A Programmer's Personal Tour of JavaOne
Day Three: Java Rules in Outer Space, Inner Space, and ColorSpace
By Bret Sommers, JavaWorld
San Francisco (April 4, 1997) -- While in transit to my third and final day of JavaOne Today coverage, I was accosted on the BART train, somewhere in the transbay tube, I think, by one of those annoying Luddite technophobes that eyeballs your Java paraphernalia, grimaces, then turns to you and says, "So, are you into them computers? Gee, I can't ever seem to get them darn things to work." I'm not exactly sure how these people function in contemporary society, but judging by the number of times I've politely endured this particular conversation, there must be a way. As the Walter Mitty in me envisioned strangling my inquisitor, attention deficit disorder kicked in and I began looking forward to the morning keynote, which focused on mission-critical, real-world applications of Java in the field of science.
I chuckled to myself as I recalled the disclaimers attached to the comment blocks of the original JDK source files, which stated something along the lines that if you used Java to control your nuclear reactor and it melted down, thereby inflicting massive radiation burns on nearby residents, Sun was not going to take responsibility for it. To my knowledge, that legalese is still in there, but it is going unheeded by Java pioneers from Lockheed Martin, Jet Propulsion Labs, and the Human Genome Project (HGP). Representatives from each of these organizations joined the contagiously bright Miko Matsumura, JavaSoft evangelist, in presenting Java-fueled demonstrations of monitoring and manipulating the Hubble space telescope, the space shuttle, the Mars land-rover, and the massive genetic information database of HGP.
Gregg Helt, a University of California scientist, demonstrated a sophisticated genotype database browsing application |
Gregg Helt, of the University of California at Berkeley, demonstrated the slick HGP GenoBrowser, showing how it enables scientists from around the world to collaborate on solving the mysteries of human genetics. As a lifetime sufferer of cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease, I could see the potential for this application of Java technology; indeed, the demo hit very close to home. Needless to say, I left the keynote ballroom with a feeling that I was involved in a community that was doing something important.
Back To Earth
Lest you think I am about to break out in a chorus of "Kumbaya" or
"We Are The World," let me turn my attention toward weightier
matters. I spent most of the final day of JavaOne attending technical
tracks in hopes of catching glimpses of new features in the Java
Electronic Commerce Framework, the Java Security APIs, and the Java
2D APIs. Though the sessions were light on code fragments and heavy
on bulleted presentations that reiterated what I had already perused on
JavaSoft's web site, I did get a better picture of the services each of
these efforts intends to provide and how I might use them in
constructing real systems for my clients.
Show Me The Money
The Java Electronic Commerce Framework (JECF) is focused on
providing (you guessed it) an electronic commerce framework for
adding secure financial transaction protocols and interfaces to Java
applets and applications. The client side of JECF, the Java Wallet,
looks and functions much like the CyberCash wallet; in it you store
your various forms of identification and credit cards. Using the Java
Wallet, payments can be made to Internet vendors, who themselves can
extend the Java Wallet's functionality by building dynamically-
loadable "cassettes."
An example JECF cassette from a Charles Schwab or an E*Trade might provide interfaces, protocols, and operations for manipulating a personal stock portfolio. Since the Java Wallet is integrated under a common set of APIs, JECF cassettes can interoperate, thereby allowing that stock portfolio cassette to charge new stock purchases to your Visa card. Payments on these purchases can be triggered automatically by a third (also fictitious) Quicken cassette. JECF white papers are available now on the JavaSoft web site. An alpha release of JECF will be available for download "some time next week."
What, Me Worry?
Obviously, security is an important aspect of any system that conducts
commerce across the insecure Internet cloud. In a Friday morning
session, Benjamin Renaud, JavaSoft security engineer, provided a road
map of the new security features of the JDK 1.1. As with the JECF,
JavaSoft's intention for the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) is to
provide open interfaces on which tools and service vendors can build.
Due to the ludicrous U.S. munitions export rules that govern cryptography technology export, the JCA has been split into two versions -- an internationally-sanitized version and a set of extensions, dubbed the Java Cryptography Extensions. All of the usual crypto message digest and encryption algorithms are supported, including MD5, SHA, DSA, RSA, and RC5. Since some of these algorithms are patented (notably the RSA algorithms), the Java Security APIs allow for pluggable "providers" whose algorithms can be licensed optionally.
Applets and other bytecode can be digitally signed using the JDK 1.1 javakey tool, which is built on the JCA. These signatures, along with the applet's class files, can be packaged into a JAR file using the JDK 1.1 jar tool. Both HotJava and forthcoming releases of Netscape Communicator will provide fine-grained access control for signed applets, thereby allowing trusted applets to manipulate local resources such as file systems, and to bypass other security restrictions now imposed by the sandbox security model. More information about the Java Cryptography Architecture, the Java Crytography Extensions, and the JDK 1.1 signing tools can be found at JavaSoft's web site.
Even Degas Would Blush
The final session I attended today dealt with the new Java 2D imaging
APIs, which address the major shortcomings in Java's image rendering
capabilities. The new 2D APIs provide an extension to the AWT
Graphics object, called Graphics2D, and other AWT imaging classes
like Font and ColorModel. A slew of powerful new imaging classes are
introduced, including ColorSpace, Tile, and Channel. Using the
Java2D APIs, we are freed from the cumbersome ImageProducer and
ImageConsumer patterns and can now manipulate and address image
pixels directly. Impressive font rendering and antialiasing features
come with the 2D APIs, as do sophisticated tiling and color model
control.
It is unclear exactly how much overlap exists between the Java 2D APIs and the Netscape/Macromedia Fireworks APIs, but writing to the Java 2D APIs has the advantage of ensuring 100% Pure Java compliance, enabling your sizzling graphics work to be viewed in any Java-capable client. You can read more about the Java 2D APIs on JavaSoft's web site.
Java Developers Unite
In closing, I'll leave you with a soliloquy composed on about 4 hours of
REM sleep over the past three days (to be chanted in a staccato, thick
German accent, much like the Dana Carvey "Vee vill rule zee vorld!"
impression of Bill Gates):
Nationalism is an anachronism, and we are the elite soldiers of a brave new global information economy. The Cold War giants have beaten their swords not into plowshares, but Pentiums; traded their guns not for butter, but bits. In this new era of unbridled international capitalism, we are the Samurai, the Jedi knights, and the Spetznatz commandos of warring corporations, competing not for meters of scorched earth, but for multihued slices of market share pies projected onto boardroom walls. Java Developers of the World, let us unite, get to work, and Write the Code that will change the face of computing and memorialize us forever. For old hackers never die, they just become managers and fade away. . .
Ok, ok, I'll keep my day job. I hope you enjoyed my personal tour of
JavaOne. I'll see you all next spring at the third annual JavaOne,
which promises to be bigger and better than ever.
- Bret Sommers bret.sommers@javaworld.com
- Java Electronic Commerce Framework, http://java.sun.com/products/commerce/
- Java Cryptography Architecture and Security APIs, http://java.sun.com/security/
- Java 2D APIs, http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/2d/
Resources
|
|
| April 4, 1997 | Complete Contents |
