Sun releases the new Java 2 platform in style

The much-anticipated release of the updated Java platform, now christened the “Java 2 platform,” made its official debut last night at a gala affair here in New York City — but the real party is just beginning.

“The Java 2 platform is complete, it’s stable, it’s secure — and it’s fast,” said Alan Baratz, president of Java Software at Sun, as he counted out the virtues of the new release. “We have stress-tested it, we have tested it with real applications, we have tested it for backwards compatibility…and going forward we will ship no Java platform before its time….”

While the festivities offered a formal unveiling for the new platform, Java 2 software and its implications have been on the lips of nearly everyone in attendance at this year’s Java Business Expo conference (though most people continue to refer to the new release by its former code name, “JDK 1.2”).

The new release is “feature complete,” providing services, APIs, and tools that developers can use to write applications. The impressive set of features already are helping solve problems for businesses in all sectors. “We listened to our customers,” said Ed Zander, Sun’s chief operating officer, in a keynote address earlier in the day. “Fast runtime performance, new APIs, an enterprise security model, globalization, more consistent cross-platform performance… Our customers are saying ‘This is the platform we can use for business-critical applications.'”

Real-World deployments

And using it they are. The sheer number of enterprise-grade deployments and commercial applications based on Java technology reflects how mature the platform has become in a very short time. “It’s been a year and look how far we’ve come … 72 percent of Fortune 1000 companies [are] doing major development in the Java programming language,” Zander stated.

Big companies — including IBM, Visa, J.D. Edwards, Prudential, Oracle, and Inprise — are Sun partners and customers, but the Expo floor is literally packed with hundreds of less-known vendors that are basing their business on the Java 2 platform.

One such vendor is a company by the name of docSPACE. In the enterprise commercial product space, docSPACE provides its customers with enterprise tools for managing and exchanging documents over the Web. docSPACE utilizes most of the APIs provided in the new release. “We use servlets, JNDI, JCE, JDBC, reflection, and other APIs,” says CTO Michael Serbinis. Serbinis evaluated Win32, ISAPI, and Perl for implementation, but he went with the Java 2 platform instead: “These APIs are way more powerful … [they] cut development time more than in half — to 30 percent of what it used to be.”

The revamped security features of the Java 2 platform were crucial to docSPACE’s applications — and unavailable on other platforms. These capabilities enable integration with existing customer systems and leading-edge public key infrastructure (PKI) systems, which are indispensable for distributed enterprise systems, Serbinis says.

Another interesting company making use of Java 2 technology is Random Walk Computing, a New York-based IT consulting firm that focuses on the financial services industry. Random Walk is using Java 2 technology in its projects for key clients, including J.P. Morgan and S&P ComStock. Steven Barber, senior architect with Random Walk, had a lot to say about the Java 2 platform APIs the company uses in its enterprise consulting projects. “We’re very excited to see Swing [Java Foundation Classes] become mainstream — it’s great technology…. [We also like] the rich data model in JDBC.”

Random Walk’s mission statement is “to use Java technology for robust enterprise applications and n-tier architectures much like the last generation used C++.” How has this mission statement played out for Random Walk and its clients? “Java technology speeds development cycles… and the holy grail of software reuse is here,” noted Eric Lehrfeld, director of business development. It “opens up options and mitigates risk that managers take with hardware. We use [the Java 2 platform] in combination with deep domain expertise and ROADMAP methodology to deliver value to our customers.”

Another company, Sales Vision, uses 100% Pure Java technology to achieve competitive advantage in the Sales Force Automation (SFA) market, said Mark Logan, vice president of sales and marketing. “Unlike every other vendor, we are the only all-Java software-based system on both client and server.” Sales Vision’s customers include McGraw Hill, LensCrafters, and Norwest Mortgage.

APIs offer developers a complete package

“The Java 2 platform is the whole package,” says Rick Schultz, product line manager for Java platform products. “GUI support with JFC, scalability, performance, pluggable VM architecture — it’s all about completeness, performance, and stability.”

When it comes to APIs, that statement pretty much sums it up. The Java 2 platform introduces a wealth of new APIs, addressing almost all client-side and enterprise needs. One of the goals of the release, noted Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz, was “making sure that you have a competitive alternative to Windows — and now it’s done.”

Until now, Windows has been the reference API for application development, and while the scope of the Java platform API lagged behind such existing APIs, there still has been a strong argument for developing platform-specific native applications.

The Java 2 platform provides a number of improvements over previous versions, including:

Security

The updated Security API provides system security in the form of fine-grained policy-defined access control of executed code, and information security in the form of a full-fledged Cryptography API. Using these APIs, network applications can safely execute within an enterprise under strict policy-defined limitations, and enterprise information can be secured from unauthorized access and eavesdropping using cryptographic techniques. Full details of the Java 2 security capabilities will be presented in an upcoming report on Java enterprise security.

Java Foundation Classes

The Java Foundation Classes (JFC) are a complete API for developing client-side applications. The JFC includes many different capabilities, including:

• The Swing set, a complete set of UI components for developing sophisticated graphical user interfaces, supports a pluggable look and feel (L&F), which allows applications to either mirror the L&F of the host OS (for example, Windows, MacOS, or Solaris) or provide a uniform L&F across all operating systems.

• The Java 2D API provides a complete toolkit for 2D graphical operations; offering support for complex data presentation needs as well as uniform support for printing.

• Accessibility support has been integrated for users with special needs; this API includes support for speech input and output, visual aids, and the like. With this API, applications truly can be run anywhere and used by anyone; the developer does not even need to provide special support, because accessibility is fundamentally supported by the underlying platform.

• Finally, the JFC provides a suite of general graphical user interface capabilities such as drag-and-drop, keyboard navigation, custom cursor support, and more.

Java IDL

Full support for CORBA has been integrated into the Java 2 platform, along with a complete standards-compliant ORB. CORBA is the industry standard for distributed computing in the enterprise; this addition to the API means enterprise applications written in the Java programming language can now seamlessly integrate into existing CORBA-based systems.

General enhancements

General additions provided by the Java 2 platform APIs include an input method framework for the input of complex foreign character sets, a collections API that provides a standard for representing collections of objects, a version identification API, a new debugger interface, and a reference API that supports advanced caching and object cleanup. Other enhancements include JavaBeans, RMI, serialization, audio, performance, JAR support, JNI, reflection, and JDBC.

Extensions framework

A final but critical addition to the Java 2 platform is the Extensions Framework. Using this framework, extensions to the core API are provided in a consistent manner and can be automatically downloaded to a client if not already available. This means that extensions to the Java platform API now can be standardized so that new features do not necessitate a new Java Virtual Machine being installed on the client.

For more information on Java 2 platform standard extensions, see Sun Outlines New Licensing Model for Java Platform Standard Extensions.

Community source licensing

In conjunction with the launch of the new Java 2 platform, Sun has announced an innovative licensing model based on the open source software model popularized by Linux. “Sun is no longer the only company that can lead the development of new APIs,” said Alan Baratz. “We’ve created a community of licensees that can evolve the Java platform more rapidly than Sun has been able to evolve it so far.”

The new model gives everyone access to the source for the Java platform. Licensees can modify the source to fit their needs and still retain the rights to the intellectual property they’ve created. In addition, modified source can be sublicensed to any other licensee, and Sun will collect a royalty only when a product actually ships.

Such a policy change will open up a whole new world to third-party Java technology-based shops that are now free to expand and extend the Java platform to create source that is useful in markets not yet touched by Java technology. For example, Xilinx Corporation is defining a new API for the boundary scan market.

Ready and able

The Java platform has been gaining an increasing foothold in many markets — initially on the client side, and more recently on the server side. But up to now, client-side Java technology has been held back by limitations of the user-interface capabilities of Java technology, and server-side Java software has been plagued by performance problems and limitations of integration with legacy systems.

The Java 2 platform addresses these issues head on. Sophisticated client-side applications can now be built with integral support for internationalization and accessibility, something that no other platform supports with such ease. Sophisticated enterprise applications also can be built, with performance, connectivity, and security — again unparalleled by any other platform, according to Sun.

The Java 2 platform is here — now. As Jonathan Schwartz says, “It’s no longer why would you write it in the Java programming language; it’s why wouldn’t you?”