Java migrations spin outside Oracle visions
July 30, 2010
With the recent announcement that the StrongHold tool is getting fresh opportunity to migrate PowerHouse 3000 sites to Java, we wondered if Java's new owners were a part of the solution. After all, earlier this year the Oracle acquisition of Sun completed, and Sun is the creator of Java. By one way of thinking, a move to Java could be seen as edging into Oracle's command and control structure.
Chris Koppe of Speedware, which signed a 7-year deal to market and use and support StrongHold, doesn't see it that way at all. Neither do other analysts, who believe that Java is a platform well outside of any vendor's control in 2010. The HP 3000 certainly hasn't had a Java option for production use since early in the last decade, but the prospect of the language carried an allure that has materialized for many commercial sites. Open source solutions are at work in the enterprise, and the awareness of Java pre-dates Linux.
"The option of Linux in the enterprise world has done a lot to support the adoption of Java in the enterprise world," Koppe said. "In the large to mid-size organization, Java does really well."
Oracle may theoretically own Java, but "from our perception, Java is an open standard," Koppe added. "I don't see Oracle changing that. Oracle buying Sun and Java makes a lot of sense, and I think it's going to be a big part of the Oracle program as well. I don't see how changing the game on a mainstream standard would help that."
But if Oracle is a player in the Java space, third parties have long since stepped in to help decide what happens with the popular platform and language. Java's father James Gosling, who left Sun after the acquisition, gave Oracle a mixed review of its stewardship so far; the company "may not even be the major driver behind Java innovation," according to an InfoWorld article.
Java was once looked upon as a magic wand to transform the 3000's development experience. Adager's Alfredo Rego devoted a major part of a 1996 NewsWire Q&A to the praise of the then-fresh language that was called write-once, run anywhere software. "Java began with two guys in a cubicle," he said back then, "just like IMAGE did within HP." What makes a computer system open, he added, "is being able to run the Java Virtual Machine." (HP ported the JVM to the 3000, but cut off Java/iX development while it canceled its 3000 plans.)
The newer reach of the StrongHold tool, taking 3000 sites to Java from PowerHouse, echoes some of that optimism. Java seems to have developed a life independent of any vendor, even one the size of Oracle.