Masood Mortazavi's Blog

Currently, Masood Mortazavi manages several teams of Sun engineers working on open-source technologies such as Apache / Derby (Java DB), MySQL Connectors, MySQL Docs and MySQL Developer Tools. He has also managed Sun's PostgreSQL and ORM teams prior to the MySQL acquisition. Masood joined Sun Microsystems' Java Software unit in 1999 as a member of the original J2EE team. He developed distributed transaction capabilities in RMI-IIOP and led the development team for GIOP 1.2. As a member of the carrier-grade J2EE project at Sun, he developed service control platforms and started a number of collaborations with SMI's mobile telecommunications partners. He has worked on SIP/IMS technologies for Sun and designed and developed a failure detection and recovery platform for cooperating processes. Masood has worked at Nasa Ames (Sterling Software), on DARPA projects (Teknowledge Corp.) and on satellite ground systems (Hughes) as well as for China National Petroleum Company. He has graduate degrees in business (MBA, Berkeley), journalism (M.J.. Berkeley) and scientific computing (Ph.D. in computational fluid dynamics, Davis) and did several years of post-graduate work in logic and methodology of science at UC Berkeley. He has published many technical papers and has multiple patents. He maintains separate weblogs at blogs.sun.com and at java.net.

JAVA = Innovation

In the pre-screens, it says "JAVA = Innovation" ...

Change and innovation comes from combining ideas that already exist, i.e. by digesting and transforming history in the context of present.

No history exists without a community to propagate it!

The history of Java and the ideas that drive it are no exception!

MSA 2 -- Bridging the Fragments

Hence, the build up to MSA 2, the successor of MSA 1.

It adds new JSRs and Certifications to the stack in order to reduce fragmentation over devices.

It addresses operational requirements.

Spec draft has three stacks instead of two -- covering a broader range of devices. Its biggest stack has 20+ JSRs.

It reduces fragmentation with a consistent set of APIs.

Quite a complex process has been used to determine which JSRs should go into which stack.

MSA 1 already includes certain JSRs, and in specifying MSA 2, there were certain requirements for backward compatibility with MSA 1.

In the past, there has been an issue regarding media type and media format fragmentation on various devices. Programmers have not been able to assume common media formats across devices.

MSA 2 is requiring certain common media formats. This will make it easier for developers to develop media applications and deploy it on various sets of devices.

JavaOne Conference -- Reason for Its Existence

Without such common context, it becomes much harder to communicate, learn and innovate on an assumed base of ideas.

A lot of creativity is just about combining one idea with another. Without a common language and common related concepts, it becomes impossible to drive the creative processes that feed the community.

People who come to JavaOne Conference don't usually have to explain to each other what a JVM is, what the JDK is, what a JRE is, what class loading is, what byte-code is, what byte-code instrumentation is, what a JSR is, what a distinction between an object, a class or an interface is, what annotations do or what libraries are best to use for concurrency, etc., etc. These are not just acronyms but a hierarchy of base concepts with which all Java programmers are quite familiar at some level of the hierarchy. The base concepts form the very base of the common context which speed up communication and learning.

In short, Java is much more than a language, a set of APIs or some set of platform specifications. In fact, it is this difference that drives Java programmers to band into a community.

Java programmers, designers, architects, business leaders, etc. continue as a vibrant community with certain habits of thinking and understanding regarding how programs work, how to design programs, how to write good code, how to arrange and deploy applications, how to build and extend platforms and how to feed their hierarchy of communities with ideas, actions and business strategies.

To underestimate the value of the JavaOne Conference is to underestimate the value of the Java community.

So, let's celebrate another successful JavaOne as its unfolds towards its conclusion tomorrow!

if (atJavaOne) { pod.visit.JavaDB(); }

At the pod, you'll get a chance to talk directly to Sun's Java DB (Apache Derby) team.

In the meantime, you can

• Check out the newest release Java DB 10.5.1, which was released this last Friday!
• Take a look at Francois Orsini's note on Java DB at JavaOne, and read his blog entry on Java DB 10.5.1.
• Read Knut Anders Hatlen's blog. Knut has written an introductory series about the new features in 10.5.1.

Knut, Francois, along with Rick Hillegas, Dag Wanvik, Kristian Waagan and Ole Solberg (all Derby committers) will also be at the pod off and on.

This is the best chance to learn about Java DB. Take good advantage of it!

@ JavaOne and CommunityOne

For most of next week, I'll be either at CommunityOne or JavaOne.

User Has it Right!

Kristian Waagan (of Sun's Java DB development team) has really given Java DB (Sun's distribution of Apache / Derby) a new life of its own when it comes to handling CLOBs, starting with Java DB 10.5.

Check out this thread. 

Note the following testimony from David Goulden:

The performance improvements with CLOBs are dramatic. I created a record with a CLOB containing about 10 million characters using derby 10.4. The following query took over 6(!) minutes:

       SELECT CONTENT FROM MESSAGES WHERE ID = 1

(CONTENT is the CLOB column.)

I then installed derby 10.5 and did a soft upgrade. The same query now takes less than three seconds!

Scientific Desktop Apps Turn to Java DB!

The authors who praise Derby also express a wish for in-memory storage, which is now part of Derby 10.5 and will soon appear in Java DB 10.5 for distribution with the JDK.

(Unfortunately, some of the other posts on the forum have some errors in them. I won't waste anytime here to try to address these errors as I'm sure the forum postings will eventually lead the reader in the right direction, in this particular case.)

So, for developers of these types of applications, the most important point of interest is the fact that Java DB 10.5 (based on Apache Derby 10.5) will now support in-memory storage. With Java DB 10.5, the Java DB distribution with the JDK will continue to be a boon for middle tier, desktop, rapid prototyping, sensing and testing applications in need of structured data--if not for a greater set of applications.

Java Twitter Client with Derby!

Haller should probably also try this on the CDC environment. This would be a coll application for the CDC devices!

Apache / Derby is the cauldron in which Java DB is forged and made ready by Sun's Java DB team as well as other members of the Apache Derby community.

Sun Java DB engineers will soon be releasing Java DB 10.5. Among other features, it will include in-memory storage. For more, start with a look at Knut Anders Hatlen's blog posting on the in-memory storage feature in Derby. Kristian Waagan had a big hand in bringing this feature to Derby and Java DB users!

A Note about MySQL Community Contributions

However, every once in a while I point to something outside of Java, usually turning focus on some other communities and projects managed by Sun. When this happens, I usually write on my Blogs.Sun.Com (BSC) blog, and put a pointer here.

So, as an example, most recently I have posted a brief note about some issues related to community contributions to MySQL, including some issues having to do with Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) for MySQL.

When it comes to open-source community-based development, you might also want to re-read the experience I have summarized, as a series of Golden Rules for Open Source Contribution-Based Communities.

43 seconds to build a database in Java

Apache Derby is the cauldron where Sun and other Apache participants forge what later becomes "Java DB" a database shipped with every copy of the JDK!

It was amazing that unlike years past, the only commands I needed to execute on this laptop to get source and do a build where these:

svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/db/derby/code/trunk derby2009
ant -quiet buildsource

All other software, including ant and svn as well as all the libraries, already existed on this laptop.

...
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 43 seconds

The jars took 14 seconds to put together!

ant -quiet buildjars
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 14 seconds

The build instructions modestly point out that we need to wait a bit longer for the Javadocs:

ant -quiet javadoc
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 1 minute 46 seconds

A simple verification

java -jar jars/sane/derbyrun.jar sysinfo

reminds the user politely what has been built:

...
10.6.0.0 alpha - (772044)

You can also build the development tests and test Derby.

A "derbyall" test took my machine about 44 minutes to execute:

Summary results:

Test Run Started: 2009-05-06 12:54:43.0
Test Run Duration: 00:44:47

663 Tests Run
96% Pass (640 tests passed)
 4% Fail (23 tests failed)
15 Suites skipped

Of course, this is for an alpha branch.

Ultimately, to build Derby, you should use the definitive guidelines.

Apache Derby 10.5.1.1 !

Francois Orsini has a more detailed note on this. It is great to see that many of the features listed are developed by our small but amazing team of Java DB engineers.

(See my previous release about this cauldron where Java DB is forged!)

Derby, the Cauldron and Java DB

Apache Derby project is the cauldron where Sun starts the forging of Java DB, Sun's distribution of Derby and the premier Java database in the world! Most recently, Knut Anders Hatlen, Java DB engineering and committer to the Apache Derby project, has been writing about the new features being shipped in Java DB 10.5. It is important to know that Java DB is a project 3 years in the making, and we're now witnessing people interested in installing this database in hundreds of instances, in the middle tier of their applications. Java DB is particularly unique because it can easily be embedded with a Java application in a JVM. (Anyone who has studied Java somewhat closely should already be completely familiar with this fact.)

You can review the derby-users list on Apache to discover the level of sophistication in the user community, or go to the derby-dev list on Apache to discover and contribute to recent ideas and development with Derby replication.

In one of his many Derby 10.5 preview blog entries, Knut describes the use of generated columns, and follows up on their usability in a particular example involving case-insensitive search.

A Real Student Bargain for JavaOne 2009

This year, JavaOne let's students get in free!

Plus, they can sign up for CommunityOne at the same time.

Both passes are full conference passes with access to everything!

Educators can also get in free when they bring 10 students with them to the conference.

If they aren't able to do this, they still get a fantastic deal of $895 for a full conference pass.

What is a Full Pass?

All the benefits of a FULL conference attendee, which includes: JavaOne general and technical sessions, panel discussions, HOLs (Hands-on-labs), BOFs (Birds-of-a-feather), the Pavilion and the After Dark Bash / Networking Mixer! Not to mention a "hang space" (which includes video games, movies & more!), plus you will be able to check email any time at one of our many hacker stations.

PLUS

Admission to the CommunityOne Deep-Dives. What does this mean? FREE training by our very own SLS on some really great topics, plus hugely discounted certification (vouchers will be handed out at the event)- certification can even be done on-site! There will also be numerous parties and chances for you to network with the best and brightest in the industry, from community leaders to "Rockstars" and everyone in between.

Goodies in Apache/Derby 10.5

Apache/Derby 10.5 is about to be released, and Knut Anders Hatlen has written a great blog entry about one of the new features: Generated Columns. (Knut himself has also worked on some important core-level feature that improves locking mechanisms within Derby.)

Derby is an all-Java database to which Sun engineers in the Java DB team contribute.

Java DB is Sun's release of Apache/Derby! In Java DB, even the database user-defined functions can be written in Java!

June 2009

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JAVA = Innovation

MSA 2 -- Bridging the Fragments

JavaOne Conference -- Reason for Its Existence

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