Server-side Java gains more momentum

All eyes are on the rate of standardization of Java on servers, now that a reference platform for the nascent Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification and newest Java Development Kit (JDK) are imminent.

The new technology and implementations are good news for Java.

“I think that Java is accelerating in a big way on the server,” said Anne Thomas, an analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group, in Boston. “[Microsoft’s] COM+ [Component Object Model+] is an implementation that does not conform to any other standard, and EJB is becoming a standard.”

“We’re already using and testing it in-house,” said Jared Rodriguez, chief technology officer at Trade’ex, an Internet-commerce applications developer in Tampa, FL.

Recent Java advances include a beta version of Remote Method Invocation (a Java-specific object transport protocol) over Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) — which is now in circulation but apparently will not be completed for the November arrival of Sun Microsystems’s JDK 1.2.

RMI-over-IIOP will arrive as an extension to the current JDK 1.1.6 and JDK 1.2 and will not become a core feature until the next big JDK release.

“RMI-over-IIOP is a good thing. It unifies the wire protocol between Java and CORBA and hastens the Java/CORBA merger,” said Daryl Plummer, vice president at the Gartner Group, in Atlanta. “It’s a good tactical compromise.”

By combining over-the-wire protocols of Sun’s Java with CORBA-driven IIOP, a potential feud is avoided, and Java developers can more easily take advantage of object request brokers (ORBs) and associated CORBA services.

“We want to make the [ORB] a fundamental part of Java going forward,” said Bill Roth, product line manager for EJB at Sun.

Consequently, the newest RMI lets developers of distributed Java applications treat remote objects as if they were local, and lets them travel through Internet firewalls, said Simon Nash, a technology architect at IBM’s laboratory, in Hursley, England.

Separately, Sun is preparing to unveil an EJB reference implementation — a freely available server against which EJB server developers can run. Timing of the server’s arrival was not disclosed.

“It’s something we have to do,” Roth said. “We need to deliver a write-once, run-anywhere server.”

“It lets you develop based on the reference in the JDK without having to buy an actual platform to design on,” Seybold’s Thomas said.

But some observers say Sun, since its NetDynamics acquisition, is not only marshalling the EJB specification and designing the reference platform, but is also competing.