JavaOne 2009 Notes I

I’m covering these events in my capacity as a blogger; here in the press room, the consensus is that this is JavaOne’s last go-around. I have no inside information and not even a guess, so this is 100% fact-free speculation, but Oracle does have a track record of rolling in the trade shows of the companies they buy: BEA, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and so on. I’d probably be in favor, just because I know the crushing load that this kind of shindig puts on insiders to get their wares ready to show; I’m not sure you could do this more than once a year, effectively.

Also, I like both large and small tech-geek-fests. But for the big ones, bigger is better; so I say mix the database gaggle and the biz-apps posse and the Java tribe in one behavioral sink and let’s see what comes out the drain. [Curb that metaphor, Tim! -Ed.]

CommunityOne · This one has been fun throughout its brief life. I was there talking the cloud talk and walking the cloud walk. Here’s Steve O’Grady of RedMonk leading a session on “Cloud Standards”; an cloudy subject indeed.

The other big deal (bigger, really, since it’s actually, you know, shipping) is OpenSolaris 2006.9. I see OpenSolaris as a big win for people who are deploying server-side apps, what with Crossbow and all those DTrace hooks. I don’t fully understand all the work those guys are putting into media handling and other end-user fit-&-finish, but they seem to be doing a good job of it.

Speaking of fun, CommunityOne brought in the Extra Action Marching Band to dance around the trade-show floor and into the party; I’d hire those guys for any show I was putting on. I took too many pictures (not the first time, either).

JavaOne Opens · The JavaOne people haven’t forgotten how to create a sense of occasion; this year, as the attendees filed in (less than last year, but still lots of ’em), there was a hot DJ laying down a drums & bass beat.

I took a video of the video of the DJ, with my Android phone.

The keynote presentation started kind of slow, I thought. Yes, it was interesting to hear about what EBay and Verizon are doing; and if Verizon is really going to open things up, that’s a radical step. But still, there wasn’t terribly much real new-technology excitement. The Java Store is interesting, but for business not technology reasons.

Of course, the real sense of occasion came when Scott McNealy got up on stage with Gosling and the tone became valedictory; much dealing out of well-deserved thanks to the many who’ve been contributing to this now-fourteen-year-old story. T-shirts were once again launched.

Then Larry Ellison was on stage. His cameo appearance was mostly a Java love-fest; essentially everything Oracle ships, except for the core database code, is Java-based.

He said some things that were news-worthy. One was an extended plug for JavaFX. This was amplified in two directions: First, a specific call-out to use FX in the OpenOffice context; and second, a fairly pointed put-down of Ajax. Then, there was some discussion of Android. I’m not 100% sure whether he was viewing it as a competitor for JavaFX or as a tool to extend Java’s reach; but it was interesting that Android has visibility at this level.

Early days yet; it’ll be fun to watch this play out.

Scott left the stage with a heartfelt “Good-bye and thank you” and the sadness hung thick in the air, even as the audience rose to applaud.

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