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                    *          DB/C Newsletter          *
                    *            March 2002             *
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                              News and Comments

     I've just returned from three days at the JavaOne conference held in the
Moscone Center in San Francisco.  It's always quite exhilarating to be with
thousands of Java programmers.  This month I'll relate a quick synopsis of
some the happenings there.

     I have one soapbox comment to make.  Scott McNealy needs to stop bashing
Microsoft.  He did it again in his keynote speech.  His Microsoft bashing
comes across (at best) as sour grapes and (at worst) as desperate.  Java has
succeeded and will continue to succeed regardless of Microsoft's actions.
McNealy's continuing tirade can only harm Java's excellent reputation.

                                                     don.wills@dbcsoftware.com


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                               JavaOne Report

     JavaOne is billed as the largest developer conference in the world.
However, this year's JavaOne was smaller than previous JavaOne conferences.
The number of attendees appeared to be somewhat less than last year, although
it was still quite busy.  The number of attendees was probably about 15,000.
This year's smaller attendance was probably caused by one or more of these
reasons:
   1.  This year's date conflicted with the Easter holiday and spring break
   2.  It has been less than 11 months since the last JavaOne
   3.  The computer economy hasn't rebounded yet
   4.  Java is maturing - thus there are fewer new things to talk about
   5.  The cost was high - admittance to JavaOne itself is $1800

     'Web Services' was the new 'big thing' this year.  There are a multitude
of new standards and products that facilitate building web services.  One new
standard, the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), appears to be key to
interoperability between the Java and Microsoft worlds.  Cooperation between
IBM, Microsoft, Sun, BEA, Oracle, etc. appears to be quite strong in this area
which is a good thing for programmers who are actually building applications.

     The relationship between web services and J2EE was the primary focus
for many of the conference sessions.  These sessions were generally well
attended.  It appeared than many of the attendees were 'big company' folks.
Their interests typically relate to 'enterprise' applications (a euphemism
for SQL-based applications).  Interestingly, the number of companies selling
products into this 'enterprise web services' market appeared to be larger
than in previous years. 
	
     Features contained in the new J2SE 1.4 version of Java were the topics for
many sessions.  One important new feature is a new language construct called
assertions.  In addition, J2SE 1.4 contains many new APIs with support for XML,
regular expressions, IPv6 and much more.  The Java language itself is still
quite healthy and growing, although at a slower rate than in the past.
       
     A highlight of this JavaOne was a gathering of Eclipse (see last month's
newsletter) developers and users at a restaurant/bar across the street from
the JavaOne convention center.  This Eclipse meeting was not part of the
official JavaOne program.  Rumor has it that the reason for the lack of
official recognition is that Sun is threatened by Eclipse because it competes
directly with Sun's NetBeans and Forte efforts.

     Erich Gamma (of 'Design Patterns' fame) is a primary architect of
Eclipse.  He was the main presenter at the Eclipse meeting.  He provided a
detailed demo of many of the new features of Eclipse 2.0.  It was an amazing
demo - the features were tremendous.  Programmers are going to love building
software with Eclipse release 2.  It is apparent that IBM is quite serious
about building the best programmer tools possible so that it can compete
successfully against Microsoft and .Net Studio.

     Sharp also made a big splash at JavaOne by selling more than 2000 of
their new Zaurus SL-5000D LINUX-based PDAs to attendees at a discounted price.
The features of this product are amazing.  Here's a short list:
  1.  It has a 240x320 16 bit color screen with a complete GUI
  2.  It has a built-in mini-keyboard
  3.  It incorporates a complete Java 1.1 VM
  4.  It incorporates Opera, a full featured web browser
  5.  It does TCP/IP at high speed with an 802.11b wireless LAN card ($100)
  6.  Most importantly, it's really LINUX - open source and all.  When you
      turn on the Zaurus PDA, you boot LINUX with the typical boot messages
      and everything.  Like LINUX on other platforms, performance is great.
      The Zaurus LINUX includes a basic command shell that runs standard
      commands like vi, telnet, ftp, etc.  Zaurus programs are developed on
      a PC in C, C++ or Java and are downloaded via the USB interface that
      is also used for synchronization and backup of data.

     Information about JavaOne can be found at http://java.sun.com/javaone.

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                             DB/C Class Schedule

   Class:     DB/C DX and JX Language Fundamentals
   Date:      June 2002
   Location:  Oak Brook, Illinois

For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com.


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