Continuing (Part I) with the remaining features of Tiger release of J2SE:
Read on if you believe the analysts…
Grid Computing Adoption Rises by 75% in Six Months; Huge Growth in Business Intelligence Mirrors Grid Computing Rise in Adoption.
Google Inc. today announced it acquired Picasa, Inc., a Pasadena, Calif.-based digital photo management company.
“Picasa enables users to easily manage and share digital photographs, and its technologies complement Google’s ongoing mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Picasa was founded in October 2001. In May 2004, Picasa announced a technology partnership with Google’s Blogger service to make publishing digital photos with Blogger faster and easier. Further product integration plans have not been announced. Picasa users will not experience any interruption in service.
The Enterprise Grid Alliance was launched, with a strong focus on “Grid for the Enterprise”. Now, The GGF is focusing on the enterprise as well. The Twelfth Global Grid Forum has a plenary program with the theme of “Grids Deployed in the Enterprise”.
Now, It’s Grid Computing’s turn to go into war of words, standards, proposals for the same technology. Seen this before? Anybody?
Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.5 (“Tiger”) is the next major revision to the Java platform and language; it is currently slated to contain 15 component JSRs with nearly 100 other significant updates developed through the Java Community Process (JCP).
New features:
Rest of the features in Part II of this entry.
Sun announces a new initiative to help people buy into Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Find, assemble and deliver applications based on a services-oriented architecture using Java Web services. As part of Kitty Hawk, Java Enterprise System is intended to simplify administration, management, security, and provisioning of services in an SOA. For example, a Java Enterprise System registry will provide centralized control of services, versioning, metadata management, services registration, and lookup, according to Sun.
Featured components in Java Enterprise System are identity services, Web and application services, portal, communication and collaboration, availability services, and security.
Sun announced the JDNC at 2004 JavaOne Conference.
via JDNC
The goal of the JDesktop Network Components (JDNC) project is to significantly reduce the effort and expertise required to build rich, data-centric, Java desktop clients for J2EE-based network services. These clients are representative of what enterprise developers typically build, such as SQL database frontends, forms-based workflow, data visualization applications, and the like.
JDNC leverages the power of J2SE and Swing while providing a higher level API, as well as an optional XML markup language, which enables common user-interface functionality to be constructed more quickly, without requiring extensive Swing or GUI programming skill. Additionally, JDNC simplifies the task of connecting a rich client to a J2EE backend, including JDBC and WebServices.
Recognizing the broad range of developer skill-sets and predilections, JDNC has been constructed in 3 distinct layers that can be used independently or together. These layers are reflected as JDNC sub-projects so that each can evolve at its own pace. From bottom to top:
Swing Extensions: APIs which extend Swing to provide key features required by data-centric applications (sorting, filtering, data-binding, asynchronous data-loading, etc); makes life easier for Swing developers. The APIs are defined in the org.jdesktop.swing package.
JDNC API: Higher level Swing based components that leverage the Swing Extensions, but provide a simplified JavaBeans API for common functions, provide attractive default visuals, usability features, and data-binding out of the box; usable by developers who may not know Swing. These component APIs are contained in the org.jdesktop.jdnc package.
JDNC Markup Language: A simple, extensible XML-based markup language that enables developers to configure JDNC based clients using XML and deploy them either as Java Web Start applications or as applets in a standard browser. The XML markup language is specified using a Schema (.xsd) and the tag library API used to implement the schema is defined in the org.jdesktop.jdnc.markup package.
RAX provides direct access to the data your application needs with near-zero parsing and other processing overhead. You identify the data you need through a set of XPaths and RAX indices into the source document for each matched XPath node. The processing that accomplishes this is done by Tarari’s RAX Content Processor, a device which snaps into the server or appliance’s standard PCI slot. Not only is the Tarari XML hardware much faster than software, but it also leaves the CPU free for other tasks. Your XML application can use the XPath node results directly or further traverse the document using the XPath indices as short-cut access points.
As quoted on Tarari’s website–Tarari’s XML Content Processor is the first “soft silicon” solution to dramatically reduce the cost of developing, deploying and reconfiguring XML and Web Services solutions. Based on standard hardware (PCI) and software interfaces, the XML Content Processor features optimized parallel searches and algorithmic acceleration for deep-content analysis on any part of an XML document.
The Finnish Technology Award Foundation describes the selection of Tim Berners-Lee by unanimous vote of the International Award Selection Committee as recipient of the first Millennium Technology Prize.
The Finnish Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every other year for innovation based on scientific research in any of four disciplines: Health Care and Life Sciences, Communications and Information, New Materials and Processes, and Energy and the Environment. It is a technology award granted “for outstanding technological achievements that directly promote people’s quality of life, are based on humane values, and encourage sustainable economic development.”
Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate of Oxford University, England, “holds the 3Com Founders chair at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).” Berners-Lee created the first server, browser, and protocols central to the operation of the Web: the URL address, HTTP transmission protocol and HTML code. Currently Berners-Lee directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT, in Boston.
He was born in London, UK in 1955 and graduated from Oxford University in the UK. In 2003, Berners-Lee was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his pioneering work.
At OracleWorld in Fall 2003 Oracle proposed a commercial grid consosrtium with an enterprise focus. Well, we already have GGF.
Why another one?
Quoted in the press–Chuck Rozwat, Oracle EVP for server technologies, told OracleWorld attendees that the company is “interested in forming a commercial Grid consortium so that, together with other members of the industry, we can define standards that make up the APIs and functions for the commercial Grid computing infrastructure.
The alliance was formally launched on 20th April, 2004.
On Board is:EMC, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, Intel, NEC, Network Appliance, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Other founding members include AMD, Ascential Software, Cassatt, Citrix, Data Synapse, Enigmatec, Force 10 Networks, Novell, Optena, Paremus and Topspin.