Top Java Products Honored
The Java vendor community convened to honor the top products and Java community leaders of 2003.
by Editors of Java Pro
JavaOne, June 11, 2003
IBM, Borland, and Sun were big winners at the Java Technology Achievement Awards gala held Tuesday night at the W Hotel across the street from JavaOne. The annual event, cosponsored by Sun Microsystems and Java Pro, honors the top products of 2003 as selected by Java Pro readers. It also comprises the Java Community Awards, selected by a panel of Java Pro editors and presented to individuals and organizations that have contributed the most to Java technology. Click here to see photos of the winners.
IBM squeaked by the major contenders to win five awards, including Best Team Development Tool, Best Java Messaging Tool, Best Java Enterprise Portal Technology, Best Enterprise Application Integration Technology, and Best Web Services Management Tool.
Borland and Sun Microsystems tied with three technology awards apiece. Borland took home awards for Best IDE, Best Java Modeling Tool, and Best Java Optimization/Profiling Tool. Sun won for the Best Mobile Development Tool, Best Web Services Development Toolkit, and Best Java Virtual Machine.
Graham Hamilton, Sun Microsystems Vice President and Sun Fellow, was awarded the Java Community Award for Outstanding Contribution to Java Technology. Oracle Corporation's submission of JSR 198 ("Standard Extension API for Integrated Development Environments") to the Java Community Process won the Java Community Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Java Community.
In an interesting twist from prior years, the Most Valuable Product was divided into two categories to better recognize the equal importance of deployment and development tools in fostering innovation. Open-source endeavors won in these categories: Apache Project's Ant for Most Valuable Java Deployment Product and Eclipse Consortium's Eclipse for Most Valuable Java Development Product.
Fawcette Technical Publications President and CEO Jim Fawcette opened the awards ceremony, congratulating the winners for their outstanding technical achievements and pointing out diversity and innovation that is the hallmark of the Java technology marketplace.
Here's a complete list of the Java Pro 2003 Readers Choice Awards winners, along with brief descriptions from Java Pro Editorial Director Dan Ruby and Editor Kay Keppler, who presented the awards.
2003 Java Pro Readers Choice Awards Winners
Best Mobile Development Tool
Sun Microsystems: J2ME Wireless Toolkit
"These sets of tools provide the emulation environments, performance tuning tools, and documentation and examples needed to develop Java technology applications targeted at CLDC/MIDP-compliant mobile phones and entry-level PDAs."
Best Web Services Development Toolkit
Sun Microsystems: Java Web Services Developer Pack
"This integrated toolkit allows Java developers to build, test, and deploy XML applications, Web services, and Web applications with the latest Web services technologies and standards implementations."
Best IDE
Borland: JBuilder
"This cross-platform environment for building enterprise Java applications simplifies Web and EJB development with two-way visual designers and rapid deployment to leading J2EE platform application servers."
Best Java Development Suite
Eclipse Consortium: Eclipse
"Eclipse is an open-source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, full-featured, commercial-quality, industry platform for the development of highly integrated tools."
Best Visual Bean/Component (tie)
BEA: WebLogic Workshop
Oracle: Oracle9i Business Intelligence Beans
"BEA WebLogic Workshop is an integrated development framework that empowers all application developers, not just J2EE experts, to create, test, and deploy enterprise-class Web service applications on the BEA WebLogic Platform.
"Oracle9i Business Intelligence Beans is a set of standards-based JavaBeans that provides application building blocks designed for Oracle9i OLAP. Using JDeveloper and BI Beans, you can build Internet apps that expose the analytic features of the Oracle9i database."
Best Java Reporting Tool
Crystal Decisions: Crystal Reports
"A high-productivity report creation and integration tool, Crystal Reports lets developers transform almost any data into powerful, interactive content."
Best Java Graphics Tool
Apache: Batik SVG Toolkit
"Batik is a Java technology-based toolkit for applications that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics format for various purposes, such as viewing, generation, or manipulation."
Best Team Development Tool
IBM: WebSphere Studio Application Developer
"IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer helps optimize and simplify development by offering best practices, templates, code generation, and a comprehensive development environment."
Best Java Modeling Tool
Borland: Borland Together
"The Borland Together family of products is an integrated development platform designed to simplify and accelerate the analysis, design, development, and deployment of complex enterprise applications."
Best Java Testing Tool
JUnit.org: JUnit
"JUnit is an open-source regression testing framework written by Erich Gamma and Kent Beck and used by developers who implement unit tests in Java."
Best Java Messaging Tool
IBM: MQSeries
"WebSphere MQ business integration software connects business software to form one enterprise by providing an open, scalable messaging backbone, integrating resources and applications and enabling companies to the changing demands of e-business."
Best J2EE Application Server
BEA: WebLogic Server
"WebLogic Server provides a standards-based foundation for building enterprise applications. Its multitier architecture, full-feature set, and support of component-based development help maximize productivity and reduce the cost of operations and management."
Best Java Enterprise Portal Technology
IBM: WebSphere Portal
"WebSphere Portal helps improve employee productivity and strengthen relationships with customers and trading partners by allowing users to interact in a personalized way with dynamic information, applications, processes, and people."
Best Enterprise Application Integration Technology
IBM: WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Integration Edition
"WebSphere Studio Integration Edition provides J2EE developers and application integration specialists with an integrated development environment for building and deploying J2EE applications."
Best Java Data Access Tool or Driver
Oracle: Oracle9iAS TopLink
"Oracle9iAS TopLink is a Java persistence architecture for rapid development and deployment of enterprise Java applications with relational databases. It supports Java Objects, entity Beans, Servlets, JSP, session Beans, and Message Driven Beans."
Best Java Optimization/Profiling Tool
Borland: Optimizeit Suite
"Optimizeit Suite offers the Automatic Memory Leak Detector, which enables teams who are new to Java to solve memory leaks immediately, increasing team and code efficiency. Seamless integration with the JBuilder development environment boosts team productivity."
Best Web Services Management Tool
IBM: WebSphere Studio Site Developer
"Based on Eclipse technology, this development environment allows developers to build, test, and maintain dynamic Web sites, applications, and Web services on both Windows and Linux."
Best Installation Tool
InstallShield: InstallShield MultiPlatform
"InstallShield MultiPlatform deploys software onto any client or server platform, including Mac OS X, OS/400, Windows, AIX, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, or any other flavor of UNIX."
Best Java Virtual Machine
Sun Microsystems: JVMs
"Java programs are executed within the JVM rather than running directly on the native operating system, which is why programs are portable from one platform to another. Java programs are written in three basic flavors: applets, applications, and Servlets/JSP pages."
Best Java-Powered Device or Platform
Palm
"Palm offers a secure, centrally managed solution that integrates with existing tools, processes, and infrastructure. Palm has several wireless choices for corporate e-mail, calendars, and contacts."
Best Pure Java Packaged Client/Server or Distributed Application
PointBase: PointBase Mobile Database Technologies with Unisync
"This Java relational database has an ultra-compact footprint and can be embedded within a Java application, making it transparent to users from the time of deployment. PointBase supports bidirectional synchronization with Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and other JDBCs."
Most Valuable Java Deployment Product
Apache: Ant
"The Java-based build tool from the Apache Software Foundation's Jakarta offers the features of Unix's Make utility, but with the full portability of pure Java code. Ant is extensible and open, so it integrates readily with any editor or development environment."
Most Valuable Java Development Product
Eclipse Consortium: Eclipse
"Eclipse is an OS-independent development environment designed to be extended with plug-in tools. Its support for the native Windows GUI look-and-feel makes Java development on Windows seem more natural."
Java Community Awards
Outstanding Contribution to Java Technology
Graham Hamilton, Sun Microsystems
"JavaOne attendees know Graham Hamilton from his annual presentations of the Java technical road map, but Hamilton has had more to do with driving Java's direction than with describing it. One of the core architects of the Java platform since 1989, he has been instrumental in Java's transition from novel technology to enterprise workhorse. His contributions include the Java IDL (Interface Definition Language) system, the JDBC database access API, the JavaBeans component initiative, Java Logging APIs, and the Java APIs for XML. He also was instrumental in the creation and establishment of the Java Community Process program, including its 2.0 update. He was specification lead for the J2SE 1.4 'Merlin' release, and most recently has been central in planning for the upcoming J2SE 'Tiger' release. He also has been active in Sun's recent push to tackle ease of development in the Java platform. This year, Graham was recognized within Sun with an appointment as a Sun Fellow. This Java Pro award amplifies that honor with well-deserved recognition from the wider Java community."
Outstanding Contribution to Java Community
JSR 198 Submission, Oracle
"Java platform vendors jockeying for competitive advantage can work counter to the community's interest in promoting common standards. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the bickering between backers of the Eclipse Consortium and the NetBeans initiative, two opposing approaches to defining an extensible framework for J2EE development tools. Stepping into the fray to seek a resolution to the intramural battle, Oracle has championed a Java Specification Request, JSR 198, that aims to establish a common API for extending Java IDEs. While the JSR is still in its early stages and will not issue a draft for public comment until later this year, the expert group has participation from both Sun and IBM and thus promises a serious attempt by partisans to resolve dispute. Oracle's commendable initiative to refocus the community's technology efforts toward common directions and standard practices is well deserving of this year's award for outstanding contribution to the Java community."
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