Java Evolve s

With solid standards and tools, Java is becoming important in enterprise and embedded development.

David S. Linthicum

No other technology has taken our Web-driven world by storm the way Java has. A simple, general-purpose, object-oriented, application-development language, Java provides the appropriate architecture and enabling technology for bringing true dynamic applications to the Web browser. In addition, through its portable Java virtual machine (JVM), Java finally solves the cross-platform problem. It provides a true "write once, run anywhere" architecture that most developers are finding too good to pass up.

Now only two years old, Java is ready to grow in new directions. Among other things, Ja va will become standardized and is poised to create enter prise-ready applications and reveal a new awareness of embedded systems.

One of the initial complaints of early Java developers was the lack of features and functions built into the Java Development Kit (JDK). Tool vendors, such as Borland, Microsoft, and Symantec, were more than willing to fill in the gaps, but they did so using proprietary, tool-dependent hooks.

Since the release of JDK1.1 in early 1997, Java now provides most of the basic features and functions that developers seek in a development language. One is the ability to link Java objects to relational databases using the Java Database Connectivity ( JDBC ) interface. Another is the ability to link Java applets, either intra- or inter-machine, using Java's remote method invocation (RMI). Java also has security, multimedia, and management APIs, to name a few.

But the mother of all Java APIs is JavaBeans, which defines a set of portable APIs and lets developers build and integrate software components into Java-enabled applications. What's more, it incorporates existing component standards, such as ActiveX, the late OpenDoc, and Netscape's LiveConnect.

All these APIs would be of little use unless coupled with a strong set of tools. While most of the popular tools went in proprietary directions in 1997, they're moving toward standard Java APIs in 1998. Borland's new JBuilder, for example, is the first to leverage the power of both JDBC and JavaBeans. Other heavy hitters, such as Symantec's Visual Café Pro, IBM's VisualAge for Java, and MoJo Pro from PreNumbra, are being revised to support most of the new API set as well.

Sun has applied to ISO/IEC JTC1 for recognition as a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) submitter. The new PAS process was designed to submit Java as a new ISO Standard language.

Thus, it's foreseeable that we could have a standard Java, which will protect the language from those w ho would leverage it for their own proprietary purposes. Moreover, developers will be more confident that the code they create is portable to other tools that support the standard.

Another clear direction for Java to be headed in is embedded systems. In response to this need, JavaSoft has created EmbeddedJava, a new Java application environment that provides a core and standard extension APIs. EmbeddedJava is for environments with few resources (e.g., memory and storage). Thus, it supports only a subset of Java features but provides upward compatibility to traditional Java development.

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Where to Find

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Palo Alto, CA
Phone:    650-842-7500
Internet: 
http://www.javasoft.com




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Java Database Connectivity Architecture

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JDBC enables Java developers to access databases in a standard way.

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Sun Microsystems, Inc. for 1998

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AT A GLANCE: Java is a platform-agnostic development and application-execution environment currently supported on nearly every OS.

WHO SUPPORTS IT: Everyone is publicly backing Java -- even Microsoft (despite the lawsuit). However, JavaSoft, a division of Sun, owns this technology.