-------------------------------
| O N L I N E R E P O R T E R |
-------------------------------
Special Supplement
Weekly dispatches from the Internet Front
Online Reporter April 10 1997 Issue Number 043a
Online Reporter is published weekly by G-2 Computer
Intelligence Inc and ComputerWire Plc.
Editor: Nick Patience (nick@computerwire.com)
Editorial consultant: John Abbott (johna@computerwire.co.uk)
New York bureau:
3 Maple Place, PO Box 7, Glen Head,
New York 11545-9864, USA
Telephone: (516) 759-7025 Fax: (516) 759-7028
London bureau:
4th Floor, 12 Sutton Row, London W1V 5FH, UK.
Telephone: +44 (0)171 208 4200 Fax: +44 (0)171 439 1105
European Publisher: Alan Heron (alanh@computerwire.co.uk)
Subscriptions: Faridah Malik (faridahm@computerwire.co.uk)
(c) Copyright 1997 ComputerWire plc.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without prior permission of ComputerWire Plc.
Single reader subscription rate: $595 per annum, published weekly
Available online to groups, departments and companies at multiple
reader rates.
London, April 7 1997
Issue Number 043a
OR043a-01 ORACLE'S NETWORK COMPUTER INC JUMPS THE GUN WITH SOFTWARE,
PICKS EXODUS FOR WINDOWS APPLICATIONS
OR043a-02 SUN GIVES JAVA APPLETS MORE ROOM FOR MANEUVER IN SANDBOX
OR043a-03 DOT GOSSIP
OR043a-01 ORACLE'S NETWORK COMPUTER INC JUMPS THE GUN
WITH SOFTWARE, PICKS EXODUS FOR WINDOWS APPLICATIONS
Oracle Corp's Network Computer Inc is splitting up its network
computer announcements this month into two, starting with the
software for the corporate market, announced today. The consumer
related software will be announced at Oracle Open World in Japan
on April 16 by Larry Ellison, along with lists of manufacturers
and third-party software vendors.
NCI is gamely targeting all the possible markets right now:
business, home, vertical markets and education, whereas most
vendors have concentrated on either the home or corporate
markets. The corporate machines are based around either Intel
Corp or Digital Equipment Corp StrongARM chips, with the consumer
devices based on Advanced RISC Machines Ltd's ARM RISC chip.
The product line comprises the NC Server, NC Access, NC
Applications and NC Card. The box we saw was built by Acorn using
components from elsewhere and had a 133MHz Pentium inside,
together with the large holes drilled in the top to let the heat
out (OR 42). It also had a smart card slot in the front, but the
thing was just a prototype to show off the software.
Like every other computer platform before it, Network Computers
will fly or die depending on the number of applications
available, and for NCs that means not just new ones, but access
to existing ones as well. Apart from the terminal emulation
market, such as 3270 and VT220s, NCI needs to access Windows
applications, and said it will do this through two ways: Java-
based ICA protocol software or an X-based protocol.
There are two vendors pushing the the Java approach that we know
of, Insignia Solutions Inc and Exodus Technologies Inc. Citrix
Systems Inc's version is thought to be a long way off. NCI's vice
president of business operations Jim Lynch refused to budge on
which it is - April 16 will reveal all - but we hear Exodus is on
the verge of signing an exclusive deal with NCI that nobody's
allowed to know about. Insignia had been approached by NCI. The
other applications that will feature on the NC Access desktop
include the HatTrick environment, which automatically converts
all test in its word processor to HTML, a browser - NCI's or
Netscape Navio's, when it arrives - e-mail, document management,
news ticker and scheduling. there is also a Java virtual machine
(JVM) in both the NC Access client and NC Server software with
full Java 1.1 support. Initially, NC Access will be stored on the
server and downloaded, but Lynch envisages it being stored in ROM
or Flash memory as an option in the near future. NCI is calling
the operating system NCOS - nobody has rights to that name
apparently. It's based on NetBSD, with asynchronous I/O added to
play video; Borland's Just-in-Time (JIT) Java compiler; JVM; a
network stack; a stripped-down X protocol of about 500k for
graphics; security stuff and codecs for ShockWave, RealAudio and
the like. Incidentally, on the consumer side, the OS options are
for a version of Acorn's RISC OS, that NCI's spent a year
optimizing, or Wind River Systemsi VXWorks, for the embedded
market. NCI toyed with JavaOS in May and June of last year before
tossing it aside.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this whole NCI adventure
has been the choice of chip vendors. At the start, before the
subsidiary was set up in May last year, it was ARM all the way.
Then last summer, Intel inevitably emerged and Oracle was
promising news of an Intel machine at Oracle Open World in the US
last November, only for nothing to emerge (OR 24). And Intel's
position on the whole thing is still fuzzy, at best: the official
position right now is that Intel officially doesn't have a
position on the use of its chips in NCs above and beyond selling
faster processors and more of them, unlike its love-in with
Microsoft over NetPCs, whereby it gets positively religious about
what is just a sealed PC with some remote management software on
the server (OR 40). But rumors spread recently of Intel getting a
bit more enthusiastic about the use of its chips in NCs following
a meeting between Intel CEO Andy Grove, Larry Ellison and NCI
president Jerry Baker (OR 41). It's thought that Intel's position
might change, especially now Ellison has started talking about a
Video User Interface (VUI), in which things like getting online
help would involve the technical support personsi mug shot
popping up on the screen to guide you through your problem.
Intel's MMX technology could come in handy in future NCs and the
chip giant is thought to warm to the concept in the near future.
The ARM machines are now consumer-only, while there are only a
couple of vendors lining up StrongARM-based boxes.
The NC Servers come in two version: Enterprise Server and
Community Server. The former is meant for ISPs and corporations,
the latter for schools and small business, and depends on the
former being used at the service provider.
Enterprise Server does the following: initialization;
authentication (for when smart cards are used); NFS-based file
system; printing, network authorization; applications management.
As with all NC it seems, NCI's will only boot off its own server,
unless NCI, IBM, Sun and those to follow integrate the boot
protocols with their respective network computer servers, which
they haven't yet. NC Server will be available first for Solaris,
then DEC Unix, AIX, HP-UX and Windows NT starting at $5,000 per
server, with server pricing following Oracle's server pricing
pattern. Like NC Access, NC Enterprise Server is available in
limited quantities - not to be confused with beta - today, and in
full production in June. It's being trialled worldwide. NC
Community Server, which will include both software and hardware,
and sold through VARs, will beta in June and ship in August - no
prices on that, apart from "extremely affordable."
The NC Card software is the part that reads the user profile and
preferences off the smart card and displays the NC Access desktop
accordingly. It's also available now, but NCI doesn't reckon
weill be seeing the archetypal terminal in every hotel room in
the US, for about two years, although Europe may be ahead of
that.
OR043a-02 SUN GIVES JAVA APPLETS MORE ROOM
FOR MANEUVER IN SANDBOX
Sun Microsystems Inc solution to the thorny problem of playing
outside the Java sandbox was announced at JavaOne last week. In
the next cut of the Java Developer's Kit (JDK), version 1.2,
slated for late summer, Sun will add file I/O, network I/O and
applet caching to the Java virtual machine, while preserving
sandbox safety, it reckons. JDK 1.1 only supports the digital
signing of classes and Java Archive (JAR) files, but with 1.2, if
a Java applet wants to write to the file system it 'asks' the JVM
for permission to do the write. Then, the JVM will only do a read
on applets that it has already signed-off as safe. The applets
will remain within the protection of the sandbox; it will deform
to access whatever part of the machine the applet has permission
to access. Not only will it save time, but it also goes further
than ActiveX, says JavaSoft VP technology and architecture Jim
Mitchell, because that only prevents the saving of files to disk
that are suspect, but would allow ! the reading of a file that
could contain a bomb, say, that did something unmentionable to
the computer at a later stage. But this of course begs the
question of what about the first time an applet is encountered?
How does the JVM decide what's safe and what's not? JavaSoft
president Alan Baratz concede that "signing does not make an
applet safe," and it's still up to the user's discretion. It's al
down to trust. JavaSoft is preparing administration server-sde
stuff that enables highly-granular security profiles to be
defined for users within a corporation. Ironically, according to
Mitchell - who thinks sandbox is too lame a moniker, more a
"bomb-proof container" - this 'new' approach is kind of back to
the future for JavaSoft, as the original specs for Java allowed
far greater access, but when browsers started downloading the
applets, Sun had to take a few steps back down the security
ladder. JavaSoft was talking about some encryption APIs a while
back that would appear with JDK 1.1. That duly appeared, but the
encryption APIs were never heard of, so we asked them about it
last week at JavaOne. Seems with these basic APIs it's up to the
developer how powerful the encryption is, rather than Sun start
getting invloved with export licenses from the government. When
asked how powerful the encryption could be, James Gosling replied
"n"; "though we're not doing anything illegal," added JavaSoft's
VP technology and architecture Jim Mitchell helpfully. What it
actually amounts to, according to JavaSoft envangelist Miko
Matsumara, is riding on the back of other vendors licenses. For
instance if an application is deployed using Netscape technology,
the APIs enable developers to put a wrapper round the object and
deploy it riding shotgun on Netscape's paid-up license with RSA.
OR043a-03 DOT GOSSIP
Sun reckons this year's JavaOne attendance was double last year's
5,000.
AllPen Software Inc was one of the more interesting types of the
floor of JavaOne. It does the embedded browsers for Apple's
MKessagePad 2000 and eMate 300 mobile computer, as well as for US
Robotics' Palm Pilot and Windows CE devices. New last week was an
embedded HTTP server caled NetHopper Enterprise Server for
putting inside cars, consumer devices and so, on. Up on Windows
NT, 95, MacOS and Unix. Its doing the same thing as Spygalss Inc,
but couldn't say how they compare because Spyglass is also a
friend of AllPen. Just how close a friend though, we're not sure
yet.
Asymetrix Corp held a slightly ramshackle press conference in the
'other place' at JavaOne - Software Development West, to try and
tell us above the din about its plans for its Supercede Just-In-
Time (JIT) Java compiler. It is working on full support for JDK
1.1, and expects compliance in the third quarter. By the year-end
it will have a version of Supercede for Unix, but if it told us
the flavor, it would give away its partner's identity, which the
company wasn't willing to do, but we found out anyway: it appears
to be the unlikely form of Visix Software Inc, that already has
it's Vibe Java devlopment toolkit ported across all major Unix
flavors so we're none the wiser, really. Also by year-end
Asymetrix will have a version for enterprise-wide distributed
objects, Cobol integration - again with a partner - and data
modeling capabilities.
Sun says it wil have all of its enterprise applications - as
opposed to its engineering ones - running within its HotJava
Views "webtop" within 15 months.
Some more meat was put on the bones last week of the seemingly-
meaningless-at-the-time "web tone" get together of IBM, Oracle,
Sun and Netscape a few weeks back. The quartet announced support
for Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans and Java Platform for the
Enterprise. Along with Corba and IIOP, Enterprise JavaBeans is
one of central planks of the agreement. It extends JavaBeans
component technlogy to the server side.
Oracle will have a "thin" version of JDBC interface by the
summer, and Java stored procedures, triggers, mthods and data
cartridges in its databases by the year-end or early 1998,
according to Steve Levine, director of server technolgies product
marketing.
Corel Corp CEO Mike Cowpland said the company will announce a
second OEM deal for Office for Java - which went into beta last
week - this quarter but it will smaller that last quarter's deal
with Marimba Inc. The Office for Java client takes up 4Mb of disk
space, and the server just 6Mb.
Sun was making a great deal out of its "100% Pure Java" campaign
at JavaOne last week. First to win that hallowed accolade was
Corel's Office for Java; the other two being Oracle's WebForms
and IBM's Host-on-Demand software. Utah-based KeyLabs Inc will do
the validation tests for $1,150 a shot. It should take five to
ten days, says KeyLabs. Send your hopefuls to
http://www.keylabs.com/100percent. Note all the successes are
client applications, though JavaSoft says Corel's Office for Java
server is being tested right now. Presumably it's a shoo-in,
otherwise they wouldn't have told us.
Sun is readying a package called Java Performance Runtime for
Windows, which comprises JDK 1.1, Symantec's Just-In-Time (JIT)
compiler and some classes. It means that JDK can be used under
Windows, but is only meant as a stop gap until Microsoft comes up
with something better, according to Jim Mitchell, JavaSoft VP
technology. It'll be avaiable as a DLL in late spring, according
to JavaSoft's roadmap.
Sun has adopted IBM Lotus' InfoBus backplane as the method for
information sharing among JavaBeans. We first heard about InfoBus
Java APIs as a method used by Lotus' Kona applets to communicate,
and as they're just JavaBeans, it's a bit of a no-brainer (OR
34). IBM's JavaBeans Migration Assistant for ActiveX tool, that
converts ActiveX components to Beand has also been adopted by
Sun.
Bill Gates used his keynote at Software Development West - across
the road from JavaOne at San Francisco's Moscone Center - to tell
us about all the great things Redmond is doing with Java. No,
just joking. That's how it was billed, but all we got was a
history lesson of interpreted languages, the fact that Microsoft
can get Java to run faster on Windows and that Redmond will
support Java as much as it supports C/C++ and Visual Basic,
because Bill wants us to think of it as just another language. He
also was us to think of him [ital] as one of the nerds, when we
all know he's really a businessman dressed up (or down) as a
nerd.
| O N L I N E R E P O R T E R |
-------------------------------
Special Supplement
Weekly dispatches from the Internet Front
Online Reporter April 10 1997 Issue Number 043a
Online Reporter is published weekly by G-2 Computer
Intelligence Inc and ComputerWire Plc.
Editor: Nick Patience (nick@computerwire.com)
Editorial consultant: John Abbott (johna@computerwire.co.uk)
New York bureau:
3 Maple Place, PO Box 7, Glen Head,
New York 11545-9864, USA
Telephone: (516) 759-7025 Fax: (516) 759-7028
London bureau:
4th Floor, 12 Sutton Row, London W1V 5FH, UK.
Telephone: +44 (0)171 208 4200 Fax: +44 (0)171 439 1105
European Publisher: Alan Heron (alanh@computerwire.co.uk)
Subscriptions: Faridah Malik (faridahm@computerwire.co.uk)
(c) Copyright 1997 ComputerWire plc.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without prior permission of ComputerWire Plc.
Single reader subscription rate: $595 per annum, published weekly
Available online to groups, departments and companies at multiple
reader rates.
London, April 7 1997
Issue Number 043a
OR043a-01 ORACLE'S NETWORK COMPUTER INC JUMPS THE GUN WITH SOFTWARE,
PICKS EXODUS FOR WINDOWS APPLICATIONS
OR043a-02 SUN GIVES JAVA APPLETS MORE ROOM FOR MANEUVER IN SANDBOX
OR043a-03 DOT GOSSIP
OR043a-01 ORACLE'S NETWORK COMPUTER INC JUMPS THE GUN
WITH SOFTWARE, PICKS EXODUS FOR WINDOWS APPLICATIONS
Oracle Corp's Network Computer Inc is splitting up its network
computer announcements this month into two, starting with the
software for the corporate market, announced today. The consumer
related software will be announced at Oracle Open World in Japan
on April 16 by Larry Ellison, along with lists of manufacturers
and third-party software vendors.
NCI is gamely targeting all the possible markets right now:
business, home, vertical markets and education, whereas most
vendors have concentrated on either the home or corporate
markets. The corporate machines are based around either Intel
Corp or Digital Equipment Corp StrongARM chips, with the consumer
devices based on Advanced RISC Machines Ltd's ARM RISC chip.
The product line comprises the NC Server, NC Access, NC
Applications and NC Card. The box we saw was built by Acorn using
components from elsewhere and had a 133MHz Pentium inside,
together with the large holes drilled in the top to let the heat
out (OR 42). It also had a smart card slot in the front, but the
thing was just a prototype to show off the software.
Like every other computer platform before it, Network Computers
will fly or die depending on the number of applications
available, and for NCs that means not just new ones, but access
to existing ones as well. Apart from the terminal emulation
market, such as 3270 and VT220s, NCI needs to access Windows
applications, and said it will do this through two ways: Java-
based ICA protocol software or an X-based protocol.
There are two vendors pushing the the Java approach that we know
of, Insignia Solutions Inc and Exodus Technologies Inc. Citrix
Systems Inc's version is thought to be a long way off. NCI's vice
president of business operations Jim Lynch refused to budge on
which it is - April 16 will reveal all - but we hear Exodus is on
the verge of signing an exclusive deal with NCI that nobody's
allowed to know about. Insignia had been approached by NCI. The
other applications that will feature on the NC Access desktop
include the HatTrick environment, which automatically converts
all test in its word processor to HTML, a browser - NCI's or
Netscape Navio's, when it arrives - e-mail, document management,
news ticker and scheduling. there is also a Java virtual machine
(JVM) in both the NC Access client and NC Server software with
full Java 1.1 support. Initially, NC Access will be stored on the
server and downloaded, but Lynch envisages it being stored in ROM
or Flash memory as an option in the near future. NCI is calling
the operating system NCOS - nobody has rights to that name
apparently. It's based on NetBSD, with asynchronous I/O added to
play video; Borland's Just-in-Time (JIT) Java compiler; JVM; a
network stack; a stripped-down X protocol of about 500k for
graphics; security stuff and codecs for ShockWave, RealAudio and
the like. Incidentally, on the consumer side, the OS options are
for a version of Acorn's RISC OS, that NCI's spent a year
optimizing, or Wind River Systemsi VXWorks, for the embedded
market. NCI toyed with JavaOS in May and June of last year before
tossing it aside.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this whole NCI adventure
has been the choice of chip vendors. At the start, before the
subsidiary was set up in May last year, it was ARM all the way.
Then last summer, Intel inevitably emerged and Oracle was
promising news of an Intel machine at Oracle Open World in the US
last November, only for nothing to emerge (OR 24). And Intel's
position on the whole thing is still fuzzy, at best: the official
position right now is that Intel officially doesn't have a
position on the use of its chips in NCs above and beyond selling
faster processors and more of them, unlike its love-in with
Microsoft over NetPCs, whereby it gets positively religious about
what is just a sealed PC with some remote management software on
the server (OR 40). But rumors spread recently of Intel getting a
bit more enthusiastic about the use of its chips in NCs following
a meeting between Intel CEO Andy Grove, Larry Ellison and NCI
president Jerry Baker (OR 41). It's thought that Intel's position
might change, especially now Ellison has started talking about a
Video User Interface (VUI), in which things like getting online
help would involve the technical support personsi mug shot
popping up on the screen to guide you through your problem.
Intel's MMX technology could come in handy in future NCs and the
chip giant is thought to warm to the concept in the near future.
The ARM machines are now consumer-only, while there are only a
couple of vendors lining up StrongARM-based boxes.
The NC Servers come in two version: Enterprise Server and
Community Server. The former is meant for ISPs and corporations,
the latter for schools and small business, and depends on the
former being used at the service provider.
Enterprise Server does the following: initialization;
authentication (for when smart cards are used); NFS-based file
system; printing, network authorization; applications management.
As with all NC it seems, NCI's will only boot off its own server,
unless NCI, IBM, Sun and those to follow integrate the boot
protocols with their respective network computer servers, which
they haven't yet. NC Server will be available first for Solaris,
then DEC Unix, AIX, HP-UX and Windows NT starting at $5,000 per
server, with server pricing following Oracle's server pricing
pattern. Like NC Access, NC Enterprise Server is available in
limited quantities - not to be confused with beta - today, and in
full production in June. It's being trialled worldwide. NC
Community Server, which will include both software and hardware,
and sold through VARs, will beta in June and ship in August - no
prices on that, apart from "extremely affordable."
The NC Card software is the part that reads the user profile and
preferences off the smart card and displays the NC Access desktop
accordingly. It's also available now, but NCI doesn't reckon
weill be seeing the archetypal terminal in every hotel room in
the US, for about two years, although Europe may be ahead of
that.
OR043a-02 SUN GIVES JAVA APPLETS MORE ROOM
FOR MANEUVER IN SANDBOX
Sun Microsystems Inc solution to the thorny problem of playing
outside the Java sandbox was announced at JavaOne last week. In
the next cut of the Java Developer's Kit (JDK), version 1.2,
slated for late summer, Sun will add file I/O, network I/O and
applet caching to the Java virtual machine, while preserving
sandbox safety, it reckons. JDK 1.1 only supports the digital
signing of classes and Java Archive (JAR) files, but with 1.2, if
a Java applet wants to write to the file system it 'asks' the JVM
for permission to do the write. Then, the JVM will only do a read
on applets that it has already signed-off as safe. The applets
will remain within the protection of the sandbox; it will deform
to access whatever part of the machine the applet has permission
to access. Not only will it save time, but it also goes further
than ActiveX, says JavaSoft VP technology and architecture Jim
Mitchell, because that only prevents the saving of files to disk
that are suspect, but would allow ! the reading of a file that
could contain a bomb, say, that did something unmentionable to
the computer at a later stage. But this of course begs the
question of what about the first time an applet is encountered?
How does the JVM decide what's safe and what's not? JavaSoft
president Alan Baratz concede that "signing does not make an
applet safe," and it's still up to the user's discretion. It's al
down to trust. JavaSoft is preparing administration server-sde
stuff that enables highly-granular security profiles to be
defined for users within a corporation. Ironically, according to
Mitchell - who thinks sandbox is too lame a moniker, more a
"bomb-proof container" - this 'new' approach is kind of back to
the future for JavaSoft, as the original specs for Java allowed
far greater access, but when browsers started downloading the
applets, Sun had to take a few steps back down the security
ladder. JavaSoft was talking about some encryption APIs a while
back that would appear with JDK 1.1. That duly appeared, but the
encryption APIs were never heard of, so we asked them about it
last week at JavaOne. Seems with these basic APIs it's up to the
developer how powerful the encryption is, rather than Sun start
getting invloved with export licenses from the government. When
asked how powerful the encryption could be, James Gosling replied
"n"; "though we're not doing anything illegal," added JavaSoft's
VP technology and architecture Jim Mitchell helpfully. What it
actually amounts to, according to JavaSoft envangelist Miko
Matsumara, is riding on the back of other vendors licenses. For
instance if an application is deployed using Netscape technology,
the APIs enable developers to put a wrapper round the object and
deploy it riding shotgun on Netscape's paid-up license with RSA.
OR043a-03 DOT GOSSIP
Sun reckons this year's JavaOne attendance was double last year's
5,000.
AllPen Software Inc was one of the more interesting types of the
floor of JavaOne. It does the embedded browsers for Apple's
MKessagePad 2000 and eMate 300 mobile computer, as well as for US
Robotics' Palm Pilot and Windows CE devices. New last week was an
embedded HTTP server caled NetHopper Enterprise Server for
putting inside cars, consumer devices and so, on. Up on Windows
NT, 95, MacOS and Unix. Its doing the same thing as Spygalss Inc,
but couldn't say how they compare because Spyglass is also a
friend of AllPen. Just how close a friend though, we're not sure
yet.
Asymetrix Corp held a slightly ramshackle press conference in the
'other place' at JavaOne - Software Development West, to try and
tell us above the din about its plans for its Supercede Just-In-
Time (JIT) Java compiler. It is working on full support for JDK
1.1, and expects compliance in the third quarter. By the year-end
it will have a version of Supercede for Unix, but if it told us
the flavor, it would give away its partner's identity, which the
company wasn't willing to do, but we found out anyway: it appears
to be the unlikely form of Visix Software Inc, that already has
it's Vibe Java devlopment toolkit ported across all major Unix
flavors so we're none the wiser, really. Also by year-end
Asymetrix will have a version for enterprise-wide distributed
objects, Cobol integration - again with a partner - and data
modeling capabilities.
Sun says it wil have all of its enterprise applications - as
opposed to its engineering ones - running within its HotJava
Views "webtop" within 15 months.
Some more meat was put on the bones last week of the seemingly-
meaningless-at-the-time "web tone" get together of IBM, Oracle,
Sun and Netscape a few weeks back. The quartet announced support
for Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans and Java Platform for the
Enterprise. Along with Corba and IIOP, Enterprise JavaBeans is
one of central planks of the agreement. It extends JavaBeans
component technlogy to the server side.
Oracle will have a "thin" version of JDBC interface by the
summer, and Java stored procedures, triggers, mthods and data
cartridges in its databases by the year-end or early 1998,
according to Steve Levine, director of server technolgies product
marketing.
Corel Corp CEO Mike Cowpland said the company will announce a
second OEM deal for Office for Java - which went into beta last
week - this quarter but it will smaller that last quarter's deal
with Marimba Inc. The Office for Java client takes up 4Mb of disk
space, and the server just 6Mb.
Sun was making a great deal out of its "100% Pure Java" campaign
at JavaOne last week. First to win that hallowed accolade was
Corel's Office for Java; the other two being Oracle's WebForms
and IBM's Host-on-Demand software. Utah-based KeyLabs Inc will do
the validation tests for $1,150 a shot. It should take five to
ten days, says KeyLabs. Send your hopefuls to
http://www.keylabs.com/100percent. Note all the successes are
client applications, though JavaSoft says Corel's Office for Java
server is being tested right now. Presumably it's a shoo-in,
otherwise they wouldn't have told us.
Sun is readying a package called Java Performance Runtime for
Windows, which comprises JDK 1.1, Symantec's Just-In-Time (JIT)
compiler and some classes. It means that JDK can be used under
Windows, but is only meant as a stop gap until Microsoft comes up
with something better, according to Jim Mitchell, JavaSoft VP
technology. It'll be avaiable as a DLL in late spring, according
to JavaSoft's roadmap.
Sun has adopted IBM Lotus' InfoBus backplane as the method for
information sharing among JavaBeans. We first heard about InfoBus
Java APIs as a method used by Lotus' Kona applets to communicate,
and as they're just JavaBeans, it's a bit of a no-brainer (OR
34). IBM's JavaBeans Migration Assistant for ActiveX tool, that
converts ActiveX components to Beand has also been adopted by
Sun.
Bill Gates used his keynote at Software Development West - across
the road from JavaOne at San Francisco's Moscone Center - to tell
us about all the great things Redmond is doing with Java. No,
just joking. That's how it was billed, but all we got was a
history lesson of interpreted languages, the fact that Microsoft
can get Java to run faster on Windows and that Redmond will
support Java as much as it supports C/C++ and Visual Basic,
because Bill wants us to think of it as just another language. He
also was us to think of him [ital] as one of the nerds, when we
all know he's really a businessman dressed up (or down) as a
nerd.
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