The conference was very interesting overall, some impressions below ..

Getting more from your existing Java applications
Simon Ritter – Java Evangelist, Sun Microsystems

This part was mainly focused on the tuning of the JVM and in particular on what often results to be a bottleneck for many Java-based applications, the garbage collection (GC). Not all developers know that there are literally hundreds of parameters, some of which only related to specific implementations (IBM, Oracle, BEA and others), through which it is possible to significantly change and adapt the JVM to a particular application. Introduced to us as the “GC Nirvana”, the following are the main optimization goals which need to be considered (compatible in pairs only):

• low GC overhead
• low GC pause times
• good space efficiency

It was clear from the beginning as the GC mechanisms are continuouslyimproved even within the same release through the various updates released by Sun. Therefore, it’s a good thing to use always the latest update, within the limits of the specific project of course.

Java for Business. Getting the best (out of Sun) for your Java applications
Owen Stuart – Java Sustaining, Critical Situation Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa

This part for me was of little interest. Speaker’s task was to explain the type of support offered to customers.

A look at Java SE embedded and real-time Java
Helen Cullen – Systems Engineer, OEM Software Sales / Andy Gilbert – Systems Engineer, OEM Software Sales

Surprising to see the full range of embedded devices controlled by Java. Among these particular attention was payed on the socket PC, specifically a Linux/Java-based implementation. It was also emphasized the difference between the Embedded version and the Micro Edition (often confused), the first intended for very small devices with less than 32 MB of memory (by now very few), the latter completely compatible with the standard version minus the packets considered optional (eg CORBA) and some not strictly necessary resources (eg javadocs) so removed from the packaging. Very interesting the discussion about Real-Time, on which I was still a little skeptical. With Java you can now easily implement a sort of soft real-time and, with more complexity of course, even a hard real-time. The results are significant as the following video shows:

New Stuff – Java Enterprise Edition 6 and GlassFish 3
Steve Elliott – Technology Evangelist, Sun Microsystems UK

Excellent was the introduction of the Enterprise Edition (J2EE or JEE) through a rapid excursus on its fast evolution happened over the years. Since its birth, the intent has always been to regulate the market in relation to new technologies introduced to improve the development of enterprise solutions. So that was in the past with the introduction of JPA and EJB 3.0 specifications (in response to the success of Hibernate), so that is now with the new JEE 6 which includes the mechanism of inversion of control (characteristic of Spring framework) in addition to other interesting new features. Good also GlassFish, the application server developed by Sun (about which I knew very little), which is going to become a reference implementation of the JEE specifications. Apparently an interesting product, definitely to be tested, also available in a bundle version for Eclipse.

More New Stuff – Java Standard Edition 7 and JavaFX
Simon Ritter – Java Evangelist Sun Microsystems / Simon Cook – Software Architect Sun Microsystems UK

Not very clear how Sun is proceeding with the development of the new JDK 7 (although Simon Ritter tried to make it clear), in fact numerous JSRs still need to be approved. The following is the complete list of what has been proposed so far (have a look at Project Coin as an example):

And to complete this long path, a look at something certainly more stylish, Java FX. In this area Adobe seems to have now a distinct advantage with Flash, but Java FX has an important card to play, the full integration with th huge world of Java technology. We’ll see whether this card will result winning. To read more about this topic you can take a look at these screencasts or test some immediate examples just visiting this gallery.