Well, the question was repeated last week in Timothy O'Brien's coverage of the Sun layoffs. And it came up again in at least one post on DZone. And then, finally, someone tried to answer the question.
Riyad Kalla may have mis-stated his point when he asked "Is Java becoming irrelevant?" but his analysis is worth following. While Sun's reorganization is promising from a shareholder perspective, it also is a scramble for position in the Java enterprise software market. The question now is whether that market has already evolved beyond Sun's ability to catch up.
Kalla mentions several vendors that do and will compete with Sun for ownership of Java -- not in terms of licensing, but in terms of affinity. As he points out, RedHat, IBM, and Oracle all have stake in the future of Java, and could be high bidders if it comes to that. But Kalla also mentions SpringSource, a company still small enough that it is unlikely to be invited to the auction, should there be one; but who needs an invitation when you can crash the gate? (Gate crashing has worked brilliantly for SpringSource so far, with CEO Rod Johnson now an executive committee member of the JCP.)
The real point of Kalla's speculation is that, while the "one-time stoic steward" of the Java platform is showing signs of weakness, "there are a lot of big elephants in the room," whose revenue streams are equally -- if not more -- tied to the Java platform. Moreover, none of these players needs to wrestle control of the Java language from Sun, not when peripheral attacks work just as well.
The trick, according to Kalla, would be to devalue Java as a language and, instead, promote the Java platform as a "means of execution for other languages controlled by other sources." Or, as he put it, a platform for platforms.
SpringGroovy, anyone?
Worth reading
]]>New business divisions focused on Application Platform Software and Cloud Computing and Developer Technologies demonstrate renewed commitment to software, with open source products like Glassfish, MySQL, and NetBeans at the fore. Less is being said, directly, about Java, which remains a bit of mystery from a company that recently took pains to switch its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA.
In a discussion with Computerworld, IDC Analyst Jean Bozman noted that Jonathan Schwartz has intended for Sun to be "the category leader in open source for enterprise users." According to the Computerworld report, Bozman believes Sun officials hope to make money off of open-source technologies through technical support contracts and selling hardware to users. At the same time, the company clearly is not "getting the maximum leverage [it] could" from its open source products.
Last Friday's reorganization reflects the conviction of some shareholders, at least, that Sun Microsystems is fundamentally a software company. Whether that conviction has arrived soon enough, or has sufficient C-level backing to stick, remains to be seen.
Worth reading:
]]>A recently released Evans Data developer survey ranks application servers based on 21 factors, including performance, security, database connectivity, scalability, and cost benefit. Esther Schindler in CIO.com reports that Apache Geronimo, JBoss AS, and WebLogic get high marks from developers surveyed. Glassfish also did well in the Java EE server niche category.
According to Schindler's report, developers are less fervent in support for WebLogic today than in 2006, a decline Evans Data associates with uncertainty about the product's future (in wake of the Oracle acquisition of BEA).
]]>A recently released Evans Data developer survey ranks application servers based on 21 factors, including performance, security, database connectivity, scalability, and cost benefit. Esther Schindler in CIO.com reports that Apache Geronimo, JBoss AS, and WebLogic get high marks from developers surveyed. Glassfish also did well in the Java EE server niche category.
According to Schindler's report, developers are less fervent in support for WebLogic today than in 2006, a decline Evans Data associates with uncertainty about the product's future (in wake of the Oracle acquisition of BEA).
Open source app servers Geronimo and JBoss AS also did well, with results indicating that some companies are beginning to overcome the lack of tech support associated with OS products. From the Evans Data report:
"Geronimo might have been burdened by the perception amongst users of a lack of support [...] However, this was not the case with Geronimo [...] IBM has provided resources and support in a variety of ways to Geronimo and the Apache Software Foundation, including technical support."
JBoss also did well among enterprise developers, being ranked as delivering the best value to cost ratio, the best compatibility with other software, and the best security, according to Schindler's report.
Let's discuss: What app servers do you use in your day-to-day work and how would you rank them in overall user satisfaction?
--Athen
More about app servers
In a recent article published by IBM developerWorks Ted Neward casts some perspective on the rumors of Java's demise. After a quick survey of the variety of arguments circulating -- some cite numbers that show Java has fallen (marginally) from its top-tier spot, while others decry the lack of features found in alternative environments du jour -- he declares the Java platform "Dead like COBOL."
]]>In a recent article published by IBM developerWorks Ted Neward casts some perspective on the rumors of Java's demise. After a quick survey of the variety of arguments circulating -- some cite numbers that show Java has fallen (marginally) from its top-tier spot, while others decry the lack of features found in alternative environments du jour -- he declares the Java platform "Dead like COBOL." (Which of course means alive and thrashing; nearly twenty years after falling out of fashion, COBOL is still cashing checks, moving mainframes, and being taught in schools.)
Perhaps the most interesting piece of the article is Ted's overview of the Java ecosystem as it stands today. The Java language is the weakest link in this ecosystem, he says, being more than a decade old and (with the addition of new features) in real danger of collapsing under its own weight. The JVM and (JSE and JEE) libraries are the invaluable, if aging, core of the platform, and all three continue to evolve. Client-side Java may well be too late out of the gate, but Java is "the established player in the server space, particularly when examining the options for non-Windows back-end farms."
This brings us to the newest layer of the Java ecosystem, what Ted calls non-Java JVM programming languages:
"Where Java leaves off, other languages pick up, enhance, and provide solutions. Groovy provides a nice dynamic, objectish scripting solution around Java objects. (j)Ruby offers a Ruby implementation on top of the JVM, opening up the world of Rails and ActiveRecord to Java programmers. Scala and Jaskell bring functional concepts home to the JVM, offering potential solutions to the rising problem of concurrency. And so on, and so on, and so on."
Whereas some might cite the popularity of JRuby or the growing interest in Scala as evidence of Java's waning power, Ted calls alternate languages for the JVM "what the technology pundits missed" in the rush to declare Java dead. Java may well be the last big programming language (as Ola Bini has recently suggested) but the Java libraries will, without a doubt, outlive every programmer using them today.
What do you think the future holds for Java -- or for you as a Java-based programmer? What are you doing to stay in stride (or not) with the Java platform as it evolves?
]]>Hello, and welcome to the first iteration of the JavaWorld blogs! Launching blogs was one of my priorities when I started editing JavaWorld a little less than a year ago, so I'm thrilled to be up and running with them today.
The goal of JW Blogs is to provide a daily mix of valuable reading from around the Java world. Some of the blogs you'll find here are syndicated and others are exclusive to JavaWorld. Notably, most of them are written by JavaWorld contributors, past or present. We also welcome blogs from JavaWorld community members -- just send us a proposal. One thing I can promise is that all of the blogs you find in the JW blogsphere will have been selected for relevance of content and the technical expertise of the author. No fluff here! (Or, perhaps, only really good fluff need apply.)
]]>Hello, and welcome to the first iteration of the JavaWorld blogs! Launching blogs was one of my priorities when I started editing JavaWorld a little less than a year ago, so I'm thrilled to be up and running with them today.
The goal of JW Blogs is to provide a daily mix of valuable reading from around the Java world. Some of the blogs you'll find here are syndicated and others are exclusive to JavaWorld. Notably, most of them are written by JavaWorld contributors, past or present. We also welcome blogs from JavaWorld community members -- just send us a proposal. One thing I can promise is that all of the blogs you find in the JW blogsphere will have been selected for relevance of content and the technical expertise of the author. No fluff here! (Or, perhaps, only really good fluff need apply.)
One of the cool things about this blog platform (it's Drupal, by the way -- more about that later) is that you don't need to have a blog of your own to participate in this community. When you land on the blogs mainpage, you see the most recent posts from our bloggers, as well as the current tagged topics they're posting about. If you're interested in a particular topic -- say OSGi or Groovy -- just click on it and you'll land in that topical zone, where you should see posts from a variety of authors. If you have something to add to a discussion, drop a comment. If you have a lot to say about a topic, create a thread, tag it appropriately, and it will end up a post in that topical zone.
Commenting in other people's blogs and posting in topical zones is a great way to start building your reputation without the commitment of your own blog. For the same reason, we encourage you to register and create a profile; otherwise all your words will be signed "anonymous," which is no way to introduce yourself. (Note, also, that blog membership is currently not synced with JavaWorld forum membership. We apologize to our forum members for this inconvenience. The blogs are the first step toward a new, unified JavaWorld community platform, so please bear with us.)
So, about Drupal. It's a PHP platform isn't it? As you might think, the decision to go with non-Java-based blogging platform wasn't made overnight. In the end we chose Drupal because it is simply the most versatile and extensible open source, community-based CMS on the planet today. Or, to put it differently, there may have been an equally slick platform written in Java, but not open source. Also, Drupal is a particular favorite of Adam Gaffin, who does most of the coding for the JW community platforms. He sold me on it through sheer, good natured persistence.
There's a lot more to say about JW Blogs, especially as we continue to work on them in the coming weeks. We hope you'll ask questions and give us your feedback -- either by commenting here or writing Adam and me at jwblogs@javaworld.com. Your input will make a difference in this feature of JavaWorld, just as it does on the site as a whole.
Before I sign off, I want to give thanks to the writers who are already contributing to JW Blogs this week: Arun Gupta, Ted Neward, John Zukowski, Charles Nutter, and Andrew Glover. It's an honor and a pleasure, sirs.
On behalf of JavaWorld and the JW Blogs team --
Welcome!
Athen O'Shea
Editor, JavaWorld
athen@javaworld.com