Reflecting On Java's Needs

Dynamic language, SOA support part of its future

By Jennifer deJong

July 15, 2007 —

It soared to heights in the Internet era. But a little more than a decade later, the Java programming language is working hard to stay aloft.

Created by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s, Java was released in 1995, just as the World Wide Web had begun to take off. But today the language that led the way is lagging behind. Java is playing catch-up with Web development technologies such as AJAX and Flash (for building rich Internet applications), and with dynamic languages like PHP, Python and Ruby, which let developers write Web applications quickly. “Java is strong,” said Sun director of Web technologies Tim Bray. “But .NET is not going away. PHP is not going away.”

SD Times asked Bray and other Java experts what lies ahead for the programming language and the platforms on which it is implemented, including Java Standard Edition (Java SE), Java Micro Edition (Java ME) and Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE).

Enabling developers to more easily build RIAs and use dynamic languages within the Java platforms remains a high priority, as does providing a better way to build services and manage service-oriented architectures (SOAs), the experts said. They also noted Java’s bright future as the language of choice for real-time applications (see “Predictably, Java Goes Real-Time,” page 40), and its suitability for writing programs that run on “wider, instead of faster computers,” said Bray, referring to those that rely on multicore processors. Finally, the experts noted that Sun’s long-awaited release of Java to an open source project under the GPLv2 is pivotal to the future of the language and the platforms.

“A lot of innovation will come from open source, not just the JCP,” said IBM director of Java technologies Mark Thomas, referring to the Java Community Process body that governs Java standards.

Here’s the experts’ take on what’s next for Java.

FIRST-CLASS SUPPORT FOR SOA
Like databases and operating systems, Java applications have become part of the core computing infrastructure, but when it comes to moving that infrastructure toward SOA, Java isn’t offering enough help today, said Thomas. “You can try to implement components [for SOA] through the Java ClassLoader, but that can be unwieldy and error-prone.” A more effective way to enable SOA is through the OSGi technology, a module system for Java that is expected to become part of the Java standard, as specified in JSRs 291 and 232, he noted. “The ability to dynamically install, start and update services is critical [to Java’s future],” he said.

Oracle chief architect and vice president of tools and middleware Ted Farrell agreed. “Responding to SOA [in Java today] is way too complicated. We have to simplify that.” In the future, the process of how services are built, assembled and hosted in the end environment will be abstracted from the developer, added Oracle senior principal product director Ralf Dossmann.

BETTER PLUGABILITY
Also on the horizon is the ability to plug in third-party technologies so that they work more easily with Java EE and other Java platforms. “A lot of developers want to use Spring, the Google Web Toolkit and Oracle [Application Development Framework],” said Dossmann, referring to three Web framework offerings. “What we will see is the formalization of how the Java platform will deal with plugability,” he said.

Addressing this issue is part of Sun’s “Java And” initiative, noted Sun senior director for Java product marketing Jean Elliot. “The goal is to make it easier for Java developers to use whatever technologies are appropriate for getting their jobs done.”

Does that include support for dynamic languages within the Java platform? Tentatively, yes—at least for Ruby. Open source project JRuby—version 1.0 was released last month—is a pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language that lets Java developers use JRuby to write Web apps and deploy them on Java EE, said Sun’s Bray. “Rails is a nice development environment, but its deployment options are limited,” he said, referring to the popular Ruby on Rails Web application framework.

Sun showed the first sign of support for dynamic languages in September 2006 when it hired Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, the lead developers of JRuby.

“I admire Sun for putting money behind JRuby,” said Bruce Eckel, who heads the software development consultancy MindView. “That proves dynamic languages are real contenders.”

Will Sun support other dynamic languages in the Java platform? “PHP and Python are potentially interesting. These are things Sun should support,” said Bray. He did not offer further details, but said, “Sun is not going to support them as broadly as JRuby.”

MOVING TOWARD RIAS
Sun’s May announcement at JavaOne of JavaFX Script, a language that will automatically run on any Java Virtual Machine, is a critical step in making it easier for Java developers to write applications with rich user interfaces. It will allow Java developers to run content on a mobile phone, desktop or digital TV, regardless of where the content is created, said Sun’s Elliot. “It also will make Swing easier to use,” she said, referring to the GUI toolkit for Java. “It has been difficult to access in the past.” Sun has not specified when it will deliver JavaFX and related tools.

Elliot acknowledged there is still a lot of work to do with Java. “We have built a lot of power into these platforms. Now it’s time to make it as easy as possible to exploit that power. The future requires work in a lot of areas—in every single way we interact with developers.”

Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/30938

From the Editors: Congress needs to act on patents The US Patent and Trademark Office needs to offer a more vigorous review process and employee technology experts to make the system work like it was supposed to. Also, we encourage readers to do their own research and not just rely on the big names in the database world.

From the Editors: Sun needs grown-ups Sun Microsystems has a lot of potential, but if it takes another company owning it to give its business plan some focus, then so be it. Also, we call upon certification companies to clean up their testing procedures.

BPM still needs a process According to a recent survey by the Association for Information and Image Management, BPM remains an informal function. Out of 300 respondents, 90% said that they lack a chief process officer.

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