Sun upgrades J2SE platform

Plans for Mustang also announced

By Paul Krill, IDG News Service, 10/04/04

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October 4, 2004—Application developers are getting a raft of new options this week with Sun Microsystems updating J2SE, Borland Software upping its CORBA ante, and Compuware detailing products that will work with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 toolbox.

Sun is updating J2SE with the 5.0 version, also known as Tiger, focusing on ease of development, manageability, startup time, and support for multiple desktop clients. Manifestations of J2SE 5.0 are expected in products such as new JVMs due from various vendors in about six months, according to Sun. A release of J2EE 5.0 is being planned that will take advantage of features in J2SE 5.0.

J2SE features intended to enable faster and more secure coding include support for generics, enumerated types, metadata, and autoboxing of primitive types. With autoboxing, primitive types such as integers can be converted to objects. Version 5.0 also offers an extended “for loop�? function to make it easier to work with collections of items or arrays of objects.

In the area of management, J2SE 5.0 features support for managing Java applications and JVMs through management consoles via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and JMX (Java Management Extensions). “For the first time ever, you could monitor if you’re running out of memory,�? said Calvin Austin, J2SE 5.0 specification lead at Sun.

A new feature in J2SE 5.0 called Ocean provides a cross-platform look and feel for Java applications, boosting the visual experience and using modern UI trends, Austin said. “Any Java app can use this look and feel,�? he said. Also featured is a native look and feel function so that if an application is being run on Windows XP or Macintosh, for example, the program will resemble Windows or Macintosh programs.

Sun also is aiming to improve the startup time performance in Version 5.0. Additionally, a performance ergonomics function provides automatic internal settings for larger systems, adjusting parameters such as garbage collection. “We will automatically determine what machine you’re on,�? Austin said.

J2SE 5.0’s startup improvements address performance, which has long been a critical issue with Java, an analyst said.

“The most important factor for me has been the performance,�? said Steve O’Grady, senior analyst at RedMonk. “That has been the crux of the problems that have developed (with) the Java platform, particularly in the startup time. As the JVM gets instantiated, it takes a while for the applications to start up.�?

The new version’s improvements such as autoboxing represent the first additions to the language since Java’s inception, O’Grady said. However, Sun still needs to do more to promote application development on the language, such as by making “Project Buzz�? a collaboration and communication technology, available via open source, O’Grady said.

Sun officials also revealed some details of the next release of Java, code-named “Mustang�? and expected in spring 2006. Proposed themes of Mustang include XML, Web services, the Java desktop, and large systems performance, according to Graham Hamilton, Sun Java platform vice president and fellow, during a conference call to unveil J2SE 5.0.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.