Baratz Tells the Java Success Story
Why JavaTM has gained enormous momentum in the last year
By Erica Rex, JavaWorldTM
JavaWorldTM talked to Dr. Alan Baratz, president of JavaSoftTM, who will present the April 2 opening keynote speech at JavaOneSM. (He will share the floor with James Gosling, Vice President and Sun Fellow, Sun Microsystems.) Baratz is in charge of developing, marketing, and supporting Java-based products to customers worldwide. He oversees JavaSoft's efforts to create application tools and services that will enhance and promote Java's capabilities."The first thing I want to do is remind the 9,000 programmers who will be attending the conference of the reasons JavaTM is so important," said Baratz. "The first reason: Java is the universal fuel for computing. Imagine if the computer industry made cars. If you drove a Microsoft car, you'd be driving around looking for a Microsoft gas station. If you drove an Apple car, you'd look for an Apple gas station. Fortunately for us, the computer industry doesn't make cars. We can use the same gas in any kind of car. With Java, you can write an application one time and it will run with any OS on any microprocessor."
Dr. Alan Baratz is President of JavaSoft at Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
Baratz continued: "The second reason for Java's importance -- Java is the only way to practice safe computing. When you download a Java applet or application, Java runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine*) on your local device. Programs have no access to local system resources. No viruses can corrupt your local memory or your local file system."
These core values that make Java such a useful programming tool are what's driving its momentum. According to a Gilder report (an industry newsletter), there are about 400,000 serious Java developers worldwide. JavaSoft's numbers underscore Gilder's. Since it was made available a month ago, 300,000 copies of the latest Java Development Kit (JDKTM 1.1) have been downloaded from JavaSoft's Web site.
Added to its programming advantages, "Java delivers value," said Baratz. "It supports things like supply-chain integration: the ability for business information systems and applications to be linked with suppliers upstream and clients downstream." On the part of developers, "It's been proven over and over again that developers write applications two to ten times faster in Java than they do in other languages. That's because they don't have to write three different versions of every program -- one for the Macintosh, one for Windows, and one for UNIX."
Enterprise Java Security and Safety Standardized Java Moving from Client to Device
Baratz predicted: "We think that this year Java will emerge as a
common, consistent programming environment from the smallest Smart Card
all the way up to the largest enterprise server."
Smart Cards will be everywhere. Said Baratz: "I think Smart Card
readers are going to live everywhere: from the door to your house to the
door to your office, and from your PC to your laptop to the ATM
machine. Gem Plus and Schlumberger collectively own 70% of the Smart
Card market, and they have both licensed Java to be the operating
system platform for their Smart Cards."
"Similar developments are happening in the cell phone market: Nokia, Alcatel,
and Nortel among others are all working on Java applications," Baratz said.
*As used on this web site, the terms "Java virtual machine" or "JVM" mean a virtual machine for the Java platform.
During his keynote, Baratz will announce 'Enterprise JavaBeans
"For example," Baratz continued, "if I wanted to write a financial
application, I could create a 'credit' Java Bean, a 'debit' Java Bean,
and an 'account transfer' Java Bean, and those would all work well
together. They can run on any machine, and they can run on any database
I happen to have installed on that machine. I don't have to worry
about the fact that on one machine there's an Oracle database and on
another there's an Informix database."
Baratz points out: "No other language besides Java has ways to prevent
introduction of viruses to the filesystem. However, Java has been a
little restrictive on the access that the application has
to the filesystem and the network. We will be announcing some
significant enhancements to the Java security model that open up access
to the filesystem in the network while maintaining security," said
Baratz. "There is some exciting new technology that makes this
possible."
Baratz will also discuss Java's application to ISO to be a submitter of
publicly-available standards. "This allows us to get mature pieces of
the Java platform endorsed by ISO, while at the same time continuing to
follow the same open process that Sun has followed up to this time to
define and enhance the platform," said Baratz.
"1996 was the year of the client, and the big focus was on the desktop
and enabling creation of interactive front ends for client-sides to
various applications in the enterprise. 1997 will be the year where we
go beyond the client, reaching down to personal systems like set-top
boxes, smart phones , embedded systems such as
HVAC systems, pagers, printers, fax machines, all the way down to Smart
Cards," said Baratz.
Java By the Numbers
JavaSoft's fast facts
prove that the Java
revolution is well under way.
Resources
March 31, 1997
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