links for 2011-01-24: Forrester on the Future of Java; Honda 1-ups Segway; Linux distros switching from OpenOffice to LibreOffice

• The Future of Java - "Over time, developers will begin to view Java as a server-side language for enterprises — like COBOL."
• Honda Personal Mobility Concept U3-X - Honda 1-ups (or 2 or 3?) Segway.
• Ubuntu opts for LibreOffice over Oracle's OpenOffice - Justified or not, Oracle just can't win with open-source advocates, developers, and Linux distributions

links for 2011-01-21: AWS Elastic Beanstalk; Googled copied Sun's Java code

• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: A Quick and Simple Way into the Cloud - AWS continues to avoid going up stack to compete with partners, but still offer new services and value.
  
• Oops: Android contains directly copied Java code, strengthening Oracle's case - That would be a big ooops!
  
• Oops: No copied Java code or weapons of mass destruction found in Android - Or maybe not.
  

links for 2010-12-21: Thoughts on Java stewardship; Losing your automotive anonymity

• Java: Nothing Without The Community - Can Java flourish without deep community stewardship?  See this too.
  
• Big Brotheresque App Kills Your Automotive Anonymity - Interesting use of data, but not sure I like the loss of privacy.
  

links for 2010-12-15: Microsoft at crossroads; OpenJDK for OS X; Java lawsuits; Oracle Cloud Office

• Microsoft: A big ship at crossroads; What else is new? - I don't think there is any question they'll survive, the titanic references are off, but will they flourish in the new markets?
  
• Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for OSX - I missed this when it was announced, but is great news.
  
• Oracle mobile Java licensing suit boomerangs - Can't we all just get along?  This this also.
  
• Oracle Announces Oracle Cloud Office and Oracle Open Office 3.3 - It is great that it is "announced", but they previewed it at Open World.  Where can we actually see it?  Only mention is in the datasheet where it says to call to get a demo account.  Not looking for mass adoption I guess.
  

links for 2010-11-11: Oracle raises MySQL pricing; ASF draws line in sand over JCP; WS-I completes their journey; PG West Notes

• Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support - This had been rumored and was expected, but now we know the details.  The lowest priced offerings are gone, Standard Edition at $2K/yr now the cheapest, differentiation between editions is now with different add-ons, not level of support, and a server is limited to 4 sockets.  Note that if you weren't buying the cheapest offering, the prices haven't really increased.
• ASF Statement on JCP - Same issue as there has been for awhile, but now saying they'll withdraw if not addressed.
• Microsoft and IBM web-control war finally silenced - Interesting read on the motivations for WS-I and entertaining quip on SOA: "WS-* and the WS-I paved the way for the Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) bubble, a cacophony of hype about a set of systems that could never be delivered but paid the wages of consultants and enterprise vendors, and involved some kind of choreography wrapped in a portal."
  
• Ex-Red Hatters eye Larry's MySQL wobblers
  
• Ex-Sun boss gives Ellison open-source wedgie
  

links for 2010-10-22: AWS free for a year; PostgreSQL vs MySQL; Stacking the JCP election; Java on OS X; What Steve could have said; Adivce to Oracle regarding Java

• Amazon Web Services: Try us free for a year - Something worth looking in to.
• PostgreSQL vs. MySQL: How to Select the Right Open-Source Database - A balanced well written article.
  
• Stacking the JCP election - An interesting read even if it is a bit biased (and I don't know if it is or isn't).
• Steve Jobs Comments on Apple's Java Discontinuation - Some interesting history from James.
  
• What Steve could have said - "We’ve been in the computer business for a long time and we’ve learned that 80% of people just aren’t very interesting. They don’t need to create that much content, because when they do, most it isn’t very good. The iPad actually saves them from themselves because it keeps them from creating a bunch of useless stuff that no one else wants to read."
• Dear Oracle, Get a Clue - Some good advice.  Is Oracle listening?

links for 2010-10-21: Apple deprecates Java; Apple announces OS X Lion ... 11 months off?; NYC adopts Microsoft Cloud; EnterpriseDB Postgres TCO calculator

• Apple deprecates Java - I struggle to see how this makes sense as part of OS X's resurgence was due to developers adopting the platform due to good Java support.  Perhaps Oracle adds support or someone steps forward with a good OpenJDK port, but Steve is clearer trying to cleanse his products of non-native apps.
• Apple's unveiling of updated OS X takes its cues from Microsoft - Apple rarely announces products that won't ship until nearly a year later, but did with OS X Lion.
  
• City of New York adopts Microsoft Cloud services - It will be interesting to watch how the battle goes between Microsoft and Google here.  Google gets Los Angeles, Microsoft gets New York City.
• EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus TCO comparison calculator - No matter how you cut it, EnterpriseDB is less expensive than SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, and DB2.  Think MySQL is cheaper?  Guess again.

links for 2010-10-20: SkySQL forking?; IBM, Oracle, and Java; Linux catching Microsoft; Developer Intelligence; Twitter predicts stocks; McNealy at PG West

• SkySQL will try to drive MySQL fork, Oracle's ouster - Not a fork yet, but supporting one (MariaDB) and not ruling out creating one.
  
• IBM, Oracle and Java: The Q&A - @sogrady's always well written Q&A with a kind mention of the questions I sent him.
• Linux Starts to Eat Microsoft’s Lunch in Servers - Shows Linux growth (79% adding more Linux vs 21% adding more Windows), but it is a lot easier to show growth when coming from behind.
  
• Introducing Project Arcturus, Part 1: The World’s First and Only Developer Intelligence Tool - A great use of data to provide insight into developers.  Kudos to RedMonk for building it.  ReadWriteWeb has a review here.
  
• Twitter mood predictions the stock market - Another fascinating use of data.
• Scott McNealy Keynote Speaker at PG West - A great opportunity to hear Scott speak.

links for 2010-10-08: More on MySQL price hikes; Jaspersoft predicts Java/MySQL resurgence; Salesforce.com adds REST APIs

• MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle's wallet love: Time for Postgres? - Mentions same content I posted earlier, but clearly suggests PostgreSQL as the natural alternative.
  
• Months After Oracle's Acquisition of Sun, OSS Survey Predicts Resurgence of Java and MySQL - Survey doesn't address what people's answers would have been had Oracle not acquired Sun (perhaps the "resurgence" was already happening and it has diminished under Oracle), and in a few cases the conclusions are classic viewing the data the way one wants.  For example, their highlight #1 is that more than three quarters said MySQL use would increase or stay the same.  That is convenient grouping of answers as their data could be used to make the exact opposite statement, i.e. more than three quarters said MySQL use would decrease or stay the same.
  
• Salesforce.com Finally Adding REST API - While their approach to their SOAP API was somewhat RESTful already, the addition of true REST APIs is welcome.
  

links for 2010-10-7: IE market share dips below 50%; Analysis of Google's response to Oracle; SQL and Big Data

• EU dings Microsoft's IE browser market share, says Statcounter - The move towards other browsers continues.
  
• Google responds to Oracle's Android patent lawsuit, we break it down - Google accuses Oracle of flip-flopping, and implies if they've violated anything than Apache Harmony has too.
  
• Who's suing who in the mobile business - Wow, I didn't know Nokia was at the center of so many of the suits.
• Who's suing who in the telecoms trade - Similar to the above, but with a bullet on each suit.
• Why relational databases make sense for big data - Good car, Indy car, helicopter analogy from Ed.

links for 2010-10-04: Forking of Java; Stewardship of Java

• Is it time to fork Java? - Clearly disappointed by JavaOne (JavaHalf?), Greg proposes "Lava".
• Time to fork Java? - Sacha's response.  Provides some good history on the issues and highlights Oracle's flip-flopping positions.  "when ORCL’s lawyers have the same opinion two-weeks in a row, the only conclusion you can draw is that they changed their mind an even number of times."
• Java: The Unipolar Moment - James points out many instances where single vendor stewardship is not the norm and why that can't be the case for Java.

links for 2010-10-02: WebP saves bandwidth over JPEG; Java, OSGi, Oracle, and more;

• Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web - It is fair to say that the image compression algorithms we use today were developed when we had CPU and memory limitations, so why not update them to make the web snappier?
• Java, OSGi, Oracle, and more - James doesn't paint too bright a picture of Oracle's stewardship thus far.

links for 2010-08-30: Background on Oracle vs Google; Google won't be at JavaOne; YouTube movies?; US Open tennis starts today

• Software War Pits Oracle vs Google - More background on what will prove to be a very interesting case.
• Google Bails on Oracle/Sun Java One Conference - A natural, but unfortunate, reaction.
• YouTube eyes pay-per-view films - I'm kind of surprised it has taken this long.
• US Open Tennis - Starts today, for what is usually a great two weeks of tennis.

links for 2010-08-20: Ellison to hire Hurd?; Laptop reliability survey; Google thwarted by California; Oracle vs Google on Java; Cloud data offers intelligence; Ubuntu advantages over Windows and OS X

• Mark Hurd to Oracle? Don't be surprised - An interesting idea.
  
• Acer makes the shoddiest laptops, say IT professionals - From those they surveyed, I'd agree Acer is at the bottom of the list.  It is interesting to see HP and Dell with high percentages in both the best and worse categories.
• Google accuses California of rigging bidding process for e-mail contract - I personally find Google's labels and search preferable to traditional e-mail clients.  Let's hope California didn't have a closed mind on the subject.
  
• Charles Nutter's thoughts on Oracle vs Google - A great read if you have the time.  If you don't, Stephen O'Grady's thoughts are good as well (and shorter).
• Intuit: Small businesses slow hiring; increase pay and hours worked - Another great example of how Cloud based services (Intuit's Online Payroll service) offer an opportunity to use volumes of data to offer intelligence.
  
• Ubuntu's two big advantages over Windows and Mac - Jason makes very good points.  I doubt it is going to cause a major shift to Ubuntu though...
  

links for 2010-06-22: Flash goes Mobile; Java's Future; Java CAPS Future;

• Adobe launches Flash 10.1 for Mobile: More than half of all smartphones by 2012? - There may be issues at first (battery life?), but pushing the envelope is how issues get resolved, not by constraining innovation.
  
• Why I'm Worried About Java's Future - John highlights the 2GB JVM memory limitation as a key issue.
  
• Wondering what to do about your integration strategy as it relates to Java CAPS? - NextGate to hold 2 webinars on what options Java CAPS (and eGate and DataGate) customers have now that they are Oracle's customers.
  
• The Economics of Open Source: Why the Billion Dollar Barrier is Irrelevant - As he's mentioned before, Stephen says data is the key: "Data is likely, in my view, to be more profitable longer term than mechanisms such as dual licensing (coverage). Telemetry (coverage) is the obvious next revenue source for open source entitites."
  

links for 2010-04-19: Integrals explained; Gosling's departure; iPhone 4 sneak peek

• It Slices, It Dices - Moving on from derivatives to integrals.
• Next for Gosling? - Sheds a little more light on the subject but still doesn't say why he left.
• iPhone 4 in the wild? - I feel sorry for the Apple employee that lost it ...

Further Analysis of Java Platform Survey Results

I wrote about some initial observations and issues with a recent Java platform survey earlier today, but couldn't help myself and downloaded the raw data and did some further analysis myself and came across some additional interesting observations.

First, I dug into the Java EE app server data and like Rich fixed some of the grouping, specifically trying to get proper JBoss and Tomcat numbers.  Our numbers differ a bit as I think he may be double counting a bit for Tomcat and JBoss which I made sure not to do.

I've ignored Jonas/JRun/Jetty/Orion so the other likely represents GlassFish and Geronimo.  My chart shows JBoss behind WebSphere but ahead of WebLogic.

Since multiple answers were allowed though, it is interesting to see which combinations are most common.

Here, Tomcat is clearly the preferred second app server in a dual strategy, but perhaps surprisingly, there is a fair number that have both WebSphere and WebLogic.

Last, I took a closer look at the operating system data.  I first combined the different Linux responses into a single one.

As I mentioned in my earlier entry, Linux usage is nearly surpassing Windows and Solaris is well behind those two.

Next I looked at what operating systems were commonly included in the same response.

Not surprisingly Windows and Linux are the most common combination and the combinations with Solaris fall behind with Linux and Solaris slightly behind.

These results may match what you'd intuitively expect, but it is always good when the data backs up your intuition.

Java Platform Survey Results - Flaws and Observations

I love surveys and analyzing the resulting data from them, so was interested to take a look at Replay Solutions write up from their 2010 Java Platform Survey.  Unfortunately, as is the case with many survey's, the way the data is presented has some issues that could result in folks making the wrong conclusions.

Rich correctly pokes holes in the report pointing out the strange grouping of results, the significant "other", and the egregious omission of GlassFish from the survey (quite possibly the bulk of the 18% "other").  If GlassFish was even only half of the "other" it would be 9% and equal to Jetty and way ahead of Jonas/JRun/Orion (which were grouped together for some reason) and Resin, each at only 2%, which would seem to clearly justify GlassFish being called out on its own.  They do provide the raw data which is fantastic, but re-analyzing the data can't fix not asking the right questions.

But there were a few other items in the report that I found interesting.

The "most important Java IDE in 2010" is, no surprise, Eclipse, but NetBeans is a pretty solid #2 at 17% ahead of JDeveloper at 12%.  This would seem to support Oracle's decision to not kill NetBeans, but it is still unfortunate that it appears to be being relegated to a minor role.

And given all the noise about the Cloud, only 14% of the respondents indicate they will be deploying to the Cloud in 2010 with an astounding 67% having no plans.  Now I'm sure the adoption is still way up from 2009 and 14% is still significant, but the IT industry still appears to be cautious about going hole hog into the Cloud.  For those looking to use the Cloud, Amazon EC2 is still dominant at 13% but with "other" at 14% there seems to again be a missing option in the questions.

As far as operating systems for deployment go, Windows is no surprise leading at 57% but with Red Hat Linux at 35% well ahead of Solaris (18%) and other Linux variants close behind Solaris (SUSE 12%, other Linux 16%), Linux is arguably threatening Windows for the #1 spot.

Last, it is a bit of an odd question on frameworks and services as options to answer included everything from Spring to JMS to ESBs, but it is interesting to see that messaging/integration technologies like JMS and ESB at 29% and 24% are well ahead of Swing and JPA (21% and 15%) and not that far behind Spring and Hibernate (36% and 37%).

As always, data is fun to look at.

links for 2010-04-08: C overtakes Java; Amazon SNS; Statistics and Data; Oracle and MySQL; iPhone OS 4

• TIOBE Programming Community Index for April 2010 - C is #1 again overtaking Java!  Due in part to other languages supported on JVM but interesting nonetheless.
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) - Notifications/events in the cloud.  Good stuff.
• Why I'm Taking Statistics - It's all about the data!
• Oracle to Outline Strategy for MySQL - State of the Dolphin, Tuesday next week.
• Apple's iPhone OS event: What to expect -
  

links for 2010-03-23: Cloud Flavors; Java on Android; JavaFX too late?

• Understanding The Many Flavors of Cloud Computing and SaaS - A good summary of what varieties of cloud there are.
  
• J2Android converts Java apps to run on Google Android phones - Too bad Apple would never allow something like this.  More reason Android is building momentum.
  
• Is it too late for JavaFX to succeed? - There seems to be some consensus that it is perhaps technically superior, but the best technology does not always win.