At JavaOne: Sun's Schwartz says WS-I 'slowing down' next J2EE release -- ADTmag

At JavaOne: Sun's Schwartz says WS-I 'slowing down' next J2EE release

By ADT Staff
June 11, 2003

[San Francisco, Calif. - Updated] - In a JavaOne kick-off with a decidedly different tenor than last year's conference, Sun's Jonathan Schwartz yesterday discussed plans to take the company's flagship Java brand deeper into the cell phone and consumer markets.

"We were early and successful in getting Java into phone devices" said Schwartz, who described the company's goal to launch a "Java Powered" branding program that will make Java technology more visible to consumers using cell phones and PDAs. Reports indicated pop singer Christina Aguilera may take part in the program to convince consumers to buy multi-faceted Java cell phones.

Said Schwartz on the Java branding plan: "We want the Java brand to start to mean 'This lets you do more.'" For the consumer, he indicated, Sun will blur the differences between J2EE, J2ME and J2SE, though the differences will remain obvious and necessary for developers.

At the press conference, Schwartz took the place often held by Sun CEO Scott McNealy, who, for his part, will address the Java throng this Friday at the conference end. Last year, McNealy focused on developers' issues, unveiling an agreement to work more closely with the Apache Software Foundation Java standards.

Also last year, McNealy challenged Java developers to help ensure that the XML standard for data interchange was not "hijacked" by software giant Microsoft. The issue seems to still be a niggling one for Sun, as Schwartz took the occasion of this JavaOne press conference to defend the Java Community Process (JCP) and criticize a prominent XML-Web services effort headed by Microsoft, IBM and others, including Sun.

Schwartz indicated Sun was waiting to move ahead with new versions of Java, in order to gain a good fit with Web services standards. "Democracies are a little less effective than dictatorships. But in this case, WS-I [Web Services Interoperability Organization] is slowing down the next release of J2EE," Schwartz asserted.