For months if not years, Sun and its conference partners have held what they were going to do close to the vest. The 2000 JavaOne conference in San Francisco was such a success in terms of draw, that they actually had too many attendees. Also, given the current economic environment, other Java conference holders are going out of business or have decided that it’s not financially feasible. Therefore, Sun and its partners knew they had to commit to a two JavaOne conferences a year strategy and schedule. Speculation was everywhere, including the following: SF in the spring/summer, NY in the fall/winter; SF in spring/summer, UK in the fall/winter; SF and Japan; etc.

Of course, we now see the last one may be taking hold, depending on the success of the current 2001 JavaOne Japan. And with the focus on wireless in Japan, that shouldn’t be a problem. I believe that once the two JavaOne shows are established on an annual basis, we will see different themes for each show; so that many Java developers might consider attending both shows if at all possible. Look for the JavaOne in Japan to remain wireless next year, and the JavaOne in San Francisco to be focused on enterprise Java/J2EE.

Curious though, I am still hearing speculation that there will be a JavaOne UK. However, this may not happen until 2003 or 2004 at the earliest. It wouldn’t be surprising though given that UK and Ireland is a hot bed for both enterprise and wireless Java development, as well as a nice destination overall. However, if UK is an option, please schedule for spring or summer.

Why another JavaOne? What do you think?

Related link: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-11-2001/jw-1121-iw-jsharp.html?

“Microsoft’s newly released Visual J# .NET Beta 1 — a full clean-room Java implementation — offers Microsoft Visual J++ (VJ++) developers a migration path to .NET for their VJ++ projects. While J# successfully converts a range of compiled Java code into .NET binaries, its JDK support remains frozen at Java 1.1.4 and the .NET binaries work only on Windows (source: JavaWorld).”

For more, check out this article. Also be sure to read what our own Brian Jepson said about J# in “A Visual J# .NET Primer.”

What do you think of J#?

Related link: http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=2627

PalmInfocenter reports that Palm is offering discounts on Xircom wireless LAN modules for the more recent Palm handhelds. Good move Palm!

In “Extending the Life Line of the Palm OS,” I argued that the Palm VII approach to wireless access was all wrong, and that WiFi offered a much better solution for corporate customers. I’m glad to see Palm taking a step in this direction.

It’s interesting that this comes on the same day that Palm announces a move away from its consumer wireless services. I am very interested to see how the Handspring Treo works in this regard — they certainly seem to be taking a better approach to consumer wireless — while I think Palm’s making the right move for corporate wireless. Perhaps the two companies will speciate into corporate-facing and consumer-facing product companies.

Related link: http://www.templetons.com/brad/crypt.html

“The key to deploying encrypted mail is to make it happen with close to zero involvement by the user. This is hard, and requires some security compromises that have made cryptographers uneasy in the past.” So says Brad Templeton in worthwhile article, Returning privacy to E-mail.

Whether or not Brad’s specific proposal is worthwhile — and I’m concerned his architecture would create a huge incentive for a mandated man-in-the-middle — the goal of email encryption that works as transparently as SSL is a good one.

Related link: http://www.sdtimes.com/news/042/special3.htm

“As Java charges ahead, developers are already asking, ‘What’s next for J2EE?’” Well for one thing, Web services will be the focus of J2EE 1.4, including a much more evolved JAX (Java API for XML) pack.

What’s Next for the Java Platform?

Related link: http://www.sdtimes.com/news/042/special2.htm

SD Times’ David Rubinstein explains, “A month after Sun Microsystems Inc. quietly announced the release of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.3 specification, critics are claiming pieces of the spec remain unfit for deployment, and complain that a uniform, Java way of creating and consuming Web services still is not baked into the platform.”

However, according to some Sun insiders, Web services will be the emphasis in next year’s release of Java 2EE v.1.4.

Do you agree or disagree with what’s been said about J2EE 1.3? What are your experiences?

Related link: http://java.sun.com/features/2001/11/jxtacomm.html

JXTA is a key P2P and Web services framework, covered at last week’s O’Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference in Washington, D.C. Like other open source projects, the community is fostering its continued growth at this time.

“As with other open source projects, community members of Project JXTA drive key parts of the technology, continually enhancing it. Today more than 6,700 members contribute to the on-going enhancements of Project JXTA technology after Sun Microsystems originally initiated the project in April, 2001. Many of its members (mostly developers and academic researchers), work on their own time — all with a common claim — to collaboratively design and build distributed network computing and peer-to-peer applications… (source: java.sun.com).”

This originally published as a press release issued by ARC Group (www.arcgroup.com), which publishes in-depth strategic reports and provides consultancy on wireless internet, wireless technologies and
infrastructure, digital broadcasting, broadband access, telematics and
optical communications.

All digital mobile handsets manufactured in five years time will be capable
of running wireless Java applications, according to a new industry report.
Java will reinvigorate lacklustre handset sales around the world in the
medium term and will ultimately prove to be an important step along the road
to 3G. These are the findings of a new study entitled Wireless Java: Handset
& Application Revenue Streams from industry analysts ARC Group
(www.arcgroup.com).

ARC Group predicts that by 2003, 421 million handsets will be Java enabled.
Such rapid growth will continue until Java becomes ubiquitous in 2006, with
over 1 billion handsets incorporating the technology around the world.

Java Handsets, 2001-2006
Milions (Units) 2001 - 2004 - 2006
World Total 489.5 - 841.9 - 1101.0
Source: ARC Group

Report author, Steven Hartley says, “The chief driver for such rapid
adoption of Java in mobile devices is the broad industry support currently
enjoyed by the technology. Every player along the value chain is embracing
the technology and realises the potential of Java to aid the migration to
3G. However, to benefit from Java all members of the wireless Java value
chain must appreciate the advantages it brings to the end user. For example,
operators and content providers can only benefit from increased data traffic
and download revenues if users are willing to pay for them. Handset
manufacturers will need to ensure that their devices are easily personalised
and support increased data usage through the addition of such features as
larger, colour displays.”

In Japan, almost 8 million NTT DoCoMo subscribers have already upgraded
their handsets since January 2001 to take advantage of the new i-appli Java
service. As Java handsets become available to the mass market, first in
Europe and then around the world, such success will be replicated over the
next two years and will provide a significant boost to currently stalling
handset sales.

Java will provide a significant boost to mobile data service usage, with the
most powerful applications leveraging the end to end security enabled by
Java in the SIM card, handset and server. Entertainment applications
utilising the enhanced graphical capabilities and over the air downloads of
Java will prove to be the most popular globally until 2004, emphasising the
phenomenal success of Java games among current wireless subscribers in Korea
and Japan.

ARC Group forecasts 442 million Java entertainment users globally in 2004,
but thereafter location based services will become the most widely used Java
applications. Location based services are set to become an integral part of
mobile Java services and utilise the offline functionality and interactivity
of Java. The result will be over 1.1 billion mobile data users exploiting
Java for location based services in 2006.

Wireless Java: Handset & Application Revenue Streams looks at the rapid
emergence of Java as a leading wireless application technology and assesses
its potential across a number of key areas:

* Maximising Java revenue streams for operators, handset manufacturers
and application developers
* Implications of implementing wireless Java in the handset
* Comprehensive market forecasts by technology and region to 2006
including Java handsets and Java application users by type
* Leading Java handset vendors and service providers in the future
* Case studies from current Java services in Asia and North America,
including NTT DoCoMo and Nextel
* Java deployment timelines and strategies by operators and service
providers worldwide
* …and much more

For more information about this report, contact Alex Noonoo on +44 (0) 1483
571 589 or email alex.noonoo@arcgroup.com

What are your thoughts about this research finding?

Related link: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/11/05/011105tcjsharp.xml

“Our experience with the J# beta was mostly positive, allowing for its narrowly defined mission and limitations. It gets high marks for VJ++ migration, and the final release will likely render effortless transplanting even large VJ++ projects to the .NET platform. Although we think it’s important to point out that J# adheres to an ancient cut of the JDK, we doubt that will matter much to most J# users. As for J#’s future as a .NET language, we’ll wait and see. For .Net development, J#’s primary audience is hard-core Java coders who must target .NET, but who would rather live with J#’s limitations than switch to the more expressive and accommodating C#. But, despite our fondness for Java, nothing in this beta sways us from our preference for C# for .NET applications.” — InfoWorld

What are your thoughts and experiences with J#?

Related link: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/10/29/011029hngoslingtalk.xml

“SOAP is an overhyped rehash of RPC that will evolve into a semichaotic system of integrated services,” says Sun Vice President, Fellow, and Java founder James Gosling. This clearly indicates that Sun’s Web services framework, SunONE, and its Java platform does not intend to adopt SOAP (specifically, WSDL) and UDDI in the long-term. Instead, James and Sun hope to convince Web services developers to adopt RPC, JAX-RPC and other JAX API as well as ebXML.

What are your thoughts on this?