Roundtable Transcript, Part 1 (Continued)

The Participants
[00:00] Jim Fawcette: Welcome to our roundtable discussion, "The State of Java Technology." I'm Jim Fawcette, president of FTP, which publishes Java Pro magazine. I apologize for my voice, I'm a little hoarse, probably from cheering at the keynote, I guess. Fortunately, we're not here to listen to me talk a lot, but to listen to you guys share your opinions. We're all looking forward to that. And we have an able moderator in Simon Phipps, joining us again this year. We appreciate that.

We are going to do this in two sections. I believe Simon has a very full agenda. We're going to break after about one hour and take a coffee break, and then come back. And we expect it to be a very full discussion, and Simon has threatened if you don't volunteer, he'll ask you questions. Ted Farrell from Oracle will come in a little bit later. Perhaps we can go around the table and you can introduce yourselves, so everyone knows everyone, but also to get that on tape. We look forward to your sharing good insight with the Java community. So do you want to start by introducing yourselves?

[01:20] Mike Milinkovich: Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse.

[01:32] Michael Bechauf: Michael Bechauf with SAP, vice president of SAP NetWeaver standards.

[01:37] David Chappell: David Chappell with Sonic Software, vice president and chief technology evangelist.

[01:44] Boz Elloy: Boz Elloy, senior vice president software products, Borland Software.

[01:48] Jeff Jackson: Jeff Jackson, vice president Java and developer tools at Sun.

[01:54] Simon Phipps: That [empty chair] will be Ted Farrell from Oracle. [Ted's title is architect and director strategy, application development tools division, Oracle Corp.]

[01:58] Mike Burba: Hi, Ted. So, I'm Mike Burba, I work at Compuware. I'm in the strategy group for focus on Java strategy.

[02:08] Steve Stover: Steve Stover, CTO of Quest Software's development and deployment solutions business unit.

[02:19] Jeff Cobb: Jeff Cobb, I'm the chief scientist from Wily Technology.

[02:23] Benjamin Renaud: Benjamin Renaud, CTO for BEA.

[02:23] Simon Phipps: Simon Phipps, and I have the fanciful job title of chief technology evangelist for Sun Microsystems, and Dave Chappell has no royalties on the [club] title. He didn't realize I had it trademarked.

So welcome, this is becoming a tradition of the order of Scott McNealy's top 10 list when it comes to Java. Well, I do hope Scott is going to have a top 10 list tomorrow morning, then. The discussion topic ahead of us is the state and future of the Java platform. Given the audience that we have here, the focus that I've got for us today is to look at things in two halves.

In the first half I would like us to talk mainly about development directions, and so we'll be talking about tool frameworks, the role of open source, about scripting, about rapid application development, about managing heterogeneous environments, about emerging development philosophies, and about whatever else you want to bring up. This is not a Q and A. We're not looking for you to plug your product. We're not looking for you to present a position statement for your company. You're welcome to attempt to do those things. [Laughter] You will be shut down, so let me give you advance warning of that.

What we need is a discussion. The reason that you've been invited is because each of you is considered to be a thought leader or expert on an aspect of the progression of Java. And this is a brain trust. So that's what the discussion's about, it's a brain trust. We'll have a coffee break after about an hour. We can't speak for more than an hour because the tape is an hour long, I believe, from the sound guy over there, so well have to break at 58 minutes, or else.

After the break we'll be looking at Java directions. In particular, we'll be considering what are the values of the new features in J2SE 1.5 Tiger, what do we think about the reemergence of desktop software development and the value of things like JDNC and SWT, what are the potentials for EJB 3.0, what are the potentials for things like service-oriented architectures [SOA] and forbiddance integration, and then we'll close the discussion by asking you to make your prediction for the coming year. And this will be the thing that next year when you get brought back blindfolded to the roundtable, we'll be asking you to explain why you got it right. We hope you'll have your opportunity to explain why you got it right.

So that's the general structure for the roundtable. What I will try and do at the outset, if I can, is to try and make sure each of you gets an introduction into the conversation. But, really, this will be successful if this is the last thing I have to say.