Tuesday General Session: Imagine the Possibilities...

Introducing the Tuesday 2007 JavaOne general session, John Gage, Sun chief researcher and vice president for the Science Office, started off by reiterating his desire after 12 years of JavaOne conferences to make the Conference more carbon-neutral. We've made a good start, said Gage, but "Efficiency is the key." "We need to figure how to create small devices that will keep our activities carbon-neutral and lessen our impact on the planet."

Gage then introduced Rich Green, executive vice president of software for Sun Microsystems, Inc. Green started off by promising quite a bit to the Conference attendees: "something different, something bigger, something new."

Green prefaced the morning announcements by talking about community as a fundamental human property. As a species, we don't only want to communicate, we actually have to communicate. Communication is the vehicle for any community. And the barriers to this communication -- whether they are physical, mental, or government boundaries -- are falling apart all over the planet.

Green continued: "The network is an unstoppable social force. There were over half a billion mobile phones sold this year. In fact, they outship PCs 20 to 1. In fact, the scale of Java technology has never been greater: over 6 million developers, 5.5 billion devices, 2.5 million project GlassFish downloads, 800 million desktops that are Java technology-enabled, 1.8 billion Java technology-enabled phones, and 11 million Java technology-enabled TVs."

Green introduced Marin Harriman, VP of marketing and business development at Ericsson, who announced that the company is working with Sun to open source the Sun Java System Communications Application Server, an application server complete with a multimedia information management system (IMS).

Next came the announcement for version 2.0 of the Sun Java Real-Time specification (Java RTS), along with a tantalizing example of how easily Java technology-threaded applications can be ported to Java RTS. In this case, he demonstrated that you can simply change instances of java.lang.Thread to javax.realtime.RealtimeThread, and you immediately inherit all of the power of Java RTS technology.

Green then introduced Anna Ewing, CIO of the NASDAQ exchange. NASDAQ is currently running its trading technology on the Java platform. NASDAQ pioneered electronic trading 36 years ago, and its systems are considered the fastest in the industry. In fact, at any point in time, NASDAQ may need to process over 150,000 transactions per second. With that in mind, Ewing talked about how the NASDAQ exchange will be converting from Java to Java RTS technology in the near future and how important compatibility with Java technology is to NASDAQ's market. "We are currently working with your team on prototyping on next-generation platform for real-time Java. We love how moving from Java to Real-Time Java is very easy."

Java technology is also all about digital entertainment. Sony PlayStation 3, Blu-ray devices, and set-top boxes all have Java technology built in. Tom Hallman, VP of production operations/digital authoring center for Sony, stated that Java technology can be used to add all sorts of dynamic content to discs. This includes everything from more interactive animations to updating the "Coming Soon" trailers for Blu-ray discs. So what's next for Blu-ray? Well, Hallman challenged, that's up to the community here at the JavaOne conference. We're only limited by our bandwidth and imagination.

Rich Green then announced the prerelease of NetBeans IDE 6.0, which includes several new features: dynamic scripting with Java technology, including JRuby 1.0 and JavaScript technology, a graphical user interface (GUI) builder that further simplifies the creation of dynamic client applications, a robust new editor, and modular packs for nearly everything that you need. Green reiterated that the NetBeans IDE is now the premiere platform for developing mobile applications.

Green further announced new developments with the OpenJDK project: "We are now, in the regard of open sourcing Java, done," he said to a hefty round of applause. One of the final steps was to create an interim governing board, which consists of Doug Lea, Fabiane Nardon, Simon Phipps, Mark Reinhold, and Dalibor Topic. This board will create the constitution of the OpenJDK community and hold elections to continue the development process.

In addition, Sun announced that the company is open sourcing the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). This ensures compatibility across the open-source software (OSS) community. The license for these will be GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. "We really shocked the world when we chose this license last year," reiterated Green. "GPL forces the work to be done in the open, so that maximum compatibility will be maintained."

Next, Sun Microsystems released JavaFX, a new family of Sun products based on Java technology and targeted at the high-impact content market. Within that family are two initial products: JavaFX Script and JavaFX Mobile.

JavaFX Script is a declarative, statically typed scripting language. It has first-class functions, declarative syntax, list comprehensions, and incremental dependency-based evaluation. In addition, JavaFX Script can make direct calls to Java APIs on the platform. Unlike other scripting languages, JavaFX Script is statically typed and has the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features -- such as packages, classes, inheritance, and separate compilation and deployment units -- that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs in the Java programming language.

JavaFX Mobile, a product aimed at mobile-handset makers, is designed to give Java technology-based applications better portability across mobile phones. It was demonstrated on a number of devices, including the SavaJe phones that were popular with 2006 JavaOne conference attendees.

JavaFX Script leverages both the 2D graphics APIs and the Swing GUI toolkit to create amazing graphical interfaces. "This is Java technology for consumers, for individuals -- not just enterprises, not just corporate. But experiences [that] people at an individual level want to experience will be powered by Java," said Green. "The scripting language we are releasing will dramatically enhance the number of people who can create content for this platform."

JavaFX Script is very easy to use. For example, where Java programmers might use Swing to declare the following JFrame,

JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setWidth(800);
frame.setHeight(700);
frame.setTitle("Test Frame");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

frame.setVisible(true);

Mainstream web developers can also now use JavaFX Script to create similar interfaces:

Frame {
    width: 800
    height: 700
    onClose: operation() {
        System.exit(0);
    }
    title: "Test Frame"
visible: true
}

The previous code example also demonstrates an important fact. Although JavaFX Script is designed to be more productive and easier than Java technology, it is also closely integrated with it. Developers can use JavaFX Script and write applications that run on Java technology-equipped PCs or mobile phones. In fact, Sun promises that JavaFX Script will enable developers to more quickly and easily develop rich Internet applications and next-generation services that can be proliferated across virtually any device -- from desktop browsers and mobile devices, set-top boxes and Blu-ray DVDs -- securely and without local installation.

According to Green, JavaFX Script is "focused on the content-authoring and content-creation crowd. It is a means of creating visually impactful, high-performance, dramatic web- and network-facing artifacts or experiences that run all the way from the desktop running Java SE all the way down to mobile devices powered by JavaFX Mobile."

Applications written with JavaFX Script can run on the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), software that is installed on millions of PCs and regularly updated. JavaFX Script will work first with the NetBeans IDE, but Sun expects that other IDEs will work with it as well.

Sun also announced that the company is planning on open sourcing JavaFX Script. "We plan to open source all of JavaFX as we work through the program," said Green. The governance, license, and community models will be worked out as the company gets closer to delivering these products. "Sun will release the source code of JavaFX Script to let other companies create web authoring tools using it. Sun, too, intends to create scripting tools for content authoring," Green said.

The alpha code that Sun demonstrated during Tuesday morning's general session is now available at the Project openjfx.org site. Sun will be enhancing and expanding this scripting language and encourages developers to join its community and send in feedback.

"This is the realization of Java SE spanning all consumer devices and fulfilling the mantra of Write Once, Run Anywhere," Green said. "We really had to take a step back and take a fresh view of how to achieve this broad access to the platform for developers."

In conjunction with JavaFX Mobile, Green introduced Yahoo! senior vice president Marco Boerries. Boerries introduced Yahoo! Go, an ambitious effort to connect 500 million users. "We chose Java because it was the only obvious choice," said Boerries, who then proceeded to demonstrate the Yahoo! Go mobile portal for maps, news (RSS), weather, and even Flickr. "People use mobile phones to capture pictures, so it's important to share those as well." Boerries then promised that developers would soon be able to integrate their own services into Yahoo! Go.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz then stepped onstage to set the business tone for the Conference. "Businesses want to connect to their customers. Where do they want to go to connect to these people? They want to connect to the devices." Schwartz went on to say that most of the Internet today uses the handset as a connection device. "In North America, we tend to view laptops as the entry point to the Internet, but that isn't necessarily the case throughout the world. So Sun's business is about serving the companies that want to build those relationships with people. The network is the utility that creates value, and governments and businesses want openness."

Finally, Jonathan Schwartz, Rich Green, and Sun founder and chairman Scott McNealy introduced Dr. Djibril Diallo of the United Nations, who announced that Sun will be working with others to establish an "engineers without borders" initiative. The group's aim is to figure out how to put together an infrastructure so that business and community leaders can produce a device to connect people across the planet -- and change the world.

McNealy also introduced curriki.org as a free and open educational tool for the Internet and said that he would like people to register, evangelize, donate, and build the community as people across the planet get to do something. "All the people of the planet have the potential to learn," said McNealy, to lengthy applause.