News

18th Annual JavaOne Spotlights Internet of Things

• By John K. Waters
• September 22, 2013

The 18th annual JavaOne conference got underway on Sunday in San Francisco. The five-day event draws attendees from around the world for educational sessions, product demos, vendor exhibits and all things Java. This year's technical tracks cover everything from the core platform to Java and the cloud, Java security to Java in Agile development, emerging languages on the Java Virtual Machine, to Embedded Java and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The event takes place in what organizers have dubbed "The Zone," which comprises the Hotel Nikko, Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Parc 55, and the surrounding area. This is the fourth year Oracle has held JavaOne concurrently with its OpenWorld conference, which takes place at the Moscone Center.

Oracle doesn't break out the registration numbers for each conference, but together the two events are expected to draw more than 60,000 attendees from more than 126 countries. Those attendees will be presented with more than 2,500 educational sessions; 400 product demos; and exhibits from 500 partners showcasing applications, middleware, databases, servers, storage systems, management systems and infrastructure.

The theme of this year's event remains unchanged from last year: "Make the Future Java."

"I think what everyone is looking for in this event is roadmap for Java," IDC analyst and JavaOne veteran Al Hilwa told ADTmag. "Java SE 8 is around the corner, and even though the scope has been cut down, there is still some tasty meat in there. Lambda for example: Java Developers, probably the largest group of developers that use a single programming language, will be able to enjoy functional programming capabilities. The ideas behind Lambda were around since the 1950s, but they have grown in importance ever since and it is nice to see this mathematical programming model go mainstream. I expect a lot of focus also on the embedded scenario, where Java is poised to up-level abstraction and productivity compared to C/C++. No doubt Oracle will be doing its best to make sure that there is an Internet of Java Things out there."

In fact, last year's event threw a spotlight on embedded Java with a conference within a conference and the unveiling of two new embedded Java products the week before: the Java ME Embedded client runtime and the Java Embedded Suite of development services. Embedded Java is in the spotlight again this year via IoT, which takes center stage on Thursday in a presentation by Freescale Semiconductor's general manager Geoff Lees: "How Java Will Unify the Internet of Things." Lees plans to talk about the role of Java in the resource-constrained-and-battery-operated devices that will make up the bulk of IoT, and will explain to attendees why Java technology "is the glue needed to connect all of these devices and topologies for the next wave of service providers."

Oracle also plans to demonstrate an IoT solution during the conference that tracks conference attendees anonymously at numerous locations. Called "IoT in Motion," it's a joint project of Oracle, Eurotech, Hitachi Communication Technologies America, and Hitachi Consulting. The movements of attendees of both conferences will be tracked from numerous locations throughout the venues with sensors. A Java SE app running on a gateway will send the data into a cloud, where it will be used to illuminate trends analyze traffic patterns.

This year's conference also gives attendees a better look at Java on the credit-card-sized single-board computer known as Raspberry Pi. "The Java Embedded Challenge for Raspberry Pi" gives attendees the chance to develop an application for the much-talked-about Raspberry Pi using Java Embedded over three days of the conference. The challenge will be "hands-on, collaborative, and innovative," conference organizers said.

Security gets its own track again at this year's conference -- not surprisingly, given much publicized problems that have left Web sites running the Java plugin vulnerable to malicious hackers and resulted in some high-profile security breaches. The list of 40 security-focused sessions includes "Top 10 Web Application Defenses for Java Developers," "Anatomy of a Java Zero-Day Exploit," Don't Be That Guy! Developer Security Awareness," "Securing Java in the Server Room" and "Securing You Native Code," among others. There's also an application security industry expert panel, featuring Milton Smith from Oracle's Security PM, Michael Coates from the Mozilla Foundation's Security Assurance, Frank Kim from the SANS Institute and Jim Manico from WhiteHat Security.

This year's strategy/technical keynote was scheduled for Sunday at Moscone North, and featured presentations by Mark Reinhold, chief architect in Oracle's platform group; Cameron Purdy, VP of Oracle's Cloud Application Foundation; Nandini Ramani, VP of development in Oracle's Java Platform group; and Peter Utzschneider, VP of Oracle's product management group.

This year's partner keynote, also on Sunday, was delivered by an IBMer: Distinguished engineer John Duimovich, Big Blue's Java CTO, talked about why "it's a great time to be a developer" in a keynote entitled "Java Flies in Blue Skies and Open Clouds."

The Community keynote wraps up the conference on Thursday, as in years past. Attendees will hear from Stephen Chin, Java Technology Ambassador and JavaOne Content Chair; Donald Smith, senior director of Java Product Management; and Henrik Stahl, VP of Java Product Management. All work at Oracle.