Ed Burns's Blog

TSSJS Mark Hapner Keynote

I'm at The ServerSide Java Symposium, blogging live. I just attended Mark Hapner's keynote and here are my notes.

Mark started out listing some things that companies own, vs. what
communities own.  Companies own OS's, some protocols (AIM), but they
don't own the wire.  Communities own massively distributed services,
such as email, content, and also protocols.  Interestingly, he asserts
that Java is owned by the community.  The crowd grumbled a bit at this
assertion.  These two points of ownership were listed as a means to
support the assertion that developers want to own the whole stack:
protocol, framework, applications.

He introduces the concept of the services wire, stating that we must
never cede the services wire to a non-global protocol.

He spent some slides on defining what a services platform is, and
concluded that J2EE is getting closer to being that, but wasn't there
yet.  He used the analogy of the Unix Pipe as an easy way that programs
interoperate.  We need something similar for Web Services.

Service evolution is all about collaboration.  The essence of
collaboration is messaging, but messaging alone isn't enough.  You need
some message exchange patterns.  So, services will be built as
compositions of pipelines, a-la-Unix pipes.

The impl of MEP is XML.  (This places great importance on technologies
like fasst infoset).  Java is a great platform for XML.  Using XML here
allows each service node to use the technology appropriate to its need.
Of course, it also provides impl independence.  

Here Mark listed the core assertion of the talk, his vision for services:

  J2SE is the core
  JMX is the management piece
  JBI will be the collaboration piece
  J2EE will provide the services and the technologies

  This vision lead to Mark assert that the Java platform plays the main
  role in building out the web, and therefore will enable people to
  achieve their dream of community ownership of the entire stack.

Comments

• He is of course right that the community owns Java. Under the JCP anyone interested can participate in the future of the platform.
  I think the grumbling must have come from people who don't realise (or don't want to accept) that the term "community" doesn't have to mean "individual people" but also includes companies.
  If Sun reserves a blocking vote for themselves in that community that's no different from the creators of Linux and Python doing the same thing in the development community of their own pet projects (which is exactly what they do).

  Posted by: jwenting on March 07, 2005 at 02:50 AM

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