Java Technology 2005: A Year in Review

Print-friendly Version

It would be impossible to know everything that's happened with the Java platform and community over the last year, but here's a look at some of the highlights.

Released in September 2004, J2SE 5.0 (Project Tiger) made a big impact on developers throughout 2005.

In January 2005, Calvin Austin gave us a look at what J2SE 5.0 offers, hoping to "prove that the 5.0 release will reduce development and runtime costs." His article "Five Reasons to Move to the J2SE 5 Platform" has been very popular. And his May 2004 article, "J2SE 5.0 in a Nutshell," was the most-viewed article on java.sun.com for 2005.

Tiger is total performance. See for yourself at David Dagastine's performance blog.

If you haven't yet upgraded to J2SE 5.0, read through the Java Tuning White Paper to get the best performance.

Google software engineer Li Moore, in a September 2005 interview with Robert Eckstein, concludes, "I can't imagine why anyone would use the 1.4 release at this point."

For a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the balancing act and trade-offs required to deliver J2SE 5.0, read Janice Heiss's November 2005 interview with James Gosling and Mark Reinhold. There, Gosling says, "If there's a misunderstood story about Tiger, it's that some people seem to believe that Tiger is something that Sun did alone. But it's probably the most intensely collaborative effort we've ever done." It takes a community.

Gosling also mentions a feature that's been on the to-do list for more than a decade: generics.

During his introduction to the Tiger release party, James Gosling offered his heartfelt thanks to all the Java Specification Request (JSR) expert groups involved, with special thanks to the Generics team. "The Generics JSR is one of the longest-running and toughest JSRs," said Gosling. "Generics is the closest that Bill Joy and I came to physical violence."

The Java Platform Migration Guide (pdf) explains, "As of [J2SE] 5.0, the collection classes, the Class class, and other core libraries have been generified by adding generic type parameters and arguments to existing classes and methods. Taking advantage of generics produces cleaner, more readable code, and eliminates one source of runtime errors by making it unnecessary to cast a value to declare its type to the compiler." And so far, the Generics class has been a big hit.

The marketing folks have also had their say. As of the June 2005 JavaOne Developer Conference, new releases of Java technology are following a new, simplified naming format, described in the June 22, 2005 article, "Building and Strengthening the Java Brand."

As Graham Hamilton explains in his June 27, 2005, blog, "We introduced the '2' back in 1998, and it seemed increasingly odd to have that '2' embedded in the platform name while also having a version number like '5.0' at the end of the name."

The new naming format starts with the release of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) instead of J2SE 6.0. Either article will give you the simple guidelines for usage.

In 2005, Sun began releasing weekly early access snapshots of Java SE 6 source code and binaries on java.net. That's a big deal. In a November 2004 interview, Graham Hamilton's Q&A helps explain why -- good and bad. Here, Hamilton also does a good job of describing the continuum of the Java SE platform, from J2SE 5.0 to Java SE 6 to Java SE 7 (version 7).

If you'd like to get involved, you're greatly encouraged to do so, but first, spend a few minutes with Hamilton's April 2005 update article, "How to Contribute Code to Java SE 6."

For a recent update on Java SE 6 current features, breeze through the java.sun.com article by Chet Haase and the Desktop Java engineering team.

The Gartner Group predicts that "By 2008, SOA will be a prevailing software engineering practice, ending the 40-year domination of monolithic software architecture." But 2005 has been a big year for SOA education and planning, and Java technology is playing a prominent role in SOA implementations.

The SOA/Web Services page is an excellent starting point with plenty of resources.

Also, there are two new entries of interest. The first is a January 2006 Q&A with Mark Hapner, Sun Distinguished Engineer, on SOA best practices. The second is the refreshed Sun SOA home page, where you can see more of Sun's SOA products and support.

In years past, you probably needed an attorney -- or at least some strong coffee and determination -- to understand the Java technology license agreements. But in recent years, the Java Community Process (JCP) program version 2.6, together with the JCP membership agreement, simplified Java platform licensing requirements. The effect was felt in a variety of Java Specification Requests (JSRs) throughout 2005, especially in JSR 176 J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) Release Contents; JSR 270 Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6); and JSR 244 Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) Specification.

In short, the JCP program supports a variety of licensing models, including open source-style licenses. This gives spec leads the flexibility to choose the licenses that best suit their specific JSRs.

For an overview of the JCP program's progress, check out Janice Heiss's interview with Onno Kluyt, senior director and chair of the JCP program.

Simplified licensing may have helped Java technology recently "dethrone" C++ as the top language on the SourceForge site, as eWeek.com reported on December 5, 2005.

For a broader view of progress in the 2005 Java platform, Janice Heiss interviewed Jeff Jackson, Sun's vice president of Java Developer Platforms group. Jackson talked about the JCP, transparency, and compatibility, but he also gave students some advice and showed he is hot on the NetBeans IDE.

2005 was a big year for the NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE). At the top of the list is the recent release of NetBeans IDE 5.0 beta. It's packed with ultra-cool features, including support for developing IDE modules and rich client applications, redesigned CVS support, Weblogic9 and JBoss 4 support, and lots more. Another nice addition is Matisse, the new intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) builder.

In fact, Matisse has become a real breakthrough for GUI designers. As Roman Strobl describes in his article, "The Next Wave of GUIs: Project Matisse and NetBeans IDE 5.0," "Project Matisse solves the core problem of GUI creation by making the layout design of visual forms much easier."

Then, the NetBeans IDE was the winner of Developer.com's Product of the Year Award for Open-Source Tool of the Year. Congratulations to everyone who contributed.

And finally, for those who don't know, NetBeans IDE 4.0 was the first free open-source IDE to support J2SE 5.0, giving the developer access to all the new language features available with Tiger. This includes constructs, such as enums, generics, or metadata annotations to build and edit applications without additional setup, as well as autoboxing, generics, and others.

NetBeans IDE 4.1 was released in May 2005, and NetBeans IDE 5.0 is slated for release in January 2006.

In his June 2005 java.sun.com article, "Asynchronous JavaScript Technology and XML (Ajax) With Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition," Greg Murray points to this year's newfound power in Ajax. Although Ajax itself is not new, he explains, what has recently changed is mainstream browser support for the XMLHttpRequest object. Murray's article was one of the top 10 articles that java.sun.com readers viewed in 2005.

He writes, "Anyone who has used Flickr, GMail, Google Suggest, or Google Maps will realize that a new breed of dynamic web applications is emerging. These applications look and act very similar to traditional desktop applications without relying on plug-ins or browser-specific features.Technologies such as JavaScript programming language and cascading style sheets (CSS) have matured to the point where they can be used effectively to create very dynamic web applications that will work on all of the major browsers."

In short, Murray describes how to "enable your web applications to be more rich and interactive like desktop applications."

Riding the wave of the future, the GlassFish community is a java.net open-source development project focused on building a free, open-source application server for the Java EE 5 platform (the next version of the J2EE platform). The GlassFish code is used in the Java EE Reference Implementation, the Java EE SDK, and the Sun Java System Application Server.

And finally, Java technology has passed the test of a decade of popularity. In fact, the language that so many experts proclaimed as a passing fad, soon to disappear, has become the most-preferred platform for developers worldwide. Java software is everywhere, doing the most incredible things imaginable. And the Java community continues to say, "Wait till you see the next release. It's really cool."

The new coffee-table book, Hello World(s) -- From Code to Culture, is part of the 10th birthday celebration. It tells the inside story of how Java technology came to be, from its earliest days. This artful, hardcover keepsake is available now online and at your local bookstore. As James Gosling's foreword says, Java technology wouldn't have happened without the enthusiasm, dedication, and work of the Java community. Thank you.

Further, if you were at the 2005 JavaOne Developer Conference in San Francisco, you caught a wild celebration of Java technology's 10th birthday, day and night.

If you missed it, no problem. The next JavaOne developer conference, to convene May 16 to 19, 2006, will surely continue the momentum. We'll see you there!