2006 JavaOne Conference

There is nothing quite like a JavaOne conference. When you put 15,000 Java fanatics under one roof, stuff is going to happen, and this week was no exception, thanks to you.

Sun and its partners provide the facilities and structure, but where do the content, energy, enthusiasm, and spontaneous thrills come from? Jonathan Schwartz writes, "the answer is you-the more than five million developers using Java each and every day. You are part of the world's largest and most active community." Thanks for making the Java platform what it is today. After having passed that "first decade" mark last year, we can move forward with incredible credibility.

Get Smart

The 2006 JavaOne conference has attracted developers from all over the world and has been a huge success. In fact, many attendees showed up a day early for the conference to attend Java University educational sessions. The big topics were Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), AJAX, and JavaServer Faces technology. On Monday also, NetBeans Day served about 1000 developers.

New Directions - Open Source, Really?

At the Tuesday morning conference kick-off, Jonathan Schwartz, a JavaOne regular, made his first appearance as Sun's new president and chief executive officer, "my new job." He introduced Rich Green as the new Sun EVP of software, returning as a Sun "boomerang" from a short stint away.

Schwartz handed the JavaOne conference over to Green in an informal passing of the "pickle" gesture. (The pickle, he explained is the remote control for all of the onstage visuals and speaker support.)

Then, pickle in hand, Rich Green divulged a clue on the next major direction for the Java platform: open source. It's been a delicate subject for a long time, and open sourcing Java technology is a major step with implications throughout the Java community. The challenge is how to maintain the compatibility value proposition of the Java platform in an open source market.

Green wouldn't give any details on making Java technology available as an open source platform just yet, but he said, "It's not a matter of Whether, but a matter of How." More news and developments will continue to flow on this topic, but for now, it's one step at a time. Stay tuned, but get ready for changes and new opportunities for all.

Also, Jeff Jackson, senior VP, Java Enterprise Platforms and Developer Products, and his host of presenters, talked on a wide range of topics, including:

Simplified Programming Model with Annotations
EJB 3.0 support for POJOs
New Java Persistence API
Foundation for SOA
Web 2.0 Applications with AJAX
IDE support available in NetBeans 5.5

And that was just the first morning.

Constant Movement

BEA's general session included their Blended Strategy approach to enterprise development and new opportunities in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and EJB 3.0.

Oracle's general session told attendees about key technologies they see as vital to the Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm: JavaServer Faces (JSF) for building user interfaces; Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (EJB 3.0) for building business logic; and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for mapping business process flow. They also talked tools and offerings, pledging to provide a variety of free tool offerings.

The IBM general session showed us ways to hit projected software delivery dates with precision and quality the Eclipse way.

Attendees at the Motorola general session learned of Motorola's new MOTODEV developer program, designed to build a broad business and developer ecosystem that will speed the pace of innovation while creating new business channels and revenue streams. They really want to make it easer for you to make better, broadly compatible mobile applications and more money from them.

Now, on the last day, it's been a full week of educational sessions, and great JavaOne Pavilion displays and demonstrations from a total of 90 companies. Don't feel bad if you haven't "seen it all," even if you kept moving the whole week. Just check out the rest, including the sessions you missed, through JavaOne Online year-round.

Back to the Real World

Finally, every JavaOne conference has a set of Calls to Action for the community after the show. Here are this year's:

Join JCP: http://www.jcp.org
Join SDN: http://developers.sun.com/global/join_sdn.html
Download NetBeans and join the NetBeans community: http://www.netbeans.org
Join java.net, and join the projects now open sourced, such as Sun Java Studio Creator 2, GlassFish, Java SE 6, WSIT (whiz-it): http://www.java.net/
Get the free GlassFish Open Source App Server: https://glassfish.dev.java.net/public/downloadsindex.html
Visit The Aquarium, a virtual water cooler for WSIT and GlassFish: http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium
Contribute to the BPEL Engine into Open ESB
Use the Beta of Java SE 6

Also, get involved with any of the new open source projects, including:

Sun Java Studio Creator
NetBeans Profile
NetBeans Mobility
NetBeans Matisse

Once again, the credit for making Java technology the success it is today goes to you folks, the Java community.

With the power of five million Java developers worldwide, this technology is making the planet a better place for all of humanity, one line of code after another.