News and New Product Briefs (July 6, 1999)

ECMA approves committee to standardize Java

The ECMA (formerly known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association) met recently and approved the formation of a new technical committee to offer Java to ISO as a standards proposal.

Twenty-three of the twenty-six ECMA members, including Sun (of course) and Microsoft, voted in favor of the process.

Last month Sun submitted Java to the ECMA. It originally received status as a publicly approved submitter to ISO, but complained when a rule change took too much enhancement responsibility away from Sun and moved it to the ISO Java Technology Committee, or JTC-1. It then made an end-run move by taking its proposal to the ECMA, which can then submit Java to ISO.

The ECMA technical committee will meet for the first time on August 11 and 12 in the San Francisco Bay area.

Geeks, cruise with your own

Geek Cruises offers cruise ship vacations complete with theme-based instructional courses, so computing professionals now have a good excuse for the boss to pay for a floating holiday.

The newest upcoming cruise is the Perl Whirl 2000. It departs on May 29, 2000, to sail up the Alaska Inside Passage. Speakers include Larry Wall, Tim Bray, Tom Christiansen, and several others. Technical courses come in three varieties:

• Two-day courses (Advanced introduction to XML; Advanced Perl; Database-backed Web sites with Perl; Packages, references, objects, and modules)

• One-day courses (Advanced CGI; Advanced JavaScript; Effective Perl programming; GUI programming with [G]TK; Tricks of the wizards)

• Half-day courses (The history and culture of Perl; Apache tricks; Gems of CPAN; Python: What’s better, what’s worse [than Perl])

There are several other cruises tentatively planned, including two Caribbean cruises — a Java cruise in October 2000 and an XML cruise in January 2001. There’s also a Linux cruise planned for the summer of 2001; it may be in the Mediterranean.

All the cruises start with a complimentary bon voyage cocktail party. Each is a seven-day trip.

ATS trains AS/400 programmers in Java

Automated Training Systems (ATS) announced AS/400 Java Introduction, a course in Java programming designed for AS/400 programmers.

The course is a self-paced, audio-cassette course designed to help experienced AS/400 programmers cope with Java programming. This course directs the user on:

• Downloading the JDK
• Configuring the JDK for the PC
• Finding the documentation
• Compiling and running Java programs
• Deploying applets on the AS/400 Web server
• Installing the AS/400 Toolkit for Java
• Accessing DB2/400 database files

This course presumes no prior Java experience. It comes with examples to illustrate object-oriented programming concepts, and it focuses on building practical GUI interfaces in applets for the purpose of accessing AS/400 database files.

The course, which takes about 14 hours to complete, will be available in August 1999 for 95.

ObjectSpace integrates Voyager into Novell products

ObjectSpace announced that it is partnering with Novell to integrate its Voyager, a Java-based ORB and smart networking infrastructure, into Novell’s products. The companies hope that this merger will bring Java portability to Novell Directory Services.

According to Art Nevarez, a leading member of Novell’s Java Technology Group, “Novell sees the Voyager product family as a leading ORB and smart networking infrastructure that forms the basis for adaptive, intelligent application server technologies that are widely available to NDS users.”

David Norris, president, CEO, and cofounder of ObjectSpace, said, “This partnership will give Novell and its customers greater freedom to build networks that connect more globally than ever before. The ongoing goal at ObjectSpace is to establish the Voyager platform as the technology of choice for creating intranet and Internet solutions.”

Voyager speeds up development and makes maintenance simpler by leveraging existing JNDI implementations while monitoring and managing programs from its management console. It uses such features as dynamic aggregation and its support for mobile agents to meet distributed computing requirements.

With Voyager, users write a single line of code to dynamically CORBA-enable Java objects at runtime without modification.

Waldo delivers the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of Jini

The July 1999 Communications of the ACM, the journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, offers an exclusive from Jim Waldo, the lead architect of Jini technology, on his creation, including design philosophy, development strategy, and performance goals.

Jini allows a variety of devices (PCs, peripherals, cell phones, PDAs, consumer electronic devices, and so on) to interact in a flexible, easily upgradable network. Waldo comments, “The Jini system allows upgrades and updates to be installed and used by the components being networked, without requiring that the network be shut down or all individual components be updated.”

The article describes the various concepts employed in Jini, including the leasing of time on the network, the ability to produce mobile code that can run on most machines (thanks to its Java heritage), the ability to create a network of homogeneous Java virtual machines, and a high level of system security.

The article also draws the connections between Jini and Java, demonstrating how code is transmitted from a service to a client.

The July issue is current not available online. Check with the ACM for obtaining a copy.

Congressional scorecard on tech issues

Floyd Kvamme, a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers, and the chairman of lobbying organization Empower America, announced the latter group’s new political campaign to protect the Internet and keep it growing — a Congressional technology watch scorecard.

The Empower America scorecard’s goal is to decide where each federal politician stands on technology issues. It will focus on such issues as encryption, export controls, child-decency laws, taxation, education, and immigration policy.

Once a year, the organization will release scorecard results. Those legislators who support “high-tech growth and free-market solutions” will be considered “Internet friends.”

The organization’s “Ten Commandments of Internet policy” includes school choice; across-the-board tax rate reductions on labor and capital income, and an eventual overhaul of the tax code; immediately raising the cap on H-1B visas for skilled high-tech workers; and private-sector solutions, not government censorship, to protect children from inappropriate and indecent materials on the Internet. The group also wants to protect high-tech companies from Y2K lawsuits and ease technology-export laws.

https://www.empower.org/html/campaigns/empowertech/main1.htm

Rainbow hardware accelerators get Phaos Java security

Rainbow Technologies and Phaos Technology signed a joint technology agreement that will let Phaos extend its SSLava Toolkit so the Java applets and applications it generates will be optimized for Rainbow’s CryptoSwift hardware accelerators.

The revamped toolkit should also improve secure Web server performance and response times for Java applications, according to company officials.

The SSLava Toolkit 1.11 includes Java implementations of Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security protocols. It allows developers to rapidly create SSL-enabled applications and applets for clients and servers. It is platform-independent and executes on all versions of the Java platform. It features support for Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement, Digital Signature Standard (DSS) certificates, and the SSL tunneling protocol.

CryptoSwift is a hardware-based, public key cryptography accelerator that comes configured as the CryptoSwift Accelerator Card (in speed configurations including 50, 100, and 200 transactions per second) and the CryptoSwift EN (secure Web server hardware for Solaris and HP-UX). Also available is a software development kit.

SSLava: https://www.phaos.com/products/sslavafr.htm

CryptoSwift: https://isg.rainbow.com/products/cryptoswift.html

IBM, Rational enter marketing, development alliance

IBM announced that it has entered a marketing and development alliance with Rational Systems that will promote Java, the Extensible Markup Language (XML), the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) programming languages.

The goal of the alliance is to offer back-to-front systems that focus on improved business process modeling, business requirements definition, code generation, change request management, and systems management, so programmers in teams can more easily design, develop, and deploy enterprise applications.

The first visible effort is the integration (through an XMI bridge) of IBM’s VisualAge development environment with the Rational Suite. In this effort, VisualAge can read Java code, transform it into XMI definitions, and use those definitions to build a visual model in Rational Rose (which offers a graphical representation of the code architecture to developers). Company officials claim that the process will work both ways.

Developers can download the XMI toolkit preview. The toolkit will be an add-on to VisualAge for Java.

https://www7.software.ibm.com/vad.nsf/FrameData/Master?OpenDocument&Title=Overview&FSet=1&Doc3=3413&Doc4=3414

Judge Whyte urges Sun, Microsoft to settle suit

US District Judge Ronald Whyte asked Sun and Microsoft to settle their lawsuit over Java at a recent hearing in US District Court.

Whyte asked attorneys for both sides, “Hasn’t all the argument today and the arguments since the beginning of this case shown that these disagreements are not clear? Doesn’t it make business sense to work out a solution so that Sun and Microsoft don’t litigate from here to eternity?”

Whyte’s earlier, tentative orders ruled that:

• Microsoft could ship clean room implementations as long as it didn’t violate Sun’s intellectual property rights

• Windows 98, Internet Exporer 4.0, and Visual J++ 6.0 did violate Sun’s copyright

• Any supplemental Java classes Sun ships to Microsoft must run on the current implementation of Microsoft’s Virtual Machine

Also, in November 1998, Whyte ordered Microsoft to support Sun’s Java Native Interface in its Java products. Microsoft appealed that ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco.

A final decision by Whyte on these issues means that they cannot be introduced at a trial, which should happen next year unless the companies reach a settlement.

Join the Java 2 Enterprise Edition alpha trials

Sun is inviting developers to join the Java 2 Enterprise Edition SDK (J2EE) alpha program, which allows participants to begin developing prototype applications and components.

The early access program also lets participants offer feedback to the Sun team as to what is good, bad, or needed in the kit.

Accepted developers will be required to submit weekly feedback on the SDK, along with comments on individual components, sample applications, tools, and documentation, and the release as a whole. They will also be required to comment on bugs and will be sent a series of questionnaires.

The J2EE SDK beta program will follow the alpha program in the fourth quarter of this year.

https://java.sun.com/j2ee/alpha.html

Sun trains 2,300 developers at JavaOne

Sun Microsystems announced that it provided Java training to 2,300 programmers and developers during the June 13 and 14 sessions of the Java University Developer Program at the recent JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

Sun also reports that it prepped 700 participants for Java platform certification.

According to Sun Educational Services Seminar Manager Jason Fish, Sun “had to cap our registration several days before the event. Not only was the demand high, but the caliber of the trainees and their familiarity with Java technology indicates the Java platform is the development platform of choice.”

Oracle showcases Oracle8i mobile computing roadmap

Oracle announced Oracle8i Lite, e-commerce-ready software that offers continuous access to enterprise data from browsers and devices at any location. Oracle officials also announced that more than 50 ISVs have plans to develop mobile applications for Oracle8i Lite.

The Oracle8i Lite strategy for 1999 covers applications for three key market segments: mobile computing, embedded computing, and information appliances.

Oracle8i Lite is designed to offer data synchronization between mobile devices and central corporate databases.

Oracle8i Lite comes in three components:

• Oracle Lite, a single-user, 50 to 750 KB footprint, Java-enabled, object-relational database

• Web-to-Go, a component that allows users to access the same data and Web applications both offline and online

• iConnect, a flexible architecture that enables reliable and scalable bidirectional synchronization of data and applications

Look for Oracle8i Lite applications from the following:

• 1783 Productions
• Aether Technologies
• AvantGo
• BPA Systems
• Datastructures
• Datria Systems
• Dauphin Technology
• Digital Inspections
• Fieldworker Products
• Future Horizons
• Intermec Technologies
• LGS Group
• MapFrame
• MICROS Systems
• ObjectShare
• Palm Computing
• Partnerware Technologies
• Pen Computer Solutions
• Puma Technology
• Severn Trent Systems Group of Stoner Associates
• Symbian
• Symbol Technologies
• SYS-CON Justice Systems
• Tidestone Technologies

Oracle8i Lite supports Windows 9x/NT/CE, Palm OS, EPOC 32, and Chorus.

https://www.oracle.com/mobile/

ECTF adopts some of JTAPI 1.3 parts

The Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF) announced that its Interoperability Agreement C.100 specified that certain packages of the Java Telephony API 1.3 (JTAPI) meet all ECTF interoperability requirements.

C.100 accepts the core, call center, call control, and private data packages of JTAPI 1.3 as a portable, object-oriented, call control API that meets all ECTF interoperability requirements.

ECTF documents: https://www.ectf.org/

JTAPI: https://java.sun.com/products/jtapi/index.html

Pratt & Whitney contracts for iMAN Java management

Unigraphics Solutions (UGS) announced that Pratt & Whitney (P&W) has signed a five-year, .9 million contract for UGS’s iMAN product data management (PDM) software, services, and training.

According to P&W Engineering Design Manager Steve Antonellis, “We selected iMAN to meet our PDM and configuration management needs, and to fulfill P&W’s requirements for CAD-model-driven configuration management.”

The iMAN Portal is based on Java technology and provides a window into the Internet and intranet that users can customize for a realtime view of data. iMAN provides a framework to let companies define, manage, and track products and process information from concepts to reality. With a Web-centered, Java-based architecture, it allows authorized users to access the system with a Web browser. It supports such technologies as Java, HTML, CORBA, and ODBC.

About iMAN: https://www.ugsolutions.com/publications/interface/vol5_no2/spotlight.shtml

Ino offers TVPC set-top

Ino Technologies announced its new TVPC MP3 set-top box, a 49 set-top device that lets users browse the Web (using their own ISP) and download MP3 files for replay through their stereos.

TVPC MP3, which include a remote, supports MP3, as well as Java, RealAudio, and other Internet protocols. The unit has separate left and right audio channels. It connects directly to the user’s television. The unit comes with a full-function remote keyboard and a large hard drive.

Some units even sport CD-ROM and DVD drives. These versions come with CouchWare, a utility that makes Windows 98 work better in a television environment.

https://www.tvpc.com/

X Games 360cam offers better online view of events

ESPN.com announced that it used Be Here’s 360cam, a single-shot 360-degree Internet Webcam, at the X Games held in San Francisco from June 27 to July 5.

The Be Here 360cam Java applet lets users control the viewing direction of their own virtual camera, independent of other users. The 360cam is based on Be Here’s iVideo full-motion technology, and eliminates the fixed-view constraints of standard Webcams. The live camera can refresh at rates from multiple frames per second to frames per multiple minutes.

Be Here’s PanViewer is the 100 percent certified Java-based virtual reality viewer that the 360cam uses. The 7 KB PanViewer applet lets users navigate with full pan, tilt, and zoom controls.

https://www.BeHere.com/

Baratz anticipates no changes to Java license process

In a recent speech to investors at the Enterprise Outlook Conference, JavaSoft President Alan Baratz said he doesn’t anticipate changes in the way Java is licensed.

Addressing complaints about Sun’s new licensing and development model for Java, Baratz said, “I think some large companies resent that Sun invented this technology and they are dependent on it.”

He added, “There’s still some noise around the issue of Sun having too much control, but there are fewer concerns on pricing since the company stopped charging for access to the source code.”

Baratz also noted that Sun may change how Navigator code is developed and licensed. “I’m not sure that Mozilla.com is working that well.”

Progress new Apptivity server bridges EJBs, 4GL

Progress Software intends to ship the Progress Apptivity 3.1 application server on July 23, an upgrade planned to help move customers that use the Progress 4GL tools to an Enterprise JavaBean environment.

The EJB-enabled Apptivity 3.1 will include new a technology called SmartDataObject, which provides a bridge between EJBs running on Apptivity and Progress 4GL components in Open AppServer.

For the future, Progress officials said that the beta release of Apptivity 4.0, planned for the fourth quarter of this year (with the final release expected in the first half of 2000) will run Progress 4GL components as if they were EJBs.

Other features in Apptivity 3.1 include:

• An XML SmartAdapter
• An API for binding XML data to Java components
• A software development kit to modify and build custom APIs

Version 3.1 implements version 1.1 of the EJB specification and supports Java 2. It will sell for 0,000 per CPU. The Apptivity developer toolkit will sell for 95 per developer.

https://www.progress.com/java/apptivity/appserv.htm

Building an online ticket store with Java and ColdFusion

SYS-CON Interactive and Ajit Sagar offer the first in a series of articles that will describe how to build a simple Internet-based airline-ticket store application using Allaire’s ColdFusion application server and Java.

The final application offers online purchase of airline tickets, as well as access to goods sold in airports. The focus of the article covers such Java platform components as applets, servlets, RMI, and JDBC.

The article attempts to illustrate how Java servlets can be used as access mechanisms in server modules that serve data to front-end storefront modules that are implemented in ColdFusion. It describes the simple protocol it uses for this purpose, to exchange name-value parameters between a servlet running in the middle tier and the ColdFusion engine running in a front-end tier.

The reader should be familiar with the aforementioned Java technologies, but knowledge of ColdFusion is not necessary.

https://www.sys-con.com/coldfusion/special/sagar/index.html

Quick news: Psion, IBM to enable Java netBook

Psion Enterprise Computing, in a recent announcement to trumpet support for IBM hardware and software in its mobile products, also announced that the two companies intend to work together to ensure that Psion’s netBook handheld device for Java, slated for release this fall, will support IBM’s 340 MB microdrive hard disk.

The netBook (and a new ruggedized tablet) will incorporate Symbian’s EPOC operating system, jointly developed by Psion, Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola.

Further information was not available.

https://www.psion.com/

Java debugger architecture in release candidate stage

The Java Developer Connection announced that the Java Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA), the new debugging support for Java 2, is in the release candidate 1 stage.

This release contains the JPDA release candidate, with which debugger developers can learn about and experiment with the new debugging APIs. Its layered APIs include: Java Debug Interface, Java Debug Wire Protocol, and the Java Virtual Machine Debug Interface.

The Java Debug Interface (JDI) is a high-level Java language interface that includes support for remote debugging. It includes the specification, documentation, and an implementation.

The Java Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) defines the format of information and requests transferred between the debugging process and the debugger front end. It includes the specification, documentation, and an implementation.

The Java Virtual Machine Debug Interface (JVMDI), part of the Java 2 platform, is a low-level native interface that defines the services a Java virtual machine must provide for debugging. The JVMDI includes the specification and documentation.

You will need to register (for free) to access this page.

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

It’s not your father’s Javamobile

“The Network is the Car,” by Janice Heiss on Sun’s Java site, offers details on the Sun concept car featured at the 1999 JavaOne developer conference, a Java-equipped version of GM’s electric car, the EV1.

Through Java technology:

• Upon breaking down, the auto’s Web page will inform AAA what’s wrong with the car, for speedy repair

• Route calculation and map databases are stored somewhere off the car, accessible via a wireless network (three networks actually, since some worked better while in motion, others while docked)

• The communication channels and user interfaces (displays, voice recognition, and text-to-speech) are separate from the functional devices, so they upgrade easily during the car’s life

• All the applications are voice-accessible via the Java Speech API

• All the applications are designed to use TCP/IP, and all the application suites are written in PersonalJava and run on the Java Embedded Server

As a prototype, Sun chose the EV1 because the rack of batteries made it easier to supply the necessary juice to power the system.

When docked close to a data source, the designers used wireless Ethernet. For traveling at highway speeds, they relied on a Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) modem that offered a maximum of 14.4 Kbps speeds. For standing still (but not near a data source), they used a 28.8 Kbps Metricom ricochet modem.

The car contains a SPARC server and a LAN. It also contains a component-enabled network, so a laptop (or other device) can be given an IP address on the car’s LAN.

As for security, the car is accessible via a Java ring and a PIN. The ring carries personal settings, so a multidriver family can reset the car’s configuration just by starting it up.

Integrating Jini will be the next move for the Javamobile.

https://java.sun.com/features/1999/06/concept_car.html

alphaWorks unveils the Bean Scripting Framework

IBM alphaWorks debuted the Bean Scripting Framework 1.0 (BSF), an architecture to incorporate scripting into Java applications and applets.

BSF can incorporate such scripting languages as Netscape Rhino (JavaScript), VBScript, Perl, Tcl, Python, NetRexx, and Rexx in Java programs to supplement an application’s function, without being subject to any of the languages’ dependencies.

BSF supports both directions of scripting — in which Java is in charge and runs and evaluates scripts at will, and in which the script runs and controls Java objects, including beans. BSF consists of:

• BSFManager, a bean that provides scripting services for the application, support services for scripting engines to interact with the Java runtime, and a registry of known scripting languages

• BSFEngine, the interface implemented by a scripting language that becomes part of the BSF

If the scripting engines are implemented in Java, then all of the components are contained within a JVM. If they aren’t, then the implementation of the BSFEngine interface would be split between Java and non-Java with a JNI link between them and the scripting engine, outside of the JVM.

Currently, BSF supports Netscape Rhino 1.4 and NetRexx 1.148. Integration for Jacl, Tcl, Active Scripting Engines (all Win32 only), and BML is under development, with Perl being the next target. It works with all Java platforms and Windows NT.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/bsf

IBM Unicode classes for server-side apps

IBM announced IBM Classes for Unicode (ICU), classes that enable developers to write cross-platform programs that handle all server-side Unicode requirements.

With Unicode’s specific definition for each character, a single internationalization process can produce an unmixed codeset that handles the requirements of all the world markets at the same time. But even with Unicode, various languages handle data representation in different ways. ICU helps developers jump these hurdles by providing functions for formatting numbers, dates, times, and currencies according to local conventions.

ICU also can parse text in those formats. It offers flexible patterns for formatting messages, in which the pattern determines the order of the variable parts of the messages and the format for each of those variables. The patterns are stored in resource files for translation to different languages.

ICU supplies code and data to handle the complexities of native-language collation, searching, and other processes, as well as a mechanism for accessing strings from resource files.

ICU supports Unicode in C and C++. Its APIs and architecture comply with the internationalization framework in Java, so C/C++ server programs comply with Java servlets and applications.

The platform dependencies in ICU are isolated into a small number of source files, so that it can be quickly ported to new platforms. The alphaWorks gurus claim that a port to Linux took less than a day.

ICU is available for Solaris (and other Unix systems) and Windows NT.

https://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/icu