This week we take an unexpected detour to discuss some important developments in the evolution of our patron language. Sun's New Java Thrust
If you haven't checked out java.sun.com for a few weeks, you'll be surprised to learn that Sun Microsystems is unveiling its second major thrust with Java. It's a big one, at least in the scope of its ambitions, with potentially far-reaching implications. New software and (surprise) new hardware have been released.
Perhaps many of you heard about the prototype "Java chip," implementing the JVM in hardware, being shown off at trade shows here and there by the Sun team. If you've asked yourself why anyone would want to build such a thing, your question has now been answered. We've already said that one of Sun's professed original motivations for developing Java was as part of a control system for device automation--in phones, appliances, PDAs, and the like. The Web-based applications, supposedly, came later. Now it's attempting to extend its reach into the workstation market.
Sun has released specifications for, and may already be selling small quantities of, something it's calling the JavaStation--a "thin client" workstation in a refurbished version of the old client-server model. Companioned with other Sun server products (Sun is now marketing the "Netra J"), they're designed to be simple, interchangeable network computers that are lean, efficient, and centrally administrated. Containing no hard drives, only a modest amount of RAM, and an operating system in Flash memory, these may be reminiscent of X-Terminals, but with some interesting differences.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of an X-Terminal, it is little more than the text terminals many of us have had to cope with when attached to the clunkier mainframes of old. The primary difference (the one with the visceral appeal) is that instead of just handling text, X-Terminals also designed to manage a graphical user interface. All of the actual applications (as well as the OS itself) are, of course, still maintained on a server (which is usually connected via a network). The exchange between server and client is accomplished in an utterly abhorrent standard that has attached itself to the UNIX world like an alien parasite--X Windows.
Unlike X-Terminals, which incidentally did not make the splash in the computer industry some thought they might, JavaStations are, in a sense, real workstations. They actually pull applications from a server and execute them independently. They do not need to contact their server for every click or drag of the mouse. They do, however, rely on the server tremendously, for example, for permanent storage of applications and data. Overall, this amounts to a redefinition of the boundaries between client and server, and, by initial inspection, it's a very good one.
The highly laudable goal of this approach is increased simplicity. JavaStations would theoretically take little time to set up and far less time to administer. Ideally, they could be treated as interchangeable parts. The main focus of administration would be with the server.
The stations carry their own simple operating system--called JavaOS--which would contain a JVM with some refinements, as well as the "native" hardware- and graphics-related routines for the station itself. In practice, these stations would run an extremely simplified user environment (Sun is pushing something called HotJava Views) that allows for easy navigation through the facilities the server makes available to it. Things like Web browsers, e-mail clients, and word processors, written in Java, are already available.
Sun envisions these workstations replacing text terminals in "process" office venues, becoming the new hardware of choice for telephone company operators, catalog salespeople, and 911 operators around the world--in places where people don't (and never did) require the full power of a real PC or UNIX workstation. Sun claims to be hard at work on tn3270 (an old IBM terminal standard) and X-Terminal emulators (in Java) to make transitioning to its equipment easier.
Psychologically speaking, it all makes sense: Sun is, after all, a high-end computer supplier and would be in tune with this particular (often lucrative) end of the market. All of this, from embedded systems to the JavaStation, are part of a strategy Sun calls The Java Platform. Ultimately, it's another very clever leveraging of the Java technology on its part, and one with at least a good potential for success.
Yet, after all this, there's more news still. The new version of the JDK (1.1, in beta) is now available for download. Contained within is a virtual avalanche of new features and bug fixes, some good, some bad, and some ugly. Topping our list of worthwhile improvements are a complete rewrite of the AWT and a standard way to enclose all the files that comprise an applet into a quickly loadable archive file. We're just getting started. Coming in the next few weeks, we'll not only wrap up that pesky applet, but start examining all the features and foibles of the new Java in the detail it deserves. Stay tuned.
