Lately I've received a number of e-mails and had conversations regarding J2EE compliance and what it means to the industry. Each conversation or message has a slightly different slant depending on whether the person on the other end is a vendor or a reader or a colleague. What almost e...

Years ago, when I was in college, I decided to pursue a minor in music to offset the insanity of getting a degree in physics. I spent a bit of time learning the key signatures, and how to transpose music written in one key to another, usually simpler, key (since I'm not much of a music...

Are you part of a small team that's building e-business systems in one- to three-month cycles, creating and reusing enterprise business components while integrating disparate platforms?

Awards and opinion polls are funny things, don't you think? In general, you read them with interest and suddenly you find yourself believing what they're saying. You then go and tell others about them, disseminating the information as the gospel truth. How many times have you found you...

'J2EE is to Java what SQL was to databases.' That's a direct quote from one of my conversations with software vendors during JavaOne. And I tend to agree with the statement. I spent most of the show talking with people regarding their products, their visions and their strategies. It wa...

Java Developer's Journal announced its first annual Readers' Choice Awards program three years ago as a patented and copyrighted innovation. JDJ's Readers' Choice Awards program became the first true, openly monitored media awards program of its kind. As happens with every innovation,...

Yes, I was in San Francisco last month - but unlike the other 25,000 pilgrims, I wasn't fortunate enough to pay full homage to the Mecca of Java: JavaOne 2000. Instead, I was trapped in somewhat less than invigorating business meetings. I was also in a hurry to get back to Dallas to my...

I spent a couple of weeks in Florida recently - ignoring the Internet and hoping the market dip would go away. It felt good not to pull e-mail (all right, I did, but not every day) and it gave me some time to think about the whirlwind pace that's been the routine of the past year.

Third time's the charm this time. After two aborted attempts to write this column, I finally was able to put pen to paper (all right, fingers to keyboard). I've been really busy patenting the two through 10 click methods of buying on the Internet. I'll shortly be asking for a royalt...

Some trends you just don't see coming, like the return of bell-bottom pants. They are mysterious and leave you wondering what people can possibly be thinking about. Other trends are much more comprehensible and when they start to manifest themselves, you tend to wonder why on earth you...

One of the frustrations of editing a monthly magazine, as opposed to a daily newspaper, is that I seldom get to scoop the rest of the press. With our lead times, breaking news is more or less old by the time you hear it from me. So by now you've heard that Corel has merged with Inprise...

I may be somewhat unusual, but I've never bought anything at an online auction. I've seen eBay, and one of my friends sold some of his collection of valuable magazines (okay, comic books) on eBay, but I've never gone the whole route and come home with the goods. I've thought about it ...

Yech. I hate that title as much as you do, but it stuck in my brain and I can't get it out. Things are going on in the industry, and I think this is an appropriate time to cover them. We were at the Java Business Conference in December, covering what appeared to be more of a nonevent t...

Are you nimble enough? That seems to be the new buzzword in the Internet world. Nimble. Nimbleness. Nimbler. My development team is nimbler than yours. Being nimble is the name of the game today. It's not enough to be good developers, we've got to be quick developers.

We have exciting news for you. The qualified circulation of Java Developer's Journal print edition reached a record high of 70,017 for the June issue, according to BPA International's June 1999 initial audit report. For the June issue JDJ printed and distributed over 104,000 copies, in...

It's not often you get to write an end-of-the-millennium column (once every thousand years, last time I checked). I thought that a little reminiscing about the past few years might be in order, followed by a brief look in the crystal ball to see what we have in store for you in the nex...

Here's an old joke. A guy in a strange town needs to get a haircut. There're only two barbers in the town, but the guy doesn't know either of them. Which one does he pick? The answer is the guy with the worst haircut. Why? Because neither barber can cut his own hair, so the guy with th...

Earlier this year I wrote an article describing how Enterprise JavaBeans had impacted the application server market, causing a convergence between Web application servers and distributed object and transaction servers. With the advent of the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) standard, w...

When I was a teenager, my parents taught me never to argue about sex, politics and religion. Later on I also learned that it's never a good idea to argue with drunks. Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to step into the middle of a "religious" debate.

Sometimes I think no one reads the editorial. Normally I receive maybe no more than fifty comments concerning any editorial. I kid myself that I do a good enough job lining up the content for the magazine that no one has any complaints, and that they post each month's editorial on a wa...

All right, I'm ready to admit that I made a slight miscalculation. Not an error, necessarily...just a slight misjudgment when it came to the timing of something. Back in January I made a set of predictions concerning the industry, as I'm wont to do at the beginning of a new year. In th...

I recently attended a technical conference and sat in on an interesting discussion concerning moving from traditional testing to testing of object-oriented systems. As many of you know, testing and quality assurance is one of my pet peeves. All too often, groups of otherwise intelligen...

Based on published research by industry analysts, over 400 million special-purpose electronic, non-PC embedded devices will be sold this year ­ and over 1.2 billion units by the year 2001. By 2002, analysts predict shipments of smart handheld devices such as PDAs, Palm Pilots and smart...

Every so often I read something that makes me scratch my head and wonder. Most recently this phenomenon occurred when I read an editorial concerning Java and XML in a Web development magazine. The author wrote that he thought the concept of XML was easy to understand in terms of its us...

Web-development of every kind is one focus of Sybase PowerJ 3.0 (see Figure 1). In addition to a complete Java development environment, PowerJ comes with a set of tools that differentiates it from other Java IDEs on the market. These tools are PowerDynamo, a Web site hosting tool that ...

The saying goes, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." The world rewards innovation and improvement. It likes new things. This month's focus is on new Java technology. Given the rapid pace of development in our area, that's not quite the oxym...

Last month I came to you as a developer as opposed to a CEO. Well, this time I'm moving up the social ladder and I'm writing in the capacity of a user. I'd like to tell you a little story that scared the living daylights out of me. Continuing on the "Ally McBeal" theme from l...

I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park and watched as the little girl proceeded to hack into a UNIX system, quickly taking control of the entire park. I couldn't help but laugh at how unlikely that whole scenario was, but it does serve to illustrate the way many people think of ...

I'm going to write this editorial as a developer, not as a CEO. Not specifically a Java developer, but a generic, abstract developer - someone that is involved with shaping tomorrow's software. I'm a very worried man. If I were to be a TV character, I would be "the Biscuit" f...

About a year ago, in a magazine not too far away, I wrote an article called "Middle-Tier Madness." A year and several languages later, we're back at the middle-tier stage again. Distributed computing is one of my main areas of interest, so my concern with the middle tier shou...

Java Developer's Journal was among the many exhibitors at the Java Business Expo at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. I was only able to make it for one day, but I managed to pack a great deal of interviewing, observation and conversation into that day, in addition to presenti...

Welcome to 1999. This is typically the time I make predictions about the coming year. Next year I'll get this issue out and have a good laugh at all the things I missed - and the few I actually get right. I'd be remiss in my editorial duty if I didn't make some predictions.

Every now and then I like to step back from the trenches and try to think like a CIO. I was a CIO at one time, so I can actually do such a thing. And lately, when I think my CIO thoughts, I've been thinking about the impact that Java has made on the Enterprise.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will build a better mouse. In the beginning we had a two-tiered architecture (I count mainframes as prehistory), and we could figure out how to do things with it. Unfortunately, one of the things we figured out was that we needed more than two tie...

Delivering on the Promise of Java

Toward the end of the last Batman movie, when Robin is giving Batman a hard time, George Clooney gets fed up and says, "This is why Superman works alone." While I'm often tempted to think along the same lines, the reality of our business is that we work in teams. This leads ...

About two years ago a colleague of mine named Joe leaned over my cubicle wall and said, "Hey, I just downloaded this new language called Java. It's pretty cool!" At the time I can't remember being very excited about another programming language. I was a PowerBuilder maven and...

Picture this. You sit down in your recliner, tell it to go to the "TV watching position," then address your desire to your new 81-inch TV - "Find me a rerun of I Dream of Jeanie" -and sit back to watch Barabara Eden confound Larry Hagman yet again. Sounds far-fetche...

In recent issues of Java Developer's Journal you may have noticed a new "feel" to the magazine. The editorial team at JDJ is dedicated to continually improving its content and providing its readers with cutting-edge, informative material. I have come aboard JDJ as managing ed...

In this month's cover story we focus on how to earn big money with Java on three levels. JDJ's feature brings you practical tips for the Java programmer by both Ed Zebrowski, JDJ's product review editor, and Sean Rhody. We also have a somewhat technical discussion by Juergen Brendel co...