News

News from JavaOne: Borland joins JTC

• By Rich Seeley
• June 28, 2004

On the first day of JavaOne 2004, Borland Software is announcing that it is joining Sun, Oracle, BEA and other vendors of the Java Tools Community (JTC).

Borland held back from joining the JTC when it was formed in January to “promote tool-friendly Java technology” but now will be a “core member,” the highest level of membership, according to the announcement by the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based software company.

Borland held back because the JTC’s goals were initially unclear, according to a company spokesman.

“JTC came into being six months ago and at that time it was pretty confusing, it wasn’t clear what its role was,” Lax Sakalkale, senior product line manager for development tools at Borland, told ADT on the eve of the announcement at JavaOne. “Now, the committee has clarified the role, which is for JTC to act as a liaison to JCP [Java Community Process]. So JTC is becoming a discussion forum for interoperability issues, ‘toolability’ issues, making sure the standards coming out will help the tools and the customer.”

As Borland now understands it, the JTC will discuss the creation, adoption and advancement of Java Specification Requests (JSRs) for toolability and interoperability in the development community. The JTC’s goal is to foster a process where tools vendors, customers and developers have input into the creation and extension of Java standards within JCP.

Along with IBM, Borland had been notably absent among major Java technology vendors when this latest attempt to foster a gentler Java was formed with key members, including BEA Systems, Compuware, Embarcadero Technologies, Iopsis Software, JetBrains, Oracle Corp., Quest Software, SAP AG, SAS and Sun Microsystems Inc.

The emerging customer and developer focus of the JTC was what led Borland to decide to take a leading role in the new organization, Sakalkale said.