Bad Managers - The Rumour Mill

Sun Boasts Next J2EE Spec Will Be Even More Russian Doll-Like

16 December 2001, 17:37 GMT

J2EE Deployment Architecture

Sun Microsystems President Scoot McNealy boasted at last year's Sun Expo Conference Summit, that deploying J2EE applications is "just like fitting lots of Russian Dolls inside each other."

He explained to an attentive crowd: "See, you've got your JARs, which are just ZIP files containing lots of other class files, properties and so on. Then you've get yer WARs, which contain your JARs, and of course you've got your EARs which also contain JARs but can also contain your WARs."

The applause after his speech was enthusiastic and unrelenting. Spurred on by this favourable response, McNealy last week announced some details of next year's Java 2 Extended Enterprise Edition (J2EEE).

In addition, for those vendors that just want to use a subset of the J2EEE feature set, Sun will also release the Java 2 Extended Entry-Level Enterprise Edition (J2EELEE).

"Eponymious Plan"

Some critics have suggested that McNealy is following a dastardly ten-year plan to spell out his own name, thus he will eventually have a programming language/platform named after himself. McNealy has of course denied this, although Sun's product roadmap does show that in two years, the Java 2 Micro Edition will feature connectivity features with J2EELEE. This special edition will be known as Java 2 Micro/Extended Entry-Level Enterprise Edition (J2McEELEE). Nearly there, Scoot...

This subtext to Sun's long-term plans for the Java platform are further promulgated by recently leaked rumours that Sun are planning to drop the Java name altogether, in favour of the proliferating EE-based acronyms.

In addition to the announced name changes, the quasi-eponymous McNealy also announced that the next J2EEE feature set will include extended deployment features, including at least an extra THREE container types, each of which will be capable of containing each other.

"Short-Lived Apps That Crash a Lot"

These three containers will be, respectively, bEARs (bytecode EAR), TARs (Transient App Archive, for short-lived apps that crash a lot and are quickly removed), and JIDs (Java Instant Deployers). Apparently JARs, JIDs and bEARS can all be deployed inside WARs and EARs, but TARs can only be deployed inside JIDs, JARs and other TARs. WARs and EARs, however, can be deployed inside bEARs, TARs, JIDs, JARs and of course other WARs and EARs. Sun's share prices surged an amazing $3.56 following this announcement.

Microsoft have been quick to respond, with the bold announcement that their as yet unproven .NET platform (or is it a strategy?) will enable different types of container to be nested at least 256 (count 'em!) levels deep. Unfortunately, any package nesting beyond one level will cause an instant system crash. Analysts appear unconcerned about this insidious limitation, however. In fact, marketing studies commissioned by Microsoft are already seeing this as irrevocable proof that .NET is set to take the market by storm.