Java's Grown Up, But When Will Web Services Reach Maturity?

JavaOne, the annual circus centered on the adulation of all things Java, is doubtless the most schizophrenic trade show on this reporter's circuit. One moment, you're watching Oracle's Larry Ellison and BEA's Bill Coleman trade jabs about the capabilities of their companies' application servers (oddly, while dressed almost identically in brown T-shirts and blazers). The next minute you are sprawled on a beanbag chair watching "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" or the "South Park" movie projected on a huge video screen right smack-dab in the front lobby of the Moscone Center. (When you get programmers and developers gathered in one place, the air-hockey tables and video games are as important as anything that may be on the show floor.)

But viewing the show as a whole indicates that Java has outgrown its geeky roots and moved into a new, much more business-oriented phase. A good indication of that was the fact that there seemed to be an even split on the floor between management and monitoring tools and development tools. Anyone familiar with management knows that it's all too often an afterthought. If Java has moved into a phase where management has become a key issue, it means it has grown up.

One interesting trend to watch centers on the granularity and precision of some of these tools. Wily's Introscope, which we wrote about here on VARBusiness.com earlier this week, examines the Java Virtual Machine, enabling developers to spot problems in the relationships between different parts of an application. Dirig Software's Fenway manages the complete infrastructure from front-end Web server through the application server and its components to the back-end database.

To the casual observer, these tools might seem to have a degree of overlap, and there is a very small intersection between the capabilities of the two tools. However, the folks from Dirig are eager to point out that they don't see Wily as a competitor but as a potential side-by-side ally. The two companies have no formal partnership, so it'll be up to solution providers to understand where those are useful and articulate to their customers how the two might work side by side.

The management story is never a sexy one, and not surprisingly it was not the one Sun was most eager to tell. Instead, Sun enthusiastically boosted its plans for Web services, a term that entered into the vernacular about six months ago and has yet to be defined consistently by the companies promising to deliver them.

Sun's definition of Web services centers on the use of Java with XML binding, UDDI, SOAP and WSDL, all of which are fairly well supported and understood. Other players in the market making the case for Web services have different takes; some equate any Web-ified application with a Web service, others use other standards to build services and still others put their fingers in their ears and try to invent their own standards (see: Microsoft and the .Net platform).

The solution-provider community is intimately aware of the value of the Web and the value of services. It's what's been driving their businesses for the last three years. However, for the Web services concept to get a serious look from solution providers, it'll require the concept to be defined and ushered carefully through its adolescence as quickly as possible. The participants at this event support Java because its openness and universality have made its traits and ability widely understood. For Web services to take off, the players in the space will have to work--and work fast--to develop that same degree of understanding about the concept.