It was only a year ago that I predicted Java's demise as a standardised platform unless Sun Microsystems reclaimed and defended it. Back then, the market didn't see Java. It saw BEA Systems Java, IBM Java and Oracle Java; despite Sun's spin, everyone knew that portability was as much a pipe dream as Sun's leadership.
"Write once, run anywhere" can be real now in more than a rhetorical sense. Sun got serious about creating easy public access to reference implementations that showed the depth of the Java specs. Now we know that Java, from phones to servers, is rich enough to get things done all by itself. With deeper specs and public awareness of their effectiveness, commercial Java licensees will now set themselves apart through tools, management, and scalability instead of through bastardisations of the Java foundations that ought to be consistent. Vendors can no longer claim that Sun's specifications are, as they once were, functionally inadequate. After all, if Apache, JBoss and other public projects can make Java work straight along the lines of the specs, there is no reason big players can't do it. Opening up Java for real has put Sun back in control.
The other long-unfulfilled Java promise relates to the value of pure Java applications as anything more than Sun marketing. The rapid advancement of Java client and mobile standards and implementations, spearheaded by Sun and other vendors involved in the Java Community Process, means that pure Java mobile, client and server apps can run on all validated mobile, client and server Java run times. The Eclipse open source development environment is pure Java, as are Java dev tools from Borland and Sun. Both vendors practiced the pure Java doctrine by moving their commercial tools to OS X, although Sun came to the party late and, some have said, reluctantly. There is more to the OS X/Java story, but it's best left to my weblog.
The Nokia/Java story is far more interesting. The phone maker has done a complete overhaul of its developer program, its developer tools and the implementation of Java on its handsets. Nokia is making good on the Java Everywhere theme by planting Java run-time code on new handsets across the product line, all the way down to the free consumer phones that come with new service. At JavaOne, Nokia handed out a trio of CDs loaded with alluring development tools and documentation, and relaunched its forum.nokia.com community site.
I am more hopeful than ever about Java as an end-to-end, consistent and open set of platform standards. But I can still see the half-empty glass. Sun's vulnerabilities remain its historic inability to stay on one course, the beastly complexity of Java APIs, and the need to turn java.com and java.net into one-stop shops for developers at all levels of experience. IT also needs details on the benefits of specific Java components. Its current view of Java as a vendor-enabling technology instead of a business-enabling technology is impeding Java's progress.
Sun has made itself the go-to vendor for its own technology — and not a moment too soon. Now Sun has to show that a Java app is written once to run anywhere, and that must mean Java apps run anywhere the user chooses, not anywhere Sun chooses. The days of seeing WebSphere or Oracle Application Server listed in an enterprise application's platform requirements had better be over. The requirements should just read, "Java".
Yager is technical director of the InfoWorld Test Centre