Solutions for Java developers
04/21/09
By Joshua Fruhlinger
There have been all sorts of reasons floated for exactly why
Oracle would buy Sun; some of the more cynical interpretations
saw the move as purely defensive, to stop IBM from coming back
and cutting another deal once heads had cooled. (The move
apparently did come as something of a shock to both IBM and
Microsoft http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10223089-56.html .)
But I guess I don't see any reason not to take this bit from the
FAQ Oracle put out on the merger
http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf as at least a start on
the company's thinking:
Oracle plans to engineer and deliver an integrated system --
applications to disk -- where all the pieces fit and work
together, so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our
customers have been asking us to step up to a broader role to
reduce complexity, risk, and cost by delivering a
highly-optimized, standards-based product stack. Oracle plans to
deliver that benefit ... Oracle's ownership of two key Sun
software assets, Java and Solaris, is expected to provide our
customers with significant benefit. Java is one of the computer
industry's best known brands and most widely deployed
technologies. Oracle Fusion Middleware is built on top of Sun's
Java language and software.
TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld says that Larry Ellison has always
wanted to be the Steve Jobs of the enterprise
http://www.networkworld.com/nljavaworldsente192771 , and the
vision outlined in that FAQ seems along those lines. You'll be
able to buy an Oracle database/enterprise server gizmo with
Solaris as the OS and Java powering the applications (and who
knows, maybe even with a SPARC chip inside, though the smart
money seems to be against it), and it will Just Work, most of
the time, without all the need for messy integration by hand at
your end. (And for those times in which it doesn't Just Work,
Oracle's support team will be there, for which you will pay
handsomely.)
If that sounds familiar, it's exactly the sort of integration of
Java with profitable products that's always been Sun's goal for
making money off of the language, but which the company has
never quite been able pull off. The problem with Sun over the
last, oh, five or ten years, is that it's never really been able
to make money off the great stuff it makes. If there's one thing
that Oracle does well, it's make money off of great stuff, much
of which it has purchased rather than developing in-house.
So in that sense, this is good for Java, in that it's in the
hands of a profitable company that has reason to invest
resources into the platform. But from the perspective of Java
developers who don't work with Oracle or Oracle products, the
road ahead might be a bit bumpy. Java is open source now, a move
that can't be undone, and obviously it's to Oracle's interests
to keep Java as a popular general-purpose programming language
out in the marketplace -- that creates a wide pool of developers
who will be interested in working with Oracle's
Solaris/Java-based platform, and who will try to convince their
bosses to buy it. But with Java set to become a key part of a
number of Oracle product lines, the company might focus its
resources on aspects of the platform that fit that vision -- on
the enterprise rather than the client or mobile platforms, on
performance rather than end-user ease-of-use. I have a hard time
seeing JavaFX as something Oracle would be as excited about as
Sun seemed to be, for instance.
Moreover, while it's been problematic over the past few years
for Java to be stewarded by a relatively weak company, that's
also given opportunities for other community members to shape
its future. Now that the platform is in the hands of a strong
company -- and one that is archrivals with another heavily
Java-invested company that happened to be Sun's spurned suitor
to boot -- it will be very interesting to see how things in the
JCP work out.
What do you think: How will Oracle's 'integrated enterprise'
strategy impact the Java ecosystem?
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/2807
More about the Oracle/Sun merge:
1. Oracle to Buy Sun for $7.4B
http://www.networkworld.com/nljavaworldsente192772
2. Sun/Oracle: What will change
http://www.networkworld.com/nljavaworldsente192773
3. Oracle could axe up to 10,000 Sun jobs
http://www.networkworld.com/nljavaworldsente192774
4. Why Oracle/Sun deal is bad news for Microsoft
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41076
New Podcast: Enterprise clustering and Terracotta 3.0
Alex Miller is a respected Java concurrency and scalability
enthusiast who works on Terracotta, an open source, Java-based
clustering system. In this talk with Andrew Glover, Alex
demystifies Terracotta, explaining the programming magic that
enables enterprise customers to run 50 to 100 JVMs on a single
application server instance. Alex also talks about Terracotta's
"sweet spot" -- storing session data off of the database -- and
Terracotta 3.0, which promises new features that he says will
eliminate certain scalability barriers.
Listen up: Alex Miller: Enterprise clustering with Terracotta
http://www.networkworld.com/nljavaworldsente191681
When the job changes but the programmer doesn't, Part 2: Saving
Frank's job http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/2796
By Esther Schindler
Last week, I described the plight of a maintenance programmer
whose company was moving to a new language and development
platform. Although Frank has worked for the medium-sized company
for some years, he's just not being productive. I promised the
rest of the story this week ....
Deadlock anti-patterns #3: Incremental locking
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/2789
By Obi Ezechukwu
Tthe incremental locking anti-pattern is simple, well-known, and
well documented -- and is unfortunately still a frequent
mistake. Chances are that most developers who have had the
misfortune of debugging deadlocking code would have come across
this pattern at some point in their career ...You've hit the tip of the iceberg: Read more in JW Blogs
http://www.javaworld.com/community/
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_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Dell
Simplifying the Data Center
Dell provides a fully engineered, end-to-end, holistic
virtualization solution that includes hardware, services and
support for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V. Read this white
paper to find out how the Dell virtualization solution is both
cost-effective and easy to manage, and it ensures high
availability with enterprise performance and stability.
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