Oracle and the Java community made relatively few new announcements at the annual JavaOne conference last week, but a number of Java vendors did. Three announcements from local companies stood out for me at this year's show:.
Hazelcast, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of an open-source, In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) solution by the same name, made big news at the show with the launch of its JCache implementation. Hazelcast 3.3.1 JCache, which is the JCache-compatible version of Hazelcast, is now drop-in "pin compatible" with Oracle's Coherence IMDG and Ehcache. Hazelcast CEO Greg Luck wrote the latter, which is one of the most widely used open-source Java caching solutions. Luck is also a co-author of the JCache spec, along with Brian Oliver, who architected Oracle Coherence. Coherence, Ehcache, and Hazelcast are the only JCache implementations currently available.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 7, 20140 comments
Is it possible that Larry Ellison's decision to step down as CEO of Oracle will mean we actually see more of him? He has made two appearances so far at the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week under his new titles of Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. Last year he bailed on his conference keynote to focus on the America's Cup, during which Oracle Team USA was staging an admittedly thrilling comeback. Attendees who traveled from...well, everywhere....and paid to see the guy were not sympathetic.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 1, 20140 comments
It's time again for the annual JavaOne gathering of Java jocks in San Francisco for a week of drink…I mean, learning and networking. I kid, but that's because the anxiety over how well this touchstone event would weather its assimilation by Oracle OpenWorld has largely dissipated. For all intents and purposes, JavaOne continues to survive with its identity intact.
The primary venues for this year's event, which runs from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2, are the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the Parc 55 Wyndam, but some related events are scheduled for the Nikko Hotel. (My feet ache already.) The annual Strategy Keynote is set for Sunday afternoon at the north hall of the Moscone Center, the event's former home. The usual suspects will be on hand: Georges Saab, Peter Utzschneider, Cameron Purdy, and John Duimovich. Mark Reinhold will again give the Technical Keynote. The Community Keynote is set for Thursday morning.
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 24, 20140 comments
Ian Skerrett is probably best known for his role at the Eclipse Foundation as vice president of marketing, but for the past two-plus years he's also been leading the Eclipse effort to foster an open-source community around the Internet of Things (IoT).
"If you look at the Internet today, it's run on open source," Skerrett told me. "Linux, Apache and open standards like HTTP are the building blocks. If we're really going to get an Internet of Things, we need a set of core building blocks that anyone can use to develop commercial or internal solutions."
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 17, 20140 comments
There's a difference between a bug and a flaw, and an impressive group of software security mavens thinks it's time to pay more attention to the latter. To shift some of the industry's focus away from finding implementation bugs and toward identifying common design flaws -- "the Achilles' heel" of security engineering -- the IEEE Computer Society has formed the Center for Secure Design (CSD).
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 2, 20140 comments
There's nothing like seeing the final agenda go up on a Web site to drive home the reality that you're chairing your first technology conference.
Gulp…
Fortunately for me, that agenda -- the one for our first ever App Dev Trends conference coming in December in Las Vegas -- is filled with workshops and sessions led by some of my favorite enterprise software experts, industry mavens, market watchers and serious codederos. I might be as nervous as a nerd at the prom about stepping onstage in my chairing duties (man, that simile brought up some bad memories), but I couldn't be more relaxed about our kick-ass presenter lineup.
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Posted by John K. Waters on August 20, 20140 comments
Java toolmaker ZeroTurnaround's software release automation tool, LiveRebel, is a little less live than it was a week ago. The company pulled the plug on the three-year-old sibling of its JRebel JVM plug-in (and newly birthed XRebel Java profiler). Company founder and CEO Jevgeni Kabanov, delivered the news in a blog post, though he says customers were contacted before he posted.
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Posted by John K. Waters on August 13, 20140 comments
Enterprise developers struggling with the challenges associated with mobile application development may not be settling on a single, one-size-fits-all tool or platform just yet, but they are approaching those challenges more strategically. That, according to IDC analyst Al Hilwa, writing in a recently published report: "Negotiating the Mobile Disruption: Approaches for Multiplatform Application Development."
Hilwa, who is a research director in IDC's Application Development Software group, told me that he's trying to be the voice of reason in this report, offering "concrete, realistic advice to enterprises."
He first states the obvious, that "the central problem in mobile application development is addressing the variety of platforms and devices that employees can bring into the enterprise in a productive and agile manner…"
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Posted by John K. Waters on August 7, 20140 comments
How are shifting consumer behaviors, new digital channels, application standards, and open source trends influencing current approaches to customer-facing software development? That's a big, scary question, but the panel of experts assembled to answer that question during Actuate's iHub F-Type launch in San Jose recently weren't intimidated in the least.
In fact, customer strategist Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder of ThinkJar, took issue with the title of the panel -- "Building the Next Big App" -- arguing that the next big app could very well be small.
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Posted by John K. Waters on July 28, 20140 comments