2006 JavaOne Conference - Sun General Session: The Best in Java Innovations

John Gage, chief researcher and vice president of the Sun Microsystems Science Office, hosted the final JavaOne conference General Session on Friday morning.

This session's primary purpose was to highlight the best in Java technology innovations. After briefly alerting attendees about repeat sessions and schedule changes, Gage introduced Scott McNealy, former CEO and now chairman of the board of directors of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

As always, McNealy was quick with a quip and joked about leaving his previous job as president of Sun Microsystems. He joked that for the first time, "I had to wear my badge to get in today. They [Conference personnel] said, 'Who are you?'"

He also provided his list of the top 10 best things about not being CEO:

He doesn't have to apologize for "stuff I say to Wall Street."

He's no longer on the most-overpaid CEO list.

He gets to just say, "See Jonathan on that."

He can read Hockey News without guilt.

He can shave even less often.

"No more SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) certification."

"I have someone to blame."

He can sell his last business suit.

"Jonathan doesn't golf. Someone has to do it!"

"My office is very close to the men's room."

McNealy announced the winner of the Bike-to-Work contest, David Marsland, a senior training specialist at eBay. Marsland won a cycling jersey signed by Lance Armstrong.

McNealy then reflected on the impressive growth that the Java platform has enjoyed, noting that Java technology is in more than 200 million cell phones and 1.5 billion smart cards. Many consumer products are Java technology-powered, including the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3, to be released in the fall.

The Participation Age

McNealy proclaimed that we are now in a Participation Age, one in which everyone is an editor, publisher, blogger, and digital content provider.

Unfortunately, three out of four people are still not connected and are on the other side of the "digital divide." Although this is a tragedy in some cases, he sees it as a huge economic opportunity for Java technology partners. Thin clients, tiny sensors, and other Java technology-enabled small devices can help us reach people to improve their lives. He praised the Java technology community, telling them that their work "will help us bridge the digital divide."

Java Technology Innovations

The next part of the session highlighted some of the interesting innovations that use Java technology. GE Healthcare's Fausto Espinal, a visualization engineer, demonstrated his company's use of Java technology on the desktop. His application renders medical images, showing incredible 2D and 3D renderings of human physical structures such as the skull, brain, and skeletal system. His product helps physicians visualize, diagnose, and treat illnesses.

Tom Ball, a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, introduced Jackpot, a next-generation code-refactoring tool. He demonstrated how you can create rules for finding and removing unnecessary casting in your code. The Jackpot tool can perform flow analysis and refactor Java programming language code to make it simpler, quicker, and easier to read. The impressive feature of this tool is its ability to make large-scale changes to your code while maintaining its functionality unchanged.

Petr Suchomel and Martin Brehovsky, members of the NetBeans software Mobility team at Sun, demonstrated the current state of mobile phone development. Their application showed a complete server-to-cell phone tracking system that provides the current status of shipped packages as they travel. The application showed how Java technology running on cell phones could consume web services, showing the status of customer orders in transit. Their demo showcased two Java platforms, Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) collaborating to track packages using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system.

Mobile development gets a power boost as JSR 209, Advanced Graphics and User Interface Optional Package for the J2ME Platform, gets implemented on some trailblazing cellular phones like the SavaJe Jasper S20.

JSR 209 defines a Swing, Java 2D, and imaging subset that will bring higher-quality graphics components to developers of mobile applications. Mobile devices that implement the JSR 209 specification will have new Swing components, antialiased fonts, gradients, 2D transforms, and opacity features that were previously unavailable. Nedim Fresko and Hinkmond Wong, senior staff engineers at Sun Microsystems, demonstrated applications on the SavaJe phone that make use of these new features. Notably, they demonstrated how threading works, running a music player at the same time as scrolling through the features of a separate application.

Greg Bollella, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, explained why predictability matters, as he described some of the real-time garbage-collection features of the Sun Java Real-Time System (Java RTS). He described how his team spent only a few hours porting its application server to the real-time system. His demo application showed two video players streaming video from the server, one using a regular communication port on the server and one using a real-time port. As he simulated increasing loads on the server, the video player using a regular communication port began to lag, showing jerky, stalling video from the server. However, the video player attached to the real-time port continued to show smooth streaming video. You can find out more about the Sun Java Real-Time System by sending email to rt-jas-interest@sun.com.

Vice president and Sun Fellow James Gosling, widely known as the father Java technology, injected some fun into the session by introducing the winners of the Java RTS Slot Car Programming Challenge. Contestants wrote real-time code using Java RTS to control slot cars that moved around the track. The application had to monitor the slot car's position on the track while controlling the car's speed. The winning contestants managed to post fast times by speeding up on straightaways and slowing at dangerous curves, but others saw their cars fly off the track. The race winners were the following:

First place: Robert Chou, 27.00 seconds
Second place: A team of German students (Michael, David, Georg, and Anna), 27.27 seconds
Third place: Peter Whitfield, 27.38 seconds

Finally, Paul Perrone of Perrone Robotics drove his autonomous ground vehicle (AGV), Tommy, onto the show floor. The vehicle uses several subsystems that use both Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java ME technology to control the vehicle's throttle, brakes, steering, vision, radar, and GPS systems. Tommy competed in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge recently. The article Here Comes Tommy -- An Unmanned, Autonomous Java Technology-Powered Dune Buggy describes this project in more detail.

Innovation Matters

Throughout the session, John Gage, Scott McNealy, and James Gosling called the audience to action on several counts. McNealy urged developers to join a user group and get involved to drive innovation. He pledged his own involvement to drive innovations in privacy and security. Gosling urged everyone to think outside the box to produce innovative solutions -- to "forget the box." Finally, Gage appealed to Java technology developers everywhere to help improve and change the world with their innovations. He explained that small devices and sensors with Java technology could help rapid-detection systems to monitor health crises around the world.

In the end, innovation really does matter, not just to the interested technologists but also to end users around the world. The Java platform's innovators create solutions that create communities, distribute information, heal people, and improve our quality of life. Thanks to our JavaOne conference attendees who participate.

Your technology, your work, your innovations, and you matter.