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Sun Microsystems Inc. is expected to announce that its Java Studio Creator, previously known by the code name Project Rave, is going to early access or beta this week, according to sources close to Sun.
Java Studio Creator has already undergone two alpha or technical preview test phases, but the early access preview already has more than 10,000 developers anxiously awaiting it, said Joe Keller, vice president of Java Web services and tools at Sun.
Sun has announced plans to ship Java Studio Creator this summer and is expected to announce details on when the technology will be generally available at JavaOne in June, the company said.
Meanwhile, last week Sun quietly updated Version 1.4 of its Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Software Developers Kit (SDK) to include the production release of its Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8. Although the information is listed on Suns Web site as of March 22, the company was not scheduled to make a formal announcement until later this week, sources said.
However, Sun shipped an early version of its free platform edition of its application server in the SDK in November. Since then the company said it has seen more than 800,000 copies downloaded, or 50,000 a week.
Sun also will announce that with the recent certification of JavaServer Faces as a standard, the platform edition of the Sun application server also will support the new specification.
“The platform edition is carrying the first version of JavaServer Faces in any application server,” Keller said. “And were doing that because of this focus on this release to make it easy for developers to build applications. In a services-oriented architecture of Web-based applications, JSF is a set of components that makes it easier to build Web-based applications. The kinds of things that are going to use that are Java Studio and Java Studio Creator. So Creator depends on Java Server Faces; thats one of its target runtimes.”
Added Keller: “We were the first with J2EE 1.4 and the first with JavaServer Faces. That has not always been true for us. It used to be that our technology and our product roadmaps were not as well aligned. I think weve demonstrated that we can compete in this marketplace by aligning these technologies and being first to market, take first mover advantage. The reaction were getting from the developer community on the application server is great.”
The free platform edition of Suns application server features the code base the company uses as the core of all of its application server products. “We just add features to it like more sophisticated management, better clustering and failover, etc., as you go up the stack,” a Sun architect said.
Sun can boast a recent application server win with the Navy, Keller said.
“We just announced a win with the Navy where the Navy has a bunch of information processing platforms on their warships and they have chosen to use application server technologies to ease their ability to get information in and out—to get the right information at the right place at the right time,” he said.
Last week at the FOSE 2004 conference that focuses on high technology in government, Sun announced that the U.S. Navys Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Computer, Communications, Intelligence and Space selected the Sun Java System Application Server Standard Edition 7 to run all Global Command and Control – Maritime deployments beginning in fiscal year 2005. Under the deal, more than 200 naval vessels could potentially be equipped with the server during a four-year installation period.
The Navy also is using Java Desktop Systems in its ability to set up command centers, Keller said.