News

Web services flow from JavaOne

• By John K. Waters
• March 25, 2002

JavaOne has arrived early this year, and this week's annual Sun Microsystems Java jamboree is once again shaping up to be a major assault on castle Microsoft. Held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, JavaOne 2002 will make the case for Java over Microsoft and .NET as the platform of choice in the emerging world of Web services, observers said.

Sun and Microsoft have long been fierce antagonists, particularly over Java, and are currently competing head-to-head for the hearts and minds of Web services developers; as well, there is the court battle in which Sun alleges that the Redmond, Wash., software maker with anticompetitive behavior has harmed the development of Java.

Beyond the anti-Microsoft rhetoric, the 2002 conference promises to yield a host of new products from a host of suppliers, again with a pronounced emphasis on Web services. Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to use the JavaOne platform to unveil the HP Web Services Platform 2. Despite recent wrangling among its executives over the company's proposed merger with Compaq, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer maker has made its mark in the emerging Web services world with a new tools suite designed to allow developers to create Web services and tie them into Java-based applications on the HP app server. The suite includes a server for handling SOAP messages and tools for creating services and registering them in a UDDI directory.

The growing importance of Web services has influenced this year's developer sessions, as well. Attendees will find a new Web services track, with nearly 70 technical sessions and 46 birds of a feather events. (BOFs are informal gab sessions between attendee developers and Sun software engineers.) The goal of these sessions is to give developers a leg up in using the most recent Java APIs with emerging Web services protocols, such as SOAP. The next-largest track focuses on J2EE, with 52 sessions and 40 informal meetings.

Last year's event, held in June, drew an estimated 20,000 attendees to Moscone. Event promoters are expecting attendance at this year's event to equal last year's. The conference runs through Friday.