JavaSoft alters JDK schedule to ensure portability and lack of bugs

San Mateo (09/17/97) — JavaSoft’s next-generation Java Development Kit, JDK 1.2, will go into beta release next month, according to company officials.

Version 1.2 will include enhancements to the JDK’s APIs but will be built on top of the current Java virtual machine (JVM).

Early next year, the company expects to beta test JDK 2.x. This upgrade release will include version 1.2 APIs and a new JVM, designed to run at speeds approaching that of C++ and based on the company’s HotSpot dynamic compilation technology.

“The JVM is invisible to the developers,” said Eric Chu, JDK JavaSoft product manager. “That way they can get the benefits of increased speed without having to re-engineer their software.”

The new APIs, code-named Playground, will include the much-talked-about Swing Set GUI components for the Java Foundation Classes (JFCs) and the Sandbox security enhancements.

Furthermore, version 1.2 promises to decrease the memory overhead required to run the JDK, according to Chu.

Meanwhile, final release of version 2.0 has been postponed from the end of this year until the second quarter of 1998, after the newly formed Java Porting and Tuning Center has ironed out any bugs in the system and ported it onto all major platforms.

“We have decided to push back the final version of the JDK because we want to release it on all major platforms concurrently,” said George Paolini, JavaSoft director of corporate marketing. “In April, we introduced version 1.1, and it was at least six months before it became available on all major platforms. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Users welcomed JavaSoft’s decision to hold the final version of the software until the Java Porting and Tuning Center has ported it across all major platforms.

“We prefer fewer but more robust releases of the JDK,” said Rajesh Lalwani, president of Intiva, in Cupertino, CA.

Analysts also applauded JavaSoft’s strategy of holding the general release of the product.

“Version 1.1 took at least three months of debugging,” said Evan Quinn, a senior analyst at International Data Corp., in Mountain View, CA. “I think JavaSoft is well advised to make sure that the next major release of the JDK is very solid before it is released.”

Some users are not so excited about JavaSoft’s HotSpot technology and believe that the just-in-time (JIT) compilers from Borland and Symantec do an adequate job of speeding up the JDKs.

“The sort of speeds we are getting out of the current JDK with the Symantec JIT compiler is good enough for the moment,” said Jim Kleckner, chief technical officer at Cats Software, a risk-management software vendor in Palo Alto, CA. “Quite frankly, I was a little skeptical of JavaSoft’s claims that HotSpot would make Java as fast as C++.”

JavaSoft, a division of Sun Microsystems Inc., in Mountain View, CA, can be reached at (408) 343-1400 or https://www.javasoft.com.