The JavaOne conference passed me by this year, as did the previous seven. I never get the time to attend these things since I'm in the UK and it's a long journey. So I sat back in my big developer's chair and watched the Java world pass by like Weblogs in the night.

I'm just back from vacation, and after six days of sun on the beach in the morning and on the tennis court in the afternoon, sun addled is a good description of my frame of mind. Also account for liberal quantities of beer throughout the week, and I'll be happy if I'm somewhat coherent...

Where can you go to make your MIDlets available to the public? Let's take a brief tour of some of the Web sites that offer MIDlets to the public and explore some of the factors you should consider.

I've recently returned from the razzmatazz of the eighth JavaOne in San Francisco. The 2003 conference was characterized by a massive drive back to the developer, with Sun Microsystems attempting to win back our hearts and put its arm around us all in a virtual hug.

In my last editorial (Vol. 8, issue 6), I argued that we, as an industry, have too much innovation. We have solutions pouring out our ears, stuff we often don't need, yet we use it anyway. This month, I'd like to clarify that somewhat: we need more innovation.

J2SE is going through a bit of an overhaul at the moment, with the release of J2SDK 1.5 (project name 'Tiger') due at the end of 2003. Sun Microsystems ran a feature article in May about this release that included a Q&A with Joshua Bloch, a senior staff engineer at Sun.

This past month gave me a newfound respect for specification writers. I remember when James Davidson marshaled the early Servlet API and the lively discussions that ensued on the mailing lists, basically coordinating the entire operation (no JCP in those days, eh?!). The point is, at l...

As I look over my choices for various tasks, I'm a little unsettled at how many choices I have, what they do, and how they interoperate. I'm not going to be the one to say that innovation is a bad thing, but too much innovation probably is a bad thing. In software design, it usually me...

While I was preparing for my interview with Bruce Eckel, a quote appeared in his Web log in May that said 'If it's not tested, it's broken.' It got me thinking about how much I actually tested the code that I wrote. Now I don't write JUnit tests for everything, but perhaps I should. To...

A recent J2ME-related announcement I find particularly interesting for a number of reasons is esmertec's demonstration of a MIDP 2.0 implementation on BREW. First, esmertec recently acquired Insignia, whose Jeode Embedded Virtual Machine for Java has made PersonalJava available on PDAs...

Have you ever pulled at a small thread, hoping to stop it before it eats into the very heart of the fabric and dismantles the whole garment? What started out as small, insignificant issue has suddenly turned into a major showstopper! I think this may be happening in the J2EE space and ...

In a large project, designing for performance often turns out to be a chicken or egg situation. In a J2EE project, this is even more evident. Typically when business and functional requirements are handed down to the technical team, the first step is to map the functional subsystems in...

Whether you like it or not, you're part of the Java community. Just by reading this publication you're declaring that you're a part of the Java way of life, maybe not by choice but you're still here. We have a network of developers all programming in the same language; there are many a...

What is a killer app for J2ME? Well, if I had a specific answer to that question I'd be slaving away over it during all my free time, dreaming of the riches and life of ease ahead of me.

I'm sitting here in the San Francisco airport waiting for a flight home after spending a few days out here with Sun. I met with representatives from the complete Java spectrum including the main man, Mr. Gosling. It was a good and very worthwhile trip and the one thing I can safely rep...

My 2 1/2 year old son has a birth certificate on his door that says 'native Texan.' Now I've lived in Dallas for several more years than those he has covered in his short stint on this planet, but that doesn't make me a native Texan. I am in a strange state of flux right now. I am orig...

Training - it can be a dirty word to some; learning by doing is all very well but what do you actually learn? On my daily commute to work, I have 90 minutes on the train to read, digest, and think about how to implement these new practices into my programming.

Hello everyone. I'm Glen, the new kid at the helm of the J2ME section. I'll start by thanking Jason and Alan for the opportunity to expostulate in these hallowed pages. Like many Java developers I find JDJ an indispensable resource in my everyday work: its code and technical enlightenm...

This will be my last outing as J2ME Editor for JDJ. It's been an interesting 22 issues, with big changes within both the Java and the J2ME spaces. Over the past two years, the number of JSRs related in some way to J2ME has increased (almost exponentially), an assortment of competitors ...

The Java space is not really unique in this situation, as we contribute our fair share to the computing buzzword thesaurus. So it's not really surprising when someone trips up using the wrong word every so often. They can be forgiven. However, this month I've been researching one parti...

One of my recent clients had an entire suite of applications that was built on an in-house messaging framework. Several years ago, when not many Java frameworks existed in the market and J2EE was still a few years away, this would have been considered a good thing; today, any new devel...

The Java Dudes cartoon on the back page of JDJ has boosted my reputation as someone who likes the API documentation for the core Java language. It's easy to navigate, it's quick, and it answers some of those common Java-related questions. There are a couple of questions that are consta...

As the old saying goes, 'It never rains, but it pours.' Our esteemed J2ME editor, Jason Briggs, and I have been sparring for the best part of a year now on what we are looking for when it comes to mobile computing. We have differing opinions on the matter and while Jason wants somethin...

If you wanted a home theater system, would you buy a shrink-wrapped solution - a preconfigured system from a single brand? Or are you one of those folks who would like to buy a TV from here, a receiver from there, and speaker from hither, and the amplifier from yonder? Because you can ...

Since last month's JDJ was the Linux focus issue, I didn't get a chance to inflict my goals for the year. I call them goals, as I hate the term New Year's resolutions as resolutions are always broken by the end of the first week of the new year. In fact, I think it's more of a custom i...

Thanks to the nice folks at Metrowerks, I finally have a smart phone to play with. As some of you may well be aware, I was suffering from an affliction of round-the-corner-itis that had prevented me from investing in a Java phone. However, when one is provided for you, this unfortunate...

If you ever questioned the usefulness or power of blogs, let me remove any remaining doubt you may have with this story. I have my own blog, http://alan.blog-city.com, and I use it primarily as a public scratchboard, noting thoughts and various observations regarding our industry throu...

A colleague of mine is an easy target for anything that's free. I'm not talking about free from the perspective of 'unshackled' or 'independent.' Rather, I'm talking about the type of free that won't make his wallet thinner. To him anything that looks, tastes, or smells 'free' is the m...

There's a saying - 'Life is about choices' - that can also be applied to Linux. In the mainstream there are about 60 different vendors with a Linux distribution working on a number of hardware platforms. For the enthusiasts that's okay, as they can reinstall as often as they like. A bu...

Along with many others, I've believed for quite some time now that there must be a change in the custodianship of Java for the platform to survive these uncertain times. My personal belief is that any future custodian of the Java platform must be an organization of community members (b...

What an exciting time in the land of Java late October through early November proved to be. During this time The Middleware Company released its now infamous report pitting J2EE against .NET. Why infamous? Well, this particular report suggested that .NET was indeed faster when running ...

By the time you get this issue, Christmas will be around the corner. From the J2EE arena, what is on your wish list for the coming year? More sophisticated tools? All-encompassing solutions for your business? More J2EE-related jobs next year? A utopia where J2EE and .NET can live toget...

Summer 1999: I was fortunate enough to be working on a Java project to write an Internet airline ticket reservation system for a client. It was one of my first Java programs and many a sleepless night was had. It opened my eyes to the travel industry and how the International Air Trans...

I recently noticed that Qualcomm has licensed the ARM1136J-S microprocessor core. The interesting thing to note about this announcement is one of the letters in that microprocessor version: the 'J'. ARM's 1136J-S is a Jazelle-enabled chip, meaning it's optimized for the Java instructi...

It's just as well I'm not a gambler. After pessimistically deciding that it would be a clichéd 'cold day in hell' before I saw a Java-enabled phone arrive on these shores, our local Vodafone launched the excellent Nokia 7650.

Have you noticed lately how the word pattern seems to be creeping into general musings and dialogue more and more? Like name-dropping, it's consciously woven into the fabric of the conversation as a way to assert a certain level of understanding and credibility.

When I first started programming, it was with a small company. Life was simple. I understood all the requirements, and knew all the aspects of the application and how to pull everything together. If I was working with a team of programmers, the projects were small enough that the team ...

In my last few editorials I've been looking back in order to look forward; for example, how to encourage and empower new programmers, how to learn, and how to create better requirements and user expectations. Now I feel it's time to look forward.

Over the past few months, I've frequently stated my belief that Java, in its present state, doesn't stand much chance on the desktop against the march of Microsoft's WinForm technology from the .NET Framework. A view, I've discovered, shared by many of you. Before I continue, let me cl...

EJB. JSP. JMS. JMX. JCA. JTA. JAAS. JAXP. JDBC. JNDI. This is a partial list of the acronyms you'll find in the 228-page J2EE v1.4 public draft. Of course, I was able to assemble this list of acronyms before I reached the bottom of page six.