ERIC BRUNO'S BLOG

Java: The Daily Grind.

February 2008

Recently, I spoke with Kevin Schmidt of Sun Microsystems regarding Open ESB, a community-driven open-source ESB used by Sun and other companies. Sun contributed Open ESB to the community under the CDDL license years ago, and uses it as the basis for its JBI reference implementation, as well as its Java Composite Application Platform Suite of applications (JCAPS or Java CAPS).

Currently, all of Sun's ESB-based development is being done in Open ESB, with code and features being made to the community first, and then used as part of its commercial products. Although led by Sun, the Open ESB community is currently at over 500 members, most of whom are individuals. However, some of them are other corporations who build products around Open ESB, from binding components to integrate with other applications, to JBI-compliant products. Overall, there are over 30 non-Sun code contributors to the Open ESB project. Contributions range from binding components and adapters, to other unique components such as connectors for RSS feeds, SIP components, and XMPP interfaces to instant messaging systems.

Recent releases of Open ESB have aligned it more with both GlassFish and NetBeans. In fact, Open ESB plugs into both of the seamlessly, and all they leverage each other's functionality. For example, Open ESB and the core JBI runtime (including binding components and engines) are released as part of Glassfish. Developers now have a new way to seamlessly integrate SOA-based components into their applications, as wall as a way to build new web services. The tooling required to do so has since been folded into NetBeans; no longer does it require a separate download of what was the NetBeans Enterprise Pack. This allows you to work not only with Java, but also XSD, WSDL, and BPL within NetBeans to build, deploy, and consume web services and other SOA components.

This strategy has resulted in a large increase in awareness of Open ESB, as well as adoption of Sun's commercial products built around it, such as Java CAPS. This serves as a real-world example of how open-source initiatives have been leveraged to result in an increase in commercial business (to license the technology).

Future of Open ESB

Java Business Integration (JBI) is a standard with a reference implementation that describes an enterprise-wide architecture and implementation around SOA. It includes the use of an ESB at its heart for global integration and communication. The expert group for JBI 2 was formed around nine-months ago, and all of the reference implementation for it will be done through the Open ESB project. New capabilities will include:
-Integration with instant messaging (IM) communication systems
-RSS feed integration
-Support for intelligent event processing and complex event processing for event-driven systems
-More GlassFish and NetBeans alignment. For instance, Glassfish V3 includes a modular, profile-driven, application server. Open ESB will be part of one of these profiles
-Support for a growing number of languages
-Service engines being built for other languages such as BPL, XSLT, and now Ruby, JavaScript, and PHP

Other things to watch include Open ESB's alignment with Java CAPS version 6, to be released next quarter, as well as a new sub-suite within Java CAPS around ETL and master data management. Overall, Sun is promising extreme transparency into its commercial product roadmaps via the related open-source development projects.

Happy coding!
-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 04:04 PM  Permalink |

Microsoft's recent acquisition activity brings to it a lot of Java-based software, expertise, as well as a large Java-focused customer base.

In January, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Fast (www.fastsearch.com), a company that sells a Java-based search engine to OEM partners (see http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205602306&queryText=Fast+Search). Today, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206401789&queryText=danger) Danger (www.danger.com), a company that sells a Java-based platform for mobile devices, such as the T-Mobile SideKick (see http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Detail.aspx?device=154e9bca-a74c-4299-99eb-48a1159c922b).

Presumably, Microsoft is aiming to take Google head-on in both the enterprise search space, and the mobile platform space. That makes sense, given the tremendous growth and potential in those areas. Never mind the possibilities of new markets around the end-to-end integration of the two. Imagine the up-side of a combined enterprise middleware, desktop OS, and mobile OS strategy with an integrated hardware platform!

The interesting part of this is the amount of Java code that Microsoft acquires with these deals. All of the enterprise code in Fast's products is based on Java, along with the Danger mobile platform. This also brings with it an installed base of integrated OEM and third-party Java-based applications, and the associated Java developer communities. In my opinion, Microsoft has no choice but to support and enhance this Java-based strategy. What else can they do; switch to C# and alienate both companies' customers and developers? Doing this can conceivably destroy the value and hence the strategy behind the acquisition of these companies in the first place.

Instead, what I think we're witnessing is Microsoft's embrace of Java to gain traction in areas of the Web 2.0 world where it has not been able to get to with .Net and C#. I, for one, am very interested to see how this will play out; I would expect this to spark the beginning of a new stage of Java growth in the industry.

Happy coding!

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 03:58 PM  Permalink |

SpringSource has purchased Covalent Technologies, a leader in support and services for Apache software projects.

Two weeks ago, MySQL was acquired by Sun. This week, Covalent Technologies has been acquired. It shows that there is true value in free and open-source software (FOSS). I once heard that asking how companies make money "giving away" open-source software is like asking how companies make money with the Internet. They make money by using it. In the FOSS world, companies make money through the services and support opportunities that surround the software.

The CEOs of both companies discuss the both the acquisition and the rapid rise and adoption of Spring and Tomcat on their respective blogs, found at (http://blog.springsource.com/ and http://blog.covalent.net/roller/covalent/). You can also read the press release at http://www.springsource.com/web/guest/2008/covalentaquisition.

Some interesting facts about the acquisition:
-64% of corporate enterprises worldwide run Tomcat
-93% of enterprises that run Spring also run Tomcat
-Both companies have a very large presence with Fortune 500 companies

Posted by Eric Bruno at 04:31 PM  Permalink |

The Transactions Platform group at Reuters chose Sun's Java RTS for its next generation trading system platform.

When predictability and low latency are important issues to you, more so than performance and throughput, solutions based on the Real-Time Specification for Java are for you. Sun and IBM are currently the only vendors that offer true real-time Java implementations. However, both vendors have their own slants on the implementation of the specification; IBM bundles the software with their hardware; Sun is much more flexible but until recently has only supported Solaris. Sun is adding Linux support; see http://www.ddj.com/java/206101018 for more information.

Reuters has chosen Sun's implementation based on their latency numbers (max latency of 10 to 20 microseconds for no-heap real-time threads), and guaranteed predicability. Regardless of which vendor was ultimately chosen, the victory goes to Java, as it is now proving itself in the few remaining areas traditionally reserved for C/C++ development. Companies are discovering that they can leverage their Java programmer talent and code-base in low latency, deterministic applications, such as data-feed processing and order processing.

“Reuters Group has a wide range of systems that use Java technology as part of the solution to deliver core services to our customers. We wanted a Java technology-based solution that could address our demanding, and growing, requirements for predictability and low-latency, as well as enable us to leverage our existing code base and Java technology expertise. We look forward to working with Sun as we deploy the Sun Java Real-Time System as part of our market-facing projects,” said Andrew Cunningham, Global Head of Transactions Platform Group, Sales & Trading Division at Reuters. “

To read more about this, see http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080204/20080204005482.html?.v=1

Happy coding!
-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 06:04 PM  Permalink |