Sun readies JavaBeans scripting tools

San Mateo (1/10/98) — Sun Laboratories will launch Java Application Command Language (JACL), a scripting language that the company is pitching as a standard, cross-platform interface for linking JavaBeans components, at its JavaOne conference in San Francisco in March.

JACL is based on Tool Command Language (TCL), a scripting language much like Perl, Rexx, or Visual Basic, that can be used as a systems-level glue to connect and arrange components.

“Our design goal was to make TCL the scripting layer for Java in much the same way as [Microsoft’s] Visual Basic is the scripting layer for Visual C++,” said Ray Johnson, JACL project manager at Sun Laboratories. “We will be showing [at JavaOne] a JACL bean [component] for Sun’s JavaStudio integrated development environment [IDE] that automatically writes TCL code to link JavaStudio beans.”

However, despite the fact that 300,000 to 500,000 programmers use TCL, currently there are no formal plans to make a JACL product; it will continue to be offered for free from Sun Labs, Johnson said.

“It’s certainly a possibility that SunSoft or JavaSoft will create a JACL product,” Johnson said. “But I think that Sun has a lot of work on its plate just keeping all of the different parts of Java going in the same direction.”

TCL is a high-level component glue, in contrast to an IDE or a systems-level application development tool, according to Tim Guleri, vice president of product development at Scopus Technology, an Emeryville, California-based help-desk application vendor.

“It would be crazy to write an entire application in JACL,” Guleri said. “Ninety-five percent of our applets or applications are written in Java, and JACL is used to enable the customer to customize the application in a similar way as [Visual Basic] is used with Visual C++.”

In March, Sun Labs will launch JACL 1.0, a 100% Pure Java version of TCL; TCL Blend 1.0, a product that enables a TCL virtual machine to load and manipulate Java or lets a Java virtual machine load and manipulate TCL code; the Java Package, a set of TCL commands that enable the creation of TCL events or JavaBeans; and the TCL extension APIs for Java.

One Microsoft official characterized TCL as a decidedly niche technology but noted that Microsoft has talked to Sun Labs about writing a TCL version of its own scripting engine.

In addition, analysts are not convinced that JACL will revolutionize computer programming.

“[TCL] has always been most popular with network and systems management developers, and Java is pretty important to that community,” said John Rymer, director and senior consultant at Upstream Consulting, in Emeryville. “[But] I see it as a competing technology with JavaScript, which is much more widely used for general-purpose applications. I don’t see [JACL] setting the world on fire.”

Sun officials contend that Netscape’s JavaScript is more squarely aimed at the HTML community.

TCL originally was developed in 1988 by John Ousterhout, a University of California at Berkeley professor. He now heads the project for Sun.