Getting in the Driver's Seat With Java Technology

This session was presented by Rich Green, Exec. VP, Software at Sun Microsystems.

His presentation touched upon a number of new announcements and some basic philosophies that Sun is following. Without a doubt, reaching consumers in the mobile and handheld market is within their vision. Also, the theme of communities and connecting to more individuals with technology being the catalyst is the goal. Rich noted "the network" is an unstoppable force was discussed. Who uses Google and Yahoo? Did you ask your CIO if you could use these services?

Currently 6 million Java developers are estimated. This is a growth of 20% over the last year. Java is currently running on 1.8 billion phones and 5.5 billion devices. Some mentions of the Sun Glassfish server were noted such as V2 Enterprise version is ready and supports JRuby scripting. Glassfish is providing innovative multimedia services for enterprises and next generation networks (IMS). Martin Harriman of Ericsson spoke and noted 40% of all GSM calls are going through an Ericsson network. I think he announced IMS being released as open source. A demo/video of IMS was given showing the interaction of mobile phone applications with traditional networks (Example. Child plays video game w/ parental control and must click button for authorization from parent. Parent denies access from instant phone message.)

Rich touched upon Real-Time-Java and how it can handle finance, telecom, and aviation industries. It is currently running on 800+ hardware platforms.

Anna Ewing, CIO from Nasdaq spoke and listed a number of impressive statistics. Trading technology is being run on Java. Their challenges are processing roughly 5 billion shares traded a day. This statistic equates to 150,378 per second and is from 400 million transactions. Anna reiterated her excitement about Real-Time-Java.

The presentation theme changed to digitial entertainment and Java's utilization in the PlayStation3 and Blu-Ray disk was mentioned. Tom Hallman, VP from Sony spoke and noted how future videos that have previews will automatically update (Internet) when watching the video a year later.

All the great things about NetBeans were mentioned: rubust new editor, JRuby support, dynamic scripting, GUI, etc. (It seems every presentation is harping on the greatness of NetBeans).

An announcement that the releasing of Java to open source is complete. The Java open-sourc, OpenJDK, is operating under the GPLv2 license, which is used by GNU/Linux. The TCK (not sure acronym) is ensuring compatibility across OSS community. The TCK is creating a constitution, holding elections and currently working under an interim governing board.

Switched topics to Java SE 6. This release is focused on faster, faster, faster!

Another really big announcement is the release of JavaFX. JavaFX provides scripting language for rich Internet applications. It is designed for content professionals. JavaFX is scripted to look like Java 2.0 and Swing. A web site demonstration using JavaFX showed a really cool application (written in 3 days...) that contained rollovers, fade-ins, fade-outs, and other cool graphical changes. The preview release of JavaFX is available now for download. The development tool is coming... JavaFX runs on all Java SE environments unmodified!

A specialized version, JavaFX Mobile, is designed for mobile devices. Another demonstration running a phone on JavaFX Mobile was made that was "graphically pleasing" in terms of the interface. Multitasking is also feasible.

Another theme involving Dr. Djibril Diallo from the United Nations, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO/President Sun, and James Gosling centered around solving world problems through education by especially targeting youth. Sun is partnering with the UN. However, a web site was mentioned (http://curriki.org) that is intended to bring kindergarten through 12th grade resources together to "share what we know".