6 November 1997, Sun will host the International Internet
Associate Symposium with many Sun executives including Alan Baratz,
President of JavaSoft, as well as key partners including ISVs, system
integrators, and resellers, followed by a full day "100% Pure Java
Seminar" with Java architects and Sun's Java Aces. Find out more on the
Web at http://www.sun.com/iap.
Also coming is the Java Internet Business Expo in New York, NY
from August 25-28. It features keynote by Scott McNealy, a Partner
Pavilion, and a Developer's Day. It's the place to meet the IT
professionals who have already implemented Java in the enterprise,
and it focuses on business strategies and solutions. Learn more at
http://java.sun.com/features/1997/june/expo.html
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