News and New Product Briefs (2/5/99)

Servertec releases iServer 1.0.0 01/26/99

Servertec announced a new release of iServer, version 1.0.0 01/26/99, a small, fast, and scalable platform-independent Web application server written in Java and designed for generating static and data-driven Web pages using servlets, iScript (another Servertec product), CGI, and server-side includes.

This new release features:

• a load-balancing, fault-resistant cluster redirector to improve reliability and scalability
• a security service that limits access to resources based on user’s access privileges
• support for Basic authentication using BASE64 encoding
• support for Access Control Lists (ACL)
• support for database connection pools to more efficiently use resources
• file caching and support for connection keep-alive for improved performance and reduced disk I/O
• improved error handling and reporting
• more readable messages
• improved object and thread synchronization
• support for HTTP session binding listener/event
• access/events/error logger thread
• preloaded commonly used server templates
• support for preloading servlets/filters
• automatic session timeouts
• server restart capabilities
• a separate file/directory handling component
• support for HTTP 1.1 header modifiers
• support for single-thread model
• enhanced configurations for server parameters

The 125KB iServer will run on any platform that supports the Java Runtime Environment 1.1.x. It includes support for the following standards: servlets, HTTP, CGI, SSI, HTML, TCP/IP, RMI, IIOP, CORBA, JDBC, and ODBC.

With iServer, developers can create object-oriented reusable servlets that encapsulate business logic. They can also use JDBC to create data-driven Web-based applications that can access a variety of data sources. iServer has built-in support for database connection pooling.

iServer security allows resources to be protected from access using the authentication model. Using the iServer Administrator, users, groups, realms, access rights, resources, and access control lists can easily be defined.

iServer can be reconfigured by editing simple text files and html pages. Server parameters, file aliases, servlets, services, filters, mime types, error messages, connection pools, users groups, realms, access rights, resources, access control lists, and HTML templates are fully configurable.

iServer is licensed on a per-seat basis for 0. A binary subscription to iServer is available for ,500. A free preview of iServer is available.

https://www.servertec.com/products/iws/iws.html

db-One 2.1 for Java-based high-speed search and retrieval

Metro One Database Software announced db-One 2.1 for Java, software that provides Web-based businesses with a database software that delivers high-speed searching and full-text retrieval.

db-One 2.1 gives users quick, efficient access to textual data across the Internet or over corporate intranets. It can be implemented as a standalone database product or as an add-on retrieval component for existing standard relational database management systems (RDBMS). It is built on a proprietary architecture that uses object-oriented design.

The product includes:

• a full-text search engine
• an authoring system
• a multithreaded database server
• a relational database indexer

Other features of db-One 2.1 include:

• Java class library for client interface to the database
• automatic phonetic, morphological, and typo correction configurations
• support for COM and JavaBeans
• priority caching to optimize performance
• faster radius searching for distance related look-ups

db-One 2.1 is available now for Solaris and Windows NT (2000) platforms. Check with the company for pricing.

https://www.metro1.com/db1.html

Zero G adds localization support to InstallAnywhere

Zero G Software announced that it has added localization support to InstallAnywhere (IA) in the form of International Language Pack plug-ins. InstallAnywhere is Zero G’s tool for developing Java-based installers.

The InstallAnywhere International Language Packs (ILPs) lets developers craft Java-based installers in 29 languages. Three ILPs come with IA 2.5 Standard Edition; with them, installers can be built in both single- and double-byte characters.

InstallAnywhere’s localization features include the ability to build one installer for multiple languages, tie graphics to certain languages, build uninstallers, and edit text for further customization.

The three currently available ILPs include:

• the Core Language Pack (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish)
• the Western Language Pack (Basque, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French Canadian, Indonesian Norwegian, Iberian Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Swedish)
• the Eastern Language Pack (simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, and Turkish)

InstallAnywhere 2.5 supports installations on Windows 95/98/NT, MacOS, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, HP-UX, OS/2, and other Java-enabled platforms. The standard edition costs 95. The express edition costs 95.

The Western and Eastern Language Packs are licensed on a per-developer-seat basis for 95 per pack. Zero G is offering the Core Language Pack (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) to all users of IA 2.5 Standard Edition for free.

https://www.ZeroG.com/html/standard.html

alphaWorks releases Self-Voicing Kit

IBM alphaWorks announced the Self-Voicing Kit (SVK), a tool to enable developers to make Java applications accessible to millions of people with disabilities by letting users add, expand, or customize application-accessibility features, such as an audio user interface.

The SVK, based on IBM’s Access Engine, is designed to take advantage of the built-in support for the Java Accessibility APIs that Java applications developed with Swing and JDK 1.1.x through Java 2 already have. These APIs can be easily modified with the Self-Voicing Kit. With the SVK, developers can add an audio user interface to any Java application.

The Access Engine launches in the background and communicates directly with accessible components of a Java application. Perks, or program files written in Java, tell the Access Engine what to do when specific events occur, such as focus changes, selection, or receiving input from an input device.

The Access Engine supports stacking of Perks, so the user interface can be expanded or customized. The SVK also allows users to test applications for accessibility.

It runs on Windows 95/98/NT and any Java-enabled platform. The SVK is available for free download.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/formula/selfvoicingkit

alphaWorks offers Rioja and Bidi classes

IBM alphaWorks announced two new Java class technologies. Rioja is a record-oriented Java input/output class library that enables Java programs to use the same files as non-Java programs. Bidi is a set of classes designed to make Java applications and applets accessible to a wider, international audience.

Rioja is a record-oriented (not byte-stream-oriented) input/output class library that allows Java applications to access and manage record-oriented data. Rioja converts existing Java I/O byte-stream applications so that they can use record-oriented data. This means that Java apps can natively navigate such file systems as OS/390 catalogs and partitioned data sets. In essence, Rioja delivers a unified, extensible I/O API.

Bidi is a set of internationalization classes that can display and edit texts with multiple character and paragraph styles and reverse character ordering. By displaying Arabic and Hebrew text in correct ordering and shaping, Bidi allows applications and applets in these languages to run on host systems that typically couldn’t support them.

The central Bidi class in the RichEdit Control is TextPanel, a component used much like the TextArea class in AWT, but it adds cut/copy/paste and undo/redo support. It also includes a set of classes for user-interface elements (such as menus and a tab ruler) and classes for representing text with multiple character and paragraph styles, which support persistent storage.

Both are available free for downloading.

Rioja: https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/formula/rioja

Bidi: https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/formula/bidi

ADNT debuts PlainSoft SSM Java C/S call-center app

AD: NT announces PlainSoft SSM (Support Service Management), a Java client/server application for managing call centers.

Each communication with a client (telephone, fax, e-mail) is the subject of an intervention report linked to a problem. All the intervention reports relating to the same problem for the same client are assembled in a file.

It has been tested on Unix and Windows 95/NT platforms with the following databases (accessed through JDBC and the PlainSoft XAS APIs):

• Sybase Adaptive Server and SQL Anywhere
• Oracle Personal Oracle8
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Informix Online WS

PlainSoft SSM costs 11 for the first processor license, and 7 for each additional processor.

https://www.adnt.fr/

Optimizeit 3.0 Pro supports Java 2

Intuitive Systems announced that Optimizeit 3.0 Professional, an update to its Java profiling/performance tool, is available.

Optimizeit 3.0 Professional lets developers test and improve the performance of Java applications, applets, servlets, and JavaBeans. It can be integrated with other development environments, so developers can directly profile apps from within their favorite IDEs. Optimizeit lets developers understand and solve performance issues such as memory leaks, too much temporary allocation, inefficient algorithms, and inefficient processor use.

The software comes with the ability to track global performance of applications in real time, “hot spot” detectors, the ability to export data and graphs as ASCII or HTML, the ability to start and stop profilers from within a user’s code, and fast installation procedures using a configuration wizard.

New features in Optimizeit 3.0 Professional include:

• full support for Java 2
• a unique CPU profiler that provides both sampling and instrumentation profiling
• an advanced object reference graph that automatically highlights the references causing memory leaks

Optimizeit Professional 3.0 is available now for Windows 95/98 platforms for 49. An upcoming Solaris release should be shipping soon.

https://www.optimizeit.com/

JLOOX 1.0 GUI collection for Java 2

LOOX Software announced JLOOX 1.0, a graphics and data-visualization development tool for the Java 2 platform. With JLOOX, programmers can build high-performance user interfaces based on the Java 2D API.

JLOOX provides a set of high-level graphics components built on the Java 2D API. It contains the JLOOXMaker interactive editor and a high-level Java API. JLOOXMaker lets Java developers quickly build complex static or animated screens, as well as create such custom control objects as pushbuttons, knobs, and dials.

JLOOX also includes a full-featured version of the JavaBean JClass Chart 3.6 from KL Group, which features business and scientific graphing tools, flexible data sources, and interactive capabilities for decision-support applications. And, the JLOOX class library sports a collection of high-performance lightweight graphics objects that handle zooming, animation, user interactions, and real-time updates.

JLOOX 1.0 for Java 2 is available now at a starting price of ,500 for a single-user development license. Applications developed with JLOOX require no runtime, royalty, or deployment fees.

https://www.loox.com/gui/jloox.htm

MS VP Maritz on the stand

Microsoft VP of platforms and applications Paul Maritz opened his testimony by stating that Microsoft’s insistence that Intel pull its Internet-based multimedia software product off the market in 1995, and then the later push for Intel to give up developing Java as a cross-platform technology, was not an attempt to stifle competition.

Maritz went on to say that Microsoft has lots of competition, from the Internet and open source software.

Earlier, government witness and Intel executive Steve McGeady testified that Microsoft threatened to withdraw support for Intel’s MMX chip if Intel continued to give its Native Signal Processing (NSP) software to OEMs for free.

Maritz claimed Microsoft opposed NSP because it was developed for Windows 3.1, at a time Microsoft was preparing to release Windows 95. Internal Microsoft documents that offered details of the negotiations told a different story from Maritz.

In an October 18, 1995, e-mail from Bill Gates, Gates wrote, “Intel feels we have all the OEMs on hold with our NSP chill. For example, they feel [Hew-lett-Packard] is unwilling to do anything relative to MMX exploitation or the new audio software Intel is doing using Windows 95 unless we say it’s OK. This is good news because it means OEMs are listening to us.”

In another Gates’ e-mail (dated February 20, 1997), Gates indicated that company officials thought about offering support to Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices (and its 3DX technology) to coerce Intel into halting development of Java technology. He wrote, “I would gladly give up supporting this if they would back off from their work on Java, which is terrible for Intel.”

Appeals court throws open Gates deposition to the public

On Friday, January 29, Microsoft lost a struggle when the US Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the public is entitled to see the entire videotaped deposition of Bill Gates.

The three-judge panel’s unanimous decision fell back on the 1913 Publicity in Taking Evidence Act that requires depositions of witnesses in government antitrust cases filed under the Sherman Act be “open to the public as freely as are trials in open court.” This is the same act cited by several news organizations in August when they petitioned Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to release the Gates testimony.

Jackson originally ruled to offer the depositions to the public, a decision which Microsoft appealed.

Microsoft allowed to see merger papers

On Friday, January 22, Judge Jackson ordered the DOJ to turn over documents to Microsoft relating to the proposed merger between AOL and Netscape, and AOL’s alliance with Sun Microsystems.

Microsoft attorneys have claimed that the AOL-Netscape merger and the Sun partnership undermine the government’s case against Microsoft.

The documents include the AOL-Netscape agreement and merger plan and documents involving AOL and Sun’s strategic development and marketing agreement, joint development agreement, side letter amending the Sun technology license and distribution agreement, service provider agreement, dial-up network services agreement, and advertising services agreements.

Bluestone’s freeware project joins Java and XML

Bluestone Software is launching XwingML (pronounced “Zwing ML”), a new freeware project that will make the Java Swing APIs and foundation classes available to the Extensible Markup Language (XML).

The XwingML project will allow developers to represent an entire Java graphical user interface as an XML document. That presents a pro and a con for developers. The pro is that developers don’t have to hard-code user-interface declarations in code. The con — everyone is doing this in a proprietary way.

Bluestone will ship XML-Server, a dynamic XML application server, which can also be integrated with CodeWarrior to build applications for PalmPilot users.

Bluestone also plans to deliver Visual-XML, a toolset built with XwingML that will let users visually design Web applications that link to legacy data or are built to accommodate an existing document type definition.

The Bluestone’s XML-Server costs ,995. Bluestone Visual-XML costs 9 and should be in beta by March 1999.

https://www.bluestone.com/xml/xwingml/

Sun, Microsoft ask for summary judgment

On Friday, January 22, Sun and Microsoft each filed motions In the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, for summary judgment in the lawsuit over Microsoft’s alleged misuse of Java.

Sun filed three summary judgment motions based on various aspects of its claim against Microsoft, which ask the court to settle the case in its favor and to permanently enforce two temporary preliminary injunctions awarded earlier against Microsoft. Two were filed under seal. Sun also filed a motion for summary adjudication (which asks the court to resolve issues that underlie claims). The claim at issue is the meaning of the term “supplemental classes” in the context of the licensing contract.

Microsoft filed five summary judgment motions, the details of which were not available.

Judge gives Microsoft extra time

On Wednesday, January 27, U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte granted Microsoft more time to bring its products into compliance with Sun Microsystems’ Java.

The decision extended Microsoft’s compliance date (originally February 15) from 30 to 180 days, depending on the product bundle.

Microsoft is following both paths — complying with Whyte’s decision and appealing the preliminary injunction.

Sun uncorks Jini

Sun debuted its Jini technology, an enabling technology written in Java that resides within a device. Jini will allow any device to automatically register itself on a so-called look-up service residing on the network; will let those devices become available to any user on the network; and will allow devices to talk to other devices on the network without using the operating system.

The core of Jini is the look-up service, sort of a dynamically constructed directory. After a device registers with the service, it becomes an object that can be accessed by other devices, whether they are registered or not. The object representing the device is automatically kicked out of the service if the device’s status changes (like goes offline).

Remote Method Invocation, or RMI, is the way devices can talk back-and-forth with each other. RMI skips over the OS and the processor and it doesn’t require any special transport backbone. It can be used over cellular networks and hard-wired connections.

Remember, however, that Jini is a still being tuned. For instance, security is still quite lax.

Jini is making another splash in the developer community because Sun is releasing it under a new licensing model — the Community Source License. Under this agreement, Sun releases the Jini code to anyone who wants it. Unlike other open source-type arrangements, users can keep what they make; developers are not required to give back to the source pool. They also do not have to pay for Jini unless they release it in a commercial piece of hardware or software.

PersonalJava 3.0 sports consumer-oriented UI-building graphical tools

Sun announced the release of the PersonalJava 3.0 application environment, which features Truffle, tools to simplify building consumer-oriented graphical user interfaces.

The Truffle graphical toolkit consists of a window system and a set of widgets written in Java. With Truffle, device manufacturers can easily customize the look-and-feel of their device’s user interface, helping to establish a unique product identity.

Truffle comes with a reference look-and-feel for touchscreen devices (called the “Touchable look-and-feel”).

The PersonalJava 3.0 application environment (as well as version 1.0 of the EmbeddedJava application environment) are the first versions of these technologies available under Sun’s Community Source License model.

Source code for both PersonalJava and EmbeddedJava technology is expected to be available to the public in February 1999.

https://java.sun.com/products/personaljava

Swing 1.1.1 beta 1 (JFC 1.1) here

The first beta of Swing 1.1.1, also known as JFC 1.1, is available to developers for download.

Changes in this version fall into three major categories:

• HTML text in buttons and labels
• two known problems
• more than 200 bug fixes

The one new feature in this mostly bug-fix release is that buttons and labels now can contain HTML text. If the text property of a button or label contains a string that begins with the HTML command (), the rest of the string will be used to create a lightweight HTML document. The text will be rendered by the full Swing styled-text engine.

The first of the known problems with this release is that applets that download swing.jar can fail on Netscape on Windows 95. The symptom of the problem is an inexplicable “class not found” error. The problem doesn’t occur in other platforms (such as Windows 98, and so on).

Problem number two is that medium-sized and larger Swing applications (such as the SwingSet example) could perform poorly on Windows machines with 32MB of memory or less. The working set for a typical Swing app increased in this release, which makes the performance of some apps dominated by paging.

The problems shouldn’t affect developers, but they could disrupt users.

There are also more than 200 bugs fixed in this release.

JFC 1.1: https://developer.java.sun.com/developer/earlyAccess/jfc/index.html

More on the HTML feature from Swing Connection: https://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/

More on the HTML feature from The Java Tutorial: https://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/

Advanced Imaging API Early Access 3

Sun announced the Early Access 3 version of the Java Advanced Imaging API, which extends Java by letting high-performance image processing be incorporated in Java applets and applications.

The API provides a set of core image-processing utilities, such as image tiling, regions of interest, and deferred execution. It also provides standard image-processing operators, such as many common point, area, and frequency domain operators.

The Java Advanced Imaging API supports a wide variety of image formats and data types, and it can perform remote and distributed imaging.

https://developer.java.sun.com/developer/earlyAccess/jai/index.html

New beans from alphaWorks

IBM alphaWorks announced four new collections of JavaBeans — for image conversion, DynamicAttribute, XML, and Java Server Pages formatting.

The Image Conversion set is designed to work with bitmap files (BMP). The set consists of two non-visual beans, BMPEncoder and BMPDecoder. BMPEncoder saves a java.awt.Image to a given file according to a BMP 3.x file format. BMPDecoder loads an image in BMP file format. Both are compatible with JDK 1.1.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/foundry.nsf/alphaBeans/21bab9a156cbcf3c8825670600217832

The DynamicAttribute bean, which provides a simple way to set attributes based on the value of other attributes without writing a line of code, can be wired in IDEs to perform dynamic expression evaluation. This bean lets developers set calculation rules (conditions), input arguments (properties), and receive an output result visually. It is compatible with JDK 1.1.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/foundry.nsf/alphaBeans/8ab1155416fd806c882566dd002bc0de

The XML beans collection, which lets developers incorporate XML into Java applications, consists of seven beans:

• DOMGenerator,
• XMLTokenizer,
• XMLSourceView,
• XMLTreeView,
• XMLAttributeView,
• DTDSourceView,
• XMLChildren.

The XML bean suite is a set of visual and non-visual beans that lets users view any type of well-formed XML documents. JDK 1.1-compatible.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/foundry.nsf/alphaBeans/6032404bcf3329f5882566f8001c6684

The Java Server Page Format bean library is a collection of 24 beans that support Java Server Pages (JSP). JSP allows the HTML developer to embed Java into a page:

• JSPTableFormat,
• JSPDateFormat,
• JSPFormat,
• JSPListFormat,
• JSPNumberFormat,
• JSPStringFormat,
• JSPTableParameterFormat,
• JSPTimeFormat,
• DateFormatFull,
• DateFormatLong,
• DateFormatMedium,
• DateFormatShort,
• ListBodyFormat,
• NumberFormatCurrency,
• NumberFormatCurrency_US,
• NumberFormatGeneral,
• NumberFormatPercent,
• OrderedListFormat,
• ShoppingCartFormat,
• TimeFormatFull,
• TimeFormatLong,
• TimeFormatMedium,
• TimeFormatShort,
• UnorderedListFormat.

The JSP Format bean library has a number of common operations in a scripted page that would be tedious or complex without additional support. For example, the JSPTableFormat bean lets developers produce a table by only modifying a single line of code using the JSPTableFormatCustomizer.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/foundry.nsf/alphaBeans/61be4f19d691e45d88256706003acf9f

Snowbound’s RasterMaster 2.0 intros high-res printing

Snowbound Software announced RasterMaster for Java 2.0 imaging components which delivers high-resolution printing from within Java.

RasterMaster 2.0 helps Java overcome its low-resolution printing standards. Besides the ability to print high-resolution images, RasterMaster 2.0 also features:

• image merge
• de-skew
• de-speckle
• cut-and-paste

It supports such image formats as TIFF, Group 4, JPEG, GIF, BMP, EPS, DICOM, MO:DCA IOCA, JEDMICS, and CMYK. The software can be used to build Internet browser applets.

RasterMaster for Java 2.0 is available now, with prices ranging from ,350 (for a RM/View developer’s toolkit) to ,995 (for RM/Plus).

https://www.snowbnd.com/Products/rmjava_eval.htm