java

Google's Keyczar designed to make cryptography easier

Google on Tuesday announced Keyczar, an open-source project to help developers select and use safe cryptography in their applications.

Built on OpenSSL, PyCrypto, and the Java JCE libraries, Keyczar supports authentication and encryption with both symmetric and asymmetric keys. It simplifies some of the details by choosing safe defaults and automatically tagging outputs with key version information. Keyczar also provides a simple interface.

The project provides developers with a simple API, key rotation and versioning, and safe default algorithms, modes, and key lengths.

A "nongoals" page proclaims what Keyczar is not. For example, Keyczar is not designed to … Read more

Why Java should dominate the cloud-scape

Underlying all the cloud possibilities is a reliance on more traditional application deployments. So far virtualization and VM images are the dominant factor in both packaging and consumption.

This leads to an interesting quandary for those who want to embrace the cloud full-on, requiring a developers to adapt to the new infrastructure design.

Considering the challenges of clustering in general and then consider the challenge of clustering from the enterprise to the cloud in a federated manner. VMs have become much more manageable and easier to use, but there are still complexities. Many monitoring tools don't function well with … Read more

Study: Java still top programming language

Java has its detractors, but according to a recent reading of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, it's still the dominant programming language, with little change in its overall popularity since August 2007. Runners up? C, (Visual) Basic, C++, and PHP.

That's the short-term view of the past year. Looking at the longer-term view, however, Java, C, and other "traditional" languages appear to be on the decline while PHP and its ilk are on the rise:

Data from O'Reilly book sales suggests a similar decline for Java and other traditional programming languages over time. Cause for … Read more

Sun shares fall sharply on quarterly results

Update at 7:55 a.m. PDT: Stock's decline has been updated.

Sun Microsystems posted a fiscal fourth-quarter decline in revenue and earnings early Friday, amid what it described as slowing U.S. growth.

Sun shares fell as far as 14 percent to $9.10 in morning trading, despite the company's announcement that it will expand its stock buyback program by $1 billion and the fact that it beat Wall Street's revised expectations.

During the quarter that ended June 30, Sun generated revenue of $3.78 billion, down 1.4 percent from a year ago. Sun's … Read more

Sun throws JavaFX hat into Web app ring

Sun Microsystems on Thursday released a preview version of JavaFX, programming technology the company hopes will be the foundation of splashy, whiz-bang Internet applications.

JavaFX, like its Java progenitor, includes both software to execute programs and a programming language used to write those programs--JavaFX Script for the new technology.

Java has a strong brand in programming circles, but the technology caught on chiefly for use on servers and mobile phones. Sun is trying to go full circle with JavaFX, billing the software as a way to run software on desktop PCs. The software includes support for 2D and 3D graphics, … Read more

Mobile platform tug-of-war

If you weren't aware, a war--more like a tug-of-war--is happening in the mobile space. The iPhone is quickly rising as the development platform to beat, despite its paltry share of market versus Nokia (Symbian), Java BREW, Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile. In addition, Google's fledgling open-source Android platform is also a challenger to the incumbents.

At a Mobile Web Wars Roundtable held by TechCrunch more than 20 mobile wonks discussed that state of mobile platforms (see the list of participants below). The purpose of the roundtable was to determine which mobile platform is best for developers. The iPhone has … Read more

Replay Solutions on 'TiVo for software'

Replay Solutions launched a new tool for enterprise Java applications in June. I recently discussed the product and concepts around "TiVo for software" with CEO and co-founder Jonathan Lindo.

Q: Where did the "replaying software" concept come from?

Lindo: In 2000, co-founder Jeff Daudel and I were helping to build a company in Silicon Valley with a very complex and ambitious networked application supporting up to millions of users. We had a large group of software testers and an army of beta testers who were great at finding issues. Lots of issues.

As we got closer to our ship date, we found ourselves drowning in a sea of software bugs. We quickly realized that we were spending over half of our time simply trying to reproduce the issues that were being reported. Often, we couldn't even reproduce the bugs that we knew were there. The conditions in which the bugs occurred were simply too random or unique. … Read more

Red Hat: Solve enterprise waste through open source

Red Hat's Jim Whitehurst pounded the pulpit this week about the need to expand open source into the largest software developer market on the planet: The enterprise. Oracle, Microsoft, et al. write lots of software, but their contributions to the software world are infinitesimal compared with the development done at real software shops like Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, etc.

Whitehurst said:

The vast majority of software written today is written in enterprise and not for resale. And the vast majority of that is never actually used. The waste in IT software development is extraordinary....Ultimately, for open source to provide value to all of our customers worldwide, we need to get our customers not only as users of open source products but truly engaged in open source and taking part in the development community.

Exactly. Jim knows what he's talking about: He comes from the enterprise world, having served as COO of Delta Airlines for several years. If Red Hat can become the hub to that development world, it will dominate the market...in a positive way.

All of which made this email I received from the head of public relations at a large enterprise so intriguing:… Read more

Replay Solutions records the activity of Java apps and app servers for debugging and more

Replay Solutions today announced it's new tool for Enterprise Java. Replay's tools are often described as Tivo for the Java applications, which I think is an accurate description.

Basically you can run your Java apps, stop, pause, rewind etc. all in one fell swoop. With the launch of ReplayDIRECTOR for Java EE, users can now drill down into source code during replay to quickly identify the root cause of an issue.

You can see a demo video here.

From the product description: ReplayDIRECTOR for Java EE allows companies, teams, or individuals to make deep recordings of their software … Read more