Industry shows strong support for Java

Sony and Hewlett Packard (HP), along with Java tools player Borland, announced products at the JavaOne convention that have the potential to expand the market for Java-based software and services.

Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled plans to build support for Java into its PlayStation 2 games console. The company said the addition of Java will make it easier to connect the console to other devices, including PDAs and mobile phones running Java.

HP said its Core Services Framework (CSF) is among the first implementations of the Java Services Framework specification.

The CSF, a developer platform to further the interoperability of Java application services, is intended to give developers and independent software vendors the ability to include Java services and application programming interfaces into new or existing applications.

Also at the convention, Borland announced that it has signed an agreement with Nokia to deliver MobileSet, a Java 2 Micro Edition product which the companies will market jointly. The initial version will focus on sales force and inventory control applications.

Borland also signed a deal with SAP in which the latter's customers will have the capacity to integrate and use Borland's JBuilder for constructing larger enterprise applications.

Sun Microsystems announced plans to include support for web services in the next release of its Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which the company said offers the same industry standard support as its Web Services Pack.

Sun also delivered tools that it claims will make it easier to build Java applications for its Cobalt server appliance.

The software kit comes with features that let the servers run Java programs called servlets and deliver custom web pages using the Java Server Pages software, a free download that works on Cobalt computers.

Rich Green, Sun Java Software Development vice president, said the company is seeing strong growth in the industry of building blocks for solutions running on the J2EE platform.

"Application developers improve efficiency, quality and resource utilisation of development projects while building innovative enterprise applications on schedule and under budget," he said.