Users confront Java challenges

December 8, 1998 — System architecture, differences among browsers, and corporate political issues are the main concerns confronting companies implementing mission-critical, Java-based systems, according to a “power panel” of corporate users, speaking at the Java Business Expo here.

In a move clearly aimed at underscoring the development of Java into a robust application-development platform, show organizers hosted a panel discussion including technology experts who helped build systems for Harvard University, Sabre Group, and Bank One — the newly merged financial group including First Chicago NBD.

The prime challenge common to all three was gaining expertise in how to structure system architecture to best exploit Java, said the panelists.

The Sabre Group, for example, scrapped one of its first efforts to move from a host- to a Web-based travel information system “due to improper architecture and performance issues … there were too many graphics up front,” said Bob Offutt, vice president of Sabre Labs.

For its part, Bank One turned to an outside consulting company in its own move to move its Customer Workstation decision support sales system from client/server to a new version of the application based on object-oriented technology, according to Raymond Demich, vice president of corporate sales and marketing systems.

An outside firm trained the bank’s programmers at the same time it helped them develop the new system, Demich said. One side benefit is that the move to Java has helped the bank retain programmers, he said.

“We get no volunteers to do … COBOL; everyone wants the chance to work on Java projects,” Demich said.

But the programmers’ enthusiasm wasn’t shared by everyone in the company — especially information management teams that controlled desktop systems, Demich said.

“The people that control the desktop … have been slow to give up control,” with the result that about 800 of more than 2,500 users who are supposed to be using the new Java-based decision support system do not have a browser and therefore can’t use the system, he said.

Other panelists agreed that implementing new Java systems is the same as deploying any other new system, in that the issue of getting users and managers involved and enthusiastic about change is more difficult than almost any technical problem.

“Most of my people on site at Harvard are involved in the social engineering aspect of the project,” said Kenneth Ledeen, CEO and chairman of Nevo Technologies Inc., which has a two-year consulting contract with Harvard to help it deploy a new university information system.

But one challenge of implementing Java systems that is specific to the technology is the difficulty of dealing with multiple browsers, the panelists agreed.

Browsers can display applets differently, perform differently, and support different features of HTML (hypertext markup language) the panelists said.

To get around the problem, several of the panelists suggested that developers avoid writing to vendor-specific HTML or Java extensions.

The other option — at least for in-house applications — is to require users to use a specific browser.

“You will see more and more companies standardizing on a specific browser,” said Colette Coad, a consultant at Ernst & Young LLP financial advisors and the panel moderator.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the controversy that has surrounded Microsoft’s Windows-specific extensions to Java and the current lawsuit against the software giant filed by Sun Microsystems Inc., the panelists said they were not worried about Microsoft’s efforts write its own extensions to the language.

“All you have to do is avoid using the Microsoft extensions,” said Nevo’s Ledeen.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has been ordered by a district court judge to ship versions of its products that are compatible with Sun’s test suite.