The Java Revolution: Still Going Strong

Just two years ago, all you heard was Java this, Java that. There was so much noise about Java that it was easy to dismiss the language and its principles as merely one more attempt to bring down Microsoft Corp. And that clearly was one of the things Sun Microsystems Inc. hoped would happen with its new programming language, which could run anywhere, enabling server-based computing and the Internet client.

A funny thing happened on the way to the guillotine. Microsoft is still here, and stronger than ever. Moreover, Java is still going strong, teamed with its new ally, XML (Extensible Markup Language). And while you don't hear so much about the revolution anymore, it's still quietly going on, building the infrastructure for e-business in the new millennium. Even Microsoft is paying at least lip service to the revolution.

"We're onto a real critical transition in the market," says Scott Hebner, program director of e-business technical marketing at IBM Corp. "Java is at the core. Customers are talking about new tools and so forth. You're seeing more action, with Java providing the core of the e-business progress."

Spreading Out

Java happens to be a great language for implementing the logic of e-business for business-to-business (B2B) interactions. At the same time, Java works very well with HTML for presenting B2B data. As those two movements came together in the past year, XML joined the scene with the unique ability to exchange B2B data electronically.

Together, Java and XML have allowed us to board a rampaging train heading for a future that we cannot define, but that will be very different from the reality we know today.

But for e-business to be successful,and it's well on the way,we need a format with which to move data from one place to another so that both ends of the transaction understand it, according to Hebner. "E-business is transforming economy," he says. "And e-business is heterogeneous, so to support that environment, you need standards."

Those standards, Hebner adds, have to be overseen by an international organization in which vendors participate but no single one dominates.

"Java, XML and HTML are incomplete by themselves," he says. "How they come together into an integrated model is what's important."

Icing On the Cake

You can view the structure Hebner refers to as something of a layered model. At the top of the model is the presentation layer, and that function is accomplished by the HTML standard. HTML tells browsers how to display data (for example, a tag of tells the data to appear in boldface), but does not include information about the nature of that data. One piece of data is the same as another to an HTML page.

The next layer, XML, has the capability to provide meta data, or, as Hebner calls it, data about the data. XML tells an e-business system what the characteristics of the data are.

"Suppose someone wants to catalog all the cars for sale on the Web," says Norbert Mikula, CTO at Data Channel Inc., a maker of e-business systems and tools. "You might have the color of the car listed on one place on the form, but someone else might have it in another." In that case, the agent that's trying to do the cataloging would have a very difficult time trying to figure out the color of each car. With XML, you can tell other systems how to find out what color the car is with one set of constraints. There's more data, however, that should be accessible as well, such as the seller's phone number and the car's make, model and year. But not all the systems need to know all that information. "XML provides one set of constraints on how to describe my car," says Mikula. "It does this with variable tags to provide access to all business data."

XML tags might include for the color of a car or for the telephone number of the person placing a car ad. Systems that need to know the phone number but not the color can pick the one piece of data and discard the other.

Different businesses, however, would of necessity have different XML tags; standards that describe these tags and what they mean are needed. Mikula calls these standards schema, which describes the tags, their order and their structure. "Standards organizations are doing the schema," he explains.

E-business providers must work with their customers to define how the data works in the schema.

Smooth Operator

Something has to work on the data, though, and that's where Java comes in. "Java is Web-friendly by default," says Rick Schultz, senior product line manager for Java 2 Standard Edition at Sun. "Some people think that Java and XML compete in the implementation of e-business, but they are complementary. We like to say that XML is the noun and Java is the verb."

Java 2 is the latest version of the language. In addition to support for CORBA interoperability, it has added a new security model that is more complete, new Java 2 foundation classes to improve cross-platform capability and the 2D API that improves printing and graphics capabilities. Java also contains the next-generation Hot Spot virtual machine, which improves performance on the client and server sides, Schultz says. Client performance has been a sore point with Java aficionados in the past.

It's important to understand that the combination of Java and XML provides an e-business solution based on open standards. Open standards mean that disparate vendors can provide e-business tools that work with those standards, and VARs,and their customers, of course,can pick the best product for an application, rather than having to stick with a proprietary solution from one vendor.

"We could have built our product without Java," says Dave Glende, director of product management for Unify Corp., which makes an e-commerce solution called eWave. "But we chose to use Java because we decided that everything by now should be based on open standards. Java has found a home on the server."

Standard Spinoffs

People used to build solutions based on single providers. But, says Glende, if they did that and then didn't like the results, they had to rip it out and start over again. With open standards, the work transfers; added functions needed by the application can be gained by plugging in a product from another vendor or by implementing the function through generating code in Java.

The XML open standard is generating new standards as development goes on, such as CXML, a standard for commercial activities that can have more information in it than is required by one particular machine.

For example, suppose a vendor is operating a business-to-consumer Web site and the data is gathered in XML format. In a transaction between the customer and the company, data such as a mailing address and credit-card number would be gathered. If a customer orders, say, a teddy bear, the company would know where to send the bear. In the meantime, the order can generate a transaction against the inventory database, showing one less of a particular teddy bear. If that inventory decrement goes below a threshold, it can generate a transaction to the teddy bear supplier.

Because the transaction to the supplier doesn't require the customer's credit-card number, the supplier's e-business system would eliminate it, or the vendor's would strip it out before the transaction went to the supplier. XML has allowed for identification of the pertinent data, and Java programming has told the system how to process that data.

So, the Java revolution continues. Like most revolutions, its outcome is still obscure. But it is a pretty sure thing that VARs who don't have people well-schooled in XML and Java had better do so,and soon. They don't want to get left behind the times.