Java: Change (Y)our World

The 2009 JavaOne conference opened Tuesday morning with the Sun general session. Hosted by Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, the session ended with an appearance by Sun chairman and cofounder Scott McNealy, who introduced surprise guest Larry Ellison, cofounder and CEO of Oracle Corporation. Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, announced in April, is expected to be finalized in the next few months.

Schwartz opened the 14th JavaOne conference with a trip down memory lane.

Java technology was invented in the early 1990s as both an object-oriented language and a virtual machine that sought to isolate a program's runtime from the hardware on which it executed. The first JVM* ran on desktop machines, and today it runs on more than 1 billion desktops, with 300 to 400 million runtimes shipping annually. The latest release of Java Platform, Standard Edition for the desktop is JDK 7.

The successful introduction of Java technology into the enterprise proved to be even more powerful, and the release of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) promises an easier to use, more capable Java EE going forward.

The discussion of Java EE technology flowed into an introduction of James Barrese of eBay Inc. As executive vice president of architecture, Barrese oversees a web enterprise of impressive scale, with more than 150 million items for sale at any one time, and over $60 billion in transactions in 2008 alone.

From the bits stored in databases to the pixels painted on the user's screen, every subsystem at eBay is based on Java technology. Java technology forms the core of eBay's operation and is largely responsible for its ability to scale to meet explosive growth. Barrese livened the discussion with anecdotes of his favorite eBay auctions -- a corn flake in the shape of the state of Illinois that brought $1,350, and a lunch with Warren Buffet that sold for a charitable donation of $2.1 million.

Schwartz then shifted focus to the mobile market, where 2.6 billion mobile Java devices roam worldwide. To highlight Java's importance in this market, Schwartz introduced executives from a device manufacturer and a service provider.

Alan Brenner, senior vice president at BlackBerry platforms at Research In Motion, lauded Java technology for its security features and pointed out that all BlackBerries are 100 percent Java devices. More than 25 million subscribers on more than 400 service providers worldwide carry BlackBerry devices. Brenner characterized BlackBerry's customer base as about half consumer and half enterprise. He then presented a demo of a BlackBerry running a Java application from Xobni. The application automatically distills a passive contact list from the BlackBerry's ongoing communications history and fills it out with data scraped from social sites like LinkedIn.

Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, completed the Java story in the mobile marketplace by explaining its importance for the service provider. Verizon is the largest wireless mobile service supplier in the United States, with 86 million customers. McAdam was attending his first JavaOne conference.

Other than mobile devices, no recent development demonstrates the reach of Java technology into the consumer marketplace more than the Blu-ray Disc in home entertainment. Don Eklund, executive vice president of advanced technology at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, took the stage to demonstrate Java technology by interactively showing Sony entertainment offerings at network rates of 48 megabits per second on a PlayStation 3.

JavaFX technology is also entering the consumer marketplace through televisions and set-top boxes as they become more capable. Ronan McBrien, JavaFX architect at Sun, demonstrated a JavaFX application that previewed and downloaded movies and other offerings on a 42-inch HDTV. In spite of the limited computing resources of the HDTV, all JavaFX code ran locally.

Developers and designers have been intrigued with the possibilities of JavaFX technology but so far have been hampered by a lack of tooling. Nandini Ramani, director of engineering for the JavaFX platform, demonstrated a very capable JavaFX authoring tool. The tool enables you to create graphical applications with minimal direct script writing.

The tool is tuned for team collaboration over a network. Like other such tools, it stages graphical assets into a scene controlled by a timeline. Using drag-and-drop gestures, you can bring in assets and link them to the timeline for animated display. The resulting application can be used wherever the Java runtime exists, including cell phones, desktop computers, and set-top TV boxes. You can target your application to these devices simultaneously.

Underlying any software technology is a processor. To illustrate the link between hardware manufacturers, Java technology, and enterprise users, Schwartz welcomed to the stage Diane Bryant, executive vice president of Intel, and Paul Ciciora, department head of infrastructure development at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). The largest options exchange in the world, CBOE is a 100 percent Java technology and Solaris OS enterprise.

The introduction of Intel Nehalem Xenon processors running Java technology doubled the previous system performance at CBOE. The enterprise now processes 2.5 billion transactions daily, with peak loads of 300,000 transactions per second.

To give Java developers access to the billions of devices powered by Java runtimes, Sun has launched a new Java Store. Developers can submit Java applications to the Java Warehouse for distribution through the store. James Gosling demonstrated how desktop users can download applications by dragging icons from the store window onto their desktops.

Although the store is active now in beta release, monetization details have yet to be finalized. Sun will collaborate with the developer community in coming weeks to design the compensation business model.

One application available in the Java Store is RuneScape, from Jagex, Ltd. Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard was awarded a Duke's Choice innovation award for the game, which has a user base of 150 million.

Randy Bryant, dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, accepted a Duke's Choice award for Alice 3.0, the object-oriented 3D programming environment that introduces students to animation programming.

Before yielding the stage to Sun chairman, cofounder, and past CEO Scott McNealy, Schwartz gave an emotional tribute to Java pioneer James Gosling, citing his courage in introducing a new way of thinking about computer programming through Java technology.

The irrepressible McNealy finally addressed the question that was on everyone's mind: What will happen to Java after the pending Oracle acquisition? To answer the question, McNealy introduced Larry Ellison, cofounder and CEO of Oracle Corporation.

Ellison insisted that Java would be maintained in the future much as it had been under Sun: an open-source project with strong corporate support from a variety of vendors and unrivaled ubiquity in the marketplace. He stressed that all of Oracle's middleware is based on Java technology and that the company values the contribution that Java has made to Oracle's success.

McNealy closed the general session with a heartfelt appreciation of the Java community and its contributions that have spread Java technology across human experience, from cell phones carried by schoolchildren to robotic rovers on the Martian landscape.

Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy

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^* As used on this web site, the terms "Java Virtual Machine" and "JVM" mean a virtual machine for the Java platform.

» Watch the General Session Replay
» Java Store

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