11th Year of JavaOne, emits more light on SOA, Webservices and .Net with interoperability sessions occupying rooms in between. Most of the SOA, webservices and .Net sessions including subject interoperability were completely full with audience. For the first time, SOA was seen gaining much momentum in the general developer community. Sessions typically concentrated on SOA models. However for SOADevelopers, it committed not many, except for some occasional sessions like SOA Programming model, which did not dive deep anyway. The lump in today’s world of SOA is there are more conceptual modelers who do not speak a developer’s language, while developers are battling management pressures against performance problems, standardizations in document transfers and abstraction within application interfaces. Without this, it would never be a service based model. May it be, but the age of the entities working as independent domain services has arrived. Regulatories will demand the second coming of the SOA. There is no other way except “be-SOA.”

The five days of the JavaOne conference held at Mascone between May 15th to 18th raised dust with software engineers and professionals arriving from distant lands crossing oceans. Beginning with the keynote address, CEO & President Jonathan Schwartz called for openness. Said he is open.
After the crippled open source “movement” for the past two years, by statements like “Open source is dead” coming from open source leaders, this is like getting some fresh air for the community of open source. As was evident, this is simply "the largest JavaOne in the 11-year history. 15000 java enthusiasts warmed up the arena scrolling through display booths, attending sessions, having heated discussions at Birds of-a-feather sessions.
The not so noticeable reduction in booths, at the pavilion could only bee seen as the filtering of core products which finally survived after downfalls in economy and competitions.
Being an attendee for the past 5 years, this year, we see a major thrust in the mobile computing area. Considerable number of high powered WAP devices ha sprouted.
Here are the numbers mobile devices in general. 1 BN+ high-capability cell phones are expected to ship over the next one year. Please note the statement. As wireless broadband, personalized entertainment, and peer-to-peer communication continue to merge, mobile devices are experiencing an explosive period of growth and evolution -- and appear to be the next likely landing spot for such technologies. Ten times as many people bought cell phones in 2004 as bought personal computers. And there are now well over 500 million Java technology-enabled phones in the world -- with over 70 percent of wireless applications under construction using the Java technology runtime environment. Source: Sun Center

Rob Shaddock, corporate vice president and chief technology officer believes, most innovations, will come from "enabling technology." For example, advances in radio technology are on the brink of changing the way a mobile device connects with the Internet. Many devices are becoming multimodal and beginning to incorporate WiFi. Speed. This is also a factor. New high-speed data technologies such as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and 1x Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO) Rev A are bringing DSL-like speeds to the mobile device, causing carriers to optimize their networks for efficient low-latency delivery of data. Next-generation services such as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) take that one step further in performance and cost reduction. With a fast, direct connection to the Internet, these services will challenge the existing operator data services and create new opportunities for developers. The new challenge today, Mr. Shaddock states there is a challenge within developers to keep up with the pace of development of mobile devices. Today, these devices not only enable voice communication but have become de-facto mobile device to manage and share your content and interact with the digital environment.

One interesting display was the Autonomous Dune Buggy, powered with java technology. The java technology vehicle, a research project of the Defense Research Projects Agency(DARPA) was getting great attraction. DARPA grand challenge is a race of unmanned, autonomous vehicles across California desert. DARPA, a forward-looking research agency funded by the pentagon, sponsors the grand challenge to foster innovation in robotic vehicles unmanned by 2015.
Read about it here.
Slot car racing programming challenges contests was interesting. Driven by Real Time Specification for Java ( JSR-01), was fun filled demo.

The SOA Arena.
In all there were 118 technical, BOF and general sessions. There were considerably more SOA sessions which appeared to be focusing on business integration and processes within enterprises.
Some titles of the sessions were thus:-
· What Is Happening With SOA in Open Source?
· Travel Web Services: Marrying Business Innovation with Java™ Technology
· (This concentrated on Travel industry and showcased ian.com)
· Service Component Architecture: Approach to Security, Transactions, and Policy
· Secure Interoperable Webservices Using XML Web Services Security 3.0
· Creating a Digital Ecosystem: Service-Oriented Architectures With Distributed Evolutionary Computing
· The SOA Programming Model – An Interesting session.
Sun’s clarity on open source is becoming clearer.
Many key pieces of an SOA runtime are already becoming available in open source. Various highlights brings together technical experts from Sun, JBoss, Logicblaze, ObjectWeb, Sonic Software, and Tuscany who are working on freely available SOA frameworks.
There was a session on OpenESB., attempting to explain practical SOA Business Integration. Sessions called for composable webservices and deployment. Spanned out of the JBI, JSR 208 session on OpenESB concentrated on developing and running a practical distributed JBI composed services application.
With JSR specifications, JBI, OpenESB and support from organizations, Sun is moving itself up the stack in providing a complete end to end solutions for an SOA.

Glances on some SOA products and complementary.

OpenESB
Based on JBI, Java Business Integration, spec JSR 208, the offering includes an OpenESB with which an SOA environment could be supposedly enabled. This would be a runtime with sample service engines. OpenESB would run on top of runtime project GlassFish.

JBI – Java Business Integration.
Supports existing infrastructure for creating SOA that uses plug-in components for the enterprise integration. Spec JSR 208.

SDO- Service Data Objects.
Working out of JSR-235 SDO, Service Data Objects, provides unifying API and architecture for common enterprise Java technology data programming tasks. SDO implements the common design pattern of using data transfer objects" between logical tiers or components in an enterprise application. Over the past challenges in data retrievals with a service definition in place has open doors of complexity and has not solved the coupling problem.

AJAX – Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
This framework is rapidly changing the way, web development will be ever done. While in the integration lifecycle, enterprises building serviceable components to be deployed will have to adopt this new way of presentation layers. Rich clients have become an intrinsic part of applications having to deliver great volume of data in real time using heavy graphics. With Java server faces and AJAX today this has become seamless.
During the many sessions, there was also a session on SWING. The demo of the application using Flickr was very interesting. Given AJAX having the maximum focus in today’s development scene, whether to go for SWING or AJAX is a question that needed to be asked. Clearly there is more focus on AJAX with even Microsoft supporting it.

Overall the event was organized with schedule builders that were sent out to participants much earlier, organization of the lunch sessions and the evening parties. Duke greeted the visitors and I took a photo or two hand in hand with Duke.
In the end, just a day before the curtains would fall, mythbusters hosted the after dark bash party. Lots and lots of food and two drinks. You could buy more if you paid which is what I did, and finally the chic who was the band of AC/DSHE.

See ya again May 8th 2007. Adios..