Finally Bill Gate and Larry Ellison smile to us…

Oracle founder/CEO        Microsoft Tycoon

Probably Bill Gate is busy with new strategy to penetrate IT market after Sun collapse. For sure Larry Ellison is smiling to us with eyeball has dollar sign. That is the destiny of Java language where it future is unknown. Do you think Oracle will give you free Java language? may be no. A business who run Java application may need to pay for the license, perhaps not per user. So why need to care about it. If Java become license fee, it will affect most IT firm who use Java to sell their product. We are waiting announcement from Oracle on Java and other Sun products. I can say that Larry Ellison will not continue to support Glassfish app server as it was strong rival to Oracle OC4J app server. Same fate goes to MySQL database. very sad.

Its true that Oracle play some roles on development of Java language. Most of Oracle products use Java. But when come to commercial user, Oracle charge you for every aspect. Do you know that Larry Ellison is the richest guy in IT business after Bill Gate. I believe in next five years he will be richest than Gate. Oracle is the best database in the world. I also love to use it.

US government has no choice in this economic recession to let the Oracle own Sun. To protect the open source community, US can use lawsuit not to allow Oracle buy Sun share because Oracle has conflict on Sun products mostly open source and low price technology. Why Sun collapse? I attend the speech from Tibco company yesterday one of the speaker said that Sun don’t know how to sell their products. Its true. We might think that Sun is a welfare company. As a profit, its ok for Sun to charge few millions (e.g. support fees) to their customer for using Java enterprise edition as well as App server and MySQL dbase.

Java Future

I read article and forum that Sun has offer IBM to buy Sun Microsystems share for usd7 billion. Current recession cause most big company in trouble including Sun, the Java inventor and care taker.

Finally IBM withdraw from the deal to buy Sun, which make the future is unknown for Sun?. Why only Sun affected with recession, why not IBM.

I think one of the reasons why Sun failing to be strength in their business is us, Java user. We simply claim that Java is the best programming language because it is free and perform well. But we don’t support Sun. We use Java to build and sell our product but we use other than Sun server to serve our Java application. Why not use Sun server? This is the question we need to make it clear.

The company I working currently use Java web application to develop and sell the products to customer. for sure my company don’t buy the support fee because they don’t need it. But Sun need our support so they can continuously bring the Java to the people. My company use usd15k Oracle application server instead of usd5k(support fee) Sun Java application server. They also use HP server when shipping Java product to customer.

You see how IT firm not fairly enough in running their business. It like a one way communication, like you talk to one person but no reply. You use free Java technology and you get money from it, but you not credit to Sun who giving you free Java. What is the problem if you use Sun hardware or buy inexpensive Sun support.

This is the problem where most IT manager has. I believe all IT manager know about Java technology because Java is cost effective. But most of them don’t realize that Java is produce by Sun, or they also don’t know that Sun who produce Java also produce server and desktop hardware. We are programmer we know about it because we always goto Sun website to download jdk, etc, we normally explore the website. we goto Netbeans and Glassfish website we know that sun support them. what a big role play by sun to support free or inexpensive open source technology. surely we appreciate Sun very well. If I’m asking to choose server hardware for my Java web, for sure I choose Sun server, even it quite expensive. can u imagine how much you can save when you use Java technology.

Please support Sun…at least

My Java Understanding

During my study in university, Java is the most programming language I hate. using notepad to create button, etc. then compile and run output. you may hit your head to keyboard if you found an error. very difficult to solve. why they don’t use Microsoft Visual Basic where you can drag drop the object, and only click run to display the output, and also easy to debug.

but this perception is gone away when I start the job. slowly I found that IT firm and business like to use Java technology. You know why? because it FREE. from A to Z Java is totally free (except support). I think this is the reason why Java still exist until now.

It not easy to develop Java application, either web or windows. You can’t believe there is people outside still use notepad to modify Java code. fantastic.

Supported by Sun, Java has grown steadily. Sun strongly support Netbeans IDE, Glassfish Application Server and Sun also own MySql AB, company who develop the most popular open source database, MySql.

I’ve read an article several years ago on how Microsoft has fight with Sun over the right for Java language. Microsoft has produce their J# language and try to get a right to language structure like they have for VB language. Finally Sun has won the trial. Microsoft know that Sun engineer has created Java language, using c++ architecture. Even Java is at early stage has many weakneses, Microsoft can see Java as a strong rival in future. many programmer move from c++ to VB language because a difficulty of c++ architecture itself. Java has coming to solve major disadvantages of c++. Now programmer see Java as a good option.

Can you imagine if Java not exist. Running enterprise web application using Microsoft technology, cost a hundred thousand of RM for licences only. For american/european people it ok to play around with Dollar value. But not for us. US1 = RM3.5. its mean we need to prepare 3.5 extra for 1 value. But I don’t understand how government agencies outside like to use Oracle rather that open source dbms like MySql. government data is not so crucial compare to business data. government staff still can smile if agencies lost RM1m (value in database). But not for business. maybe Oracle has build strong fundamental until people feel insecure if using database other than Oracle dbms.