Oracle takes over JavaOne conference

Next month’s revamped JavaOne conference, the first under Oracle’s jurisdiction, will feature a keynote presentation from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, as well as the latest on Java technologies ranging from the GlassFish application server to the JavaFX rich media platform.

Ellison is to “share Oracle’s vision” for strengthened investment and innovation in Java and describe how Java will continue to grow as the most powerful, scaleable, secure, and open platform for the global developer community. And, later in the week, the conference will cover “the Java frontier” in a presentation featuring speakers such as Mark Reinhold, chief architect in the Java Platform Group.

But this year’s conference is likely to feature more than what can be gleaned from the sessions list, according to IDC analyst Al Hilwa. “For example, I expect significant attention given to Java fragmentation and how Oracle plans to avoid it in the future. Oracle is also likely to play up its considerable contributions to open source and community developed software to highlight its credibility in this area. I suspect there will be quite a bit of discussion around Java governance issues and how parallel implementations of Java can get certified,” Hilwa said.

Oracle has gotten a bad rap with some in the open source community in the wake of its recent lawsuit against Google over the Android platform and its use of Java. JavaOne features a session about testing for the Google App Engine cloud platform – a bit ironic since Oracle is suing Google!

Also to be covered at the conference will be Project Lambda. The project is an OpenJDK (Java Development Kit) effort exploring Java language features intended to increase developer productivity when working with parallel APIs such as Fork/Join Framework. Other topics of note include the Hudson open source integration server, the Groovy scripting language for the Java Virtual Machine, Java Standard Edition 7 and the HotSpot Java Virtual Machine. Project Jigsaw, offering a module system for Java, will be covered as well.

JavaOne has been an annual event to cover all things Java. When Java was owned by Sun Microsystems, JavaOne would be held around early June as a separate conference in San Francisco. Now that Oracle has acquired Sun, the event is being held concurrently with the Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle Develop conferences.

It appears, however that James Gosling, considered the father of Java and a staple at previous JavaOne conferences, will not appear this year. Searches on his name on the JavaOne site have come up empty.

Oracle Develop, meanwhile, will focus on numerous development technologies, including the WebLogic Server application server and Microsoft .Net, while OpenWorld covers Oracle technologies including the company’s database, applications, and Fusion middleware.