The likelihood that we will be blessed with a JavaOne conference in 2010 just got a whole lot better.
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The following image is available on the Oracle website currently (original URL):

For me personally the 2 biggest questions about the whole deal have always been What happens to MySQL? and What happens to Java?

MySQL has always been open source and Java has been creeping slowly towards open source over the last few years.

Can Oracle really kill either of these technologies if they chose too? Probably not outright, but they could certainly damage their reputation and community support. People can fork code bases and start again, but it would take time (many years) to build back up to the flagships they are today.

The above image from Oracle is interesting in that it does call out MySQL but does not mention Java at all.

Perhaps Oracle sees more value in MySQL than Java and is attempting to protect it better. Or perhaps Oracle believes Java needs less protection than MySQL, after all, much of the debate over the Oracle/Sun deal has surrounded MySQL and not Java.

Wednesday is the day when some of these questions will hopefully begin to answered.

Why do you think Oracle called out MySQL and not Java?

Well, it seems almost official now, Oracle will get it hands on Sun and the Java and MySQL communities (among others) will need to hold their breath and wait to see what kind of chaos this might cause for our industries.

James Gosling (the father of Java) has long been publishing Java related images on his internal Sun blog. He has now posted his very last one.

The best comment I saw so far was “So long and thanks for all the Glassfish”.

You can read the original post here.

It’s official: the European Commission has granted regulatory approval for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion, without further conditions. In a statement released moments ago, Oracle says it expects unconditional approval from China and Russia as well and intends to close the transaction shortly.

Robin Wauters @ TechCrunch
EU Approves $7.4 Billion Deal Between Oracle And Sun

Just received this email from the Zembly team at Sun. They don’t specifically point the finger at Oracle, but it doesn’t take a genius to join these dots.

We regret to inform you that on November 30th, 2009 we will be suspending the zembly service.

More than three years ago, we started this project with the goal of making it easy to create next-generation Web apps. Our original tagline was “Build the web, using the web,” and the ideas we were incubating around platform-mediated Web applications, Web API mashups, and social programming were brand new.

We learned a lot along the way. Your confidence and enthusiasm helped us improve the project and do amazing things that we never imagined when we began this journey.

Thank you to everyone who’s been with us through the ups and downs. It’s heartening to see that many of the best ideas pioneered in zembly have started to appear elsewhere. With your support, we’re proud to have contributed to the DNA of the Web.

For more information about the zembly suspension, please refer to the FAQ section at http://zembly.com

Finally, if you have questions, please contact us at zembly-support@sun.com

All the best,

– The zembly team

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
4150 Network Circle
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Click here to unsubscribe

• Twitter API Wiki
  (tags: twitter software.reference)
• Trail: 2D Graphics (The Java™ Tutorials)
  (tags: java graphics)
• Twitter4J – A Java library for the Twitter API
  (tags: twitter java opensource software)

• wwdc keynote is underway. #
• had to kill the #wwdc search on #TweetDeck, my laptop was melting down. i thought the #javaone chatter was high but wwdc is out of control #
• looks like a refresh of the complete laptop lineup, all at lower prices at #wwdc #
• #iPhone 3.0 software available worldwide June 17th #wwdc #
• It’s official, new #iPhone to be called 3GS #wwdc #
• #iPhone 3GS officially available June 19th, a month earlier than previously speculated, but definitely not today #wwdc #
• Family Blog Update: American Tourist Fail http://bit.ly/15SO7w #
• http://twitpic.com/6yhnv @gorkeyv trying to convince @jazzlifejunkie that the #pre doesn’t make him a giant douche #
• #oracle to keynote AJAX World, will talk about #flash but not #javafx ? http://bit.ly/4guTRt #
• is it just me or is meetup.com only used to promote multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes these days? #
• RT @JasonCalacanis: Great post by @mcuban –> “The year of WTF?!?!?!” http://tinyurl.com/lpha5k #
• Netflix just sent me Revolutionary Road #
• Netflix just sent me Weeds: Season 4: Disc 2 #
• #eXo Platform Merges Portal Software Development into #JBoss Community http://bit.ly/BL4az #
• Testing out #TweetLater #
• thanks to #squarespace for sponsoring #twit #
• #lifehack – Sell Your Knowledge On The Side – http://bit.ly/98Gk9 #
• RT @alleyinsider: CHART OF THE DAY: One-Third Of Web Video Watchers May Cancel Cable by @fromedome http://bit.ly/zoUGg #
• #O’Reilly Webcast: #Twitter Power Tips – http://bit.ly/3u4AVy #
• checking out #squarespace #
• RT @timoreilly: Trends for jobs calling for gwt or jquery show sharp increases: http://bit.ly/tDChW #
• Job growth of #ajax vs plugin based #ria technologies like #silverlight and #flex – http://bit.ly/d1maj #
• Farewell #analog TV , I will miss you like VHS tapes and pagers. #
• So is this kid #lucky or #unlucky? http://bit.ly/dxHF0 #
• @ebuckl don’t panic, your nonsense will suck just as much as everyone else’s in reply to ebuckl #
• doing my best to win an #iphone from #squarespace #
• @thatkevinsmith yay zack and miri for the win! #
• @jazzlifejunkie I didn’t know there were shortstops in the stanley cup??? #
• Life imitating art (again) – anyone seen the movie Final Destination? http://bit.ly/KMvUt #
• RT @digg_2000: “George Lucas Then vs George Lucas Now [PIC]” – http://digg.com/d2tbGN?t1 #
• RT @JessicaElastic: Less than 25 Super Early Bird registrations left for the #Agile2009 Conference! Get yours now!! #
• #iPhone 3G S pre-orders sold out http://bit.ly/15b8Fz #
• @ABridgwater #SNL Will Ferrell and Green Day in reply to ABridgwater #
• #Beer Log: Mission Street Blonde Ale #
• Secured my piece of the #Facebook vanity land grab http://ping.fm/5bm0c #
• #Beer Log: Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat #
• Adelaide Crows def. North Melbourne Kangaroos, 68 to 24, take 5th position overall #
• #Beer Log: Orion Breweries’ Premium Draft (Okinawa, Japan) #
• #Beer Log: Saporo Breweries’ Premium Yebisu (Tokyo, Japan) #
• Just me, or does track 2 “Shake Me Like A Monkey” on the new #DMB album sound a lot like Cameo’s “Word Up” from the ’80s? #

In the opening keynote at SpringOne Europe 2009, Rod Johnson wondered if Java innovation is going to be stifled by latest Oracle acquisition and expressed his belief that Java will continue to evolve outside of Sun as it has done for the last few years. As proof he mentioned: Grails, Roo, a tool for improved developer productivity, a free STS, tc Server and dm Server.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/SpringOne-Keynote-Rod-Johnson

A few days before JavaOne I posted some questions that I was looking forward to finding out the answers too. Here is what I found out.

Has Hudson Killed CruiseControl?
I saw a couple of presentations on Hudson. I also saw Kohsuke Kawaguchi at the Thirsty Bear and he was drinking the good beer, so clearly Hudson is verging on world domination under his guidance.

I never saw Cruisecontrol mentioned anywhere. Not in the conference catalog and not in the pavilion.

I am now even more convinced that Hudson is the way forward for open source Java Continuous Integration.

What Will Be The Volume Of The Twitter Noise Coming From Inside The Conference?
There was definitely a strong stream of Tweets around the #javaone keyword all week. I was able to get a different perspective during the General Sessions by watching the Twitter stream go by as people Tweeted about what was being said on stage.

But what I will say is that I was able to keep up with the volume of Tweets. I mention this because I started to try and follow the #wwdc keyword this week as the Apple conference was going on and I simply could not keep up, not even close. Every time my TweetDeck was refreshing, I was getting more than 100 Tweets during the opening keynote. I gave up in the end and turned the live search off.

Also, while I saw some people Tweet about “is there a Tweetup?“, I never actually saw anyone take the bold step to be the organizer of one.

So definitely more Twittering going on, but nothing earth shattering. I was also hoping to see a vendor try and use Twitter as a medium for some kind of viral promotion during the conference, but I didn’t see anything that creative unfortunately.

Will AJAX Presentations Be THE Place To Be Seen For A 3rd Year Running?
So there were definitely a lot of AJAX based presentations. There were also a lot of REST presentations, which (at least in my experience) seem to always stray over into the AJAX world.

But there were also probably an equal number of JavaFX presentations. Although I would take the amount of JavaFX presentations and other buzz with a grain of salt as it is Sun’s pet project and it was their conference.

There was even an AJAX vs JavaFX presentation to round things out on that front.

But I do think my prediction of all topics related to the cloud as being the hot topics of the conference was probably correct – probably only outnumbered by speculation related to the whole Sun/Oracle situation. There was a track on the Monday morning related to the cloud, there was an unconference on the Monday afternoon called “Cloud Camp”, Sun showed off cloud related provisioning in the Tuesday morning keynote and there were a whole pile of regular sessions either related to new cloud topics, or just repositioning old topics to add the buzzword cloud to their repertoire.

What Will The Oracle Presence Be?
So a bit of a mixed bag on this front.

As most people who care already know, Larry Ellison made an appearance at the keynote on Tuesday morning. I was actually rooting for him to not show up at all – I think that would have been the best play for Oracle. I think McNealy played it well, but it was obvious that both men were a little uncomfortable and they stumbled on some awkward topics during the time they shared the stage. I don’t actually think Larry really cleared any of the FUD related to the situation even though he tried to reassure people that Oracle “likes” Java.

Beyond Larry’s appearance though, Oracle’s presence was actually less than previous years. Most notably, Oracle had absolutely zero presence in the pavilion this year. You can speculate to heart’s content as to why that was. I believe there was at least one session from Oracle personnel, but I did not make it to that one.

I didn’t see any Oracle signage around the conference, it pretty much was business as usual from that standpoint.

What Will The Reaction To The Microsoft Keynote Be?
This turned out to be a dud when compared to the chatter leading up to it.

There was little reaction from the crowd, although from my quick eyeballing of the room, it seemed to be the smallest attendance for keynote during the week.

Basically Microsoft told us that integration is import – wow, thanks for that, welcome to the party. The rest of it was a thinly veiled marketing pitch, which never goes over well at a technical conference.

Will Jonathon Schwartz Look As Uncomfortable And Awkward As Usual?
Believe it or not, I actually think Schwartz did a reasonable job on the Tuesday morning. It didn’t feel quite as stiff as usual. His interaction with partners etc. was still a little cumbersome but nothing worse than I have seen elsewhere.

I was super happy to see Scott McNealy make an appearance – it was clearly the highlight of the keynote. I also think Sun made the right call to have McNealy be the one to address the elephant in the room. The standing ovation he received when he left the stage I think was evidence of that and was also the highpoint of the whole keynote.

Will James Gosling’s Toy Show Seem Overly Long And Desperate Again?
The toy show was the same old story as expected. I sat through it and there are some interesting niche type Java things going on, but I still left the session with overwhelming sense of “meh”.

I think the most interesting part of the Friday morning keynote was the fact that there was absolutely no acknowledgment of the Oracle/Sun situation at all, nor was there any acknowledgment that this was probably the end of JavaOne, at least as we know it today. I had predicted the Friday morning keynote to be somewhat emotional with a bunch of farewells and look-backs, but as it turns out, the Tuesday morning keynote was the one that had the emotion in it.

Will The Lunch Lines Be Under Control?
Nope, lunch lines were ridiculous as usual.

I am always impressed at how megalomaniacal the event staff get at Moscone during these big conferences.

Will It Be Crazy Cold in Yerba Buena Gardens on Thursday Night Again?
I was way off on this one.

The weather was forecast to be horrible on Thursday and so the event staff moved the party to the ballroom at the Marriott on 4th street. As it turns out it was perfectly dry on Thursday and it could have easily been held outside, but it was certainly cold.

The party was actually pretty good and the band was excellent for the setting IMHO and the food was significantly better than last year’s corn dogs and popcorn.

Will The Bookstore Be Given More Space?
Nope, exactly the same space, exactly the same pushy-shovey experience trying to browse the books.

Will Enough People Use me As A Reference So I Can Get The Better Swag?
Unfortunately no.

Why are the A’s and Giants both playing away all week?
The MLB has declined to comment on this obvious conspiracy.

After upgrading my SCEA certification recently (see this post), I have summarized some key pieces of information and the resources I used to pass the exam below. I hope this helps others pass as well.

The Basics
The place to start is the main SCEA exam page on the Sun site (http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/scea.xml). You will find a description of the exam objectives as well as plenty of plugs for Sun’s own training courses to help you pass the exam (I have never taken any training directly from Sun, so I cannot speak to their value).

Certification Structure
Remember, the certification is made up of 3 parts.

The first part is an exam and is the hardest part, this is the part you are really doing all of the study for. The exam is a computer administered multiple-choice style exam (the same as the SCJP exam if you have done that one).

The second part is a take home assignment. This part will take the longest and involves presenting a solution (via UML and other documentation) to a business problem. There is no coding involved.

The third part is another computer based exam, but is made up of long answer questions this time. You should plan to do the 3rd part ASAP after you have submitted and passed the 2nd part. The questions in this part will ask about certain design considerations and other decision points from the assignment and why you chose the solution option that you did.

Obviously it will depend on your level of proficiency as an architect and specifically with the JavaEE technologies, but I think you should plan on 3-6 months in prep for the first part, 1-3 months to complete the assignment and then you should be able to do the 3rd part within a month of submitting your assignment depending on how long it takes Sun to review your assignment and you to get scheduled in to take the exam.

Websites
Below is a list of some websites that contain relevant information.

• Sun JavaEE Blueprints – http://java.sun.com/blueprints/enterprise/index.html
• JavaRanch list of online SCEA resources – http://faq.javaranch.com/java/SceaOnlineResources
• JavaRanch SCEA FAQ – http://faq.javaranch.com/java/SceaFaq
• Paractice exam on about.com – http://certification.about.com/od/freequestions/a/blscea_intro.htm

Books
I have read all of the following books at one point or another. They are all mentioned as recommended reading at various places in the official Sun documentation for the exam.

Some Notes on Upgrading
If you have previously passed the SCEA for an earlier version of the JavaE/J2EE specification, then you can complete a modified version of the SCEA certification to upgrade to the latest version (currently JavaEE 5). The upgrade certification process only requires you to sit and pass the first part of the normal certification – the multiple choice exam. You do not need to re-do the assignment or the long-answer exam.

When I sat the upgrade exam, I noticed that a significant proportion of the questions were related to web services. I suspect that this is because the first time I sat the exam, web services were not officially part of the JavaEE stack and so perhaps the upgrade exam is tailored to cover only the newer parts of the specifications – but I cannot guarantee that this is the case.

Do you have other resources that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments.