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Sun Microsystems

Sun's JDIC And JDNC: A Cross-Platform ActiveX? 28

Posted by timothy from the sun-is-busy dept.
Espectr0 writes "eWeek is reporting that last week, Sun Microsystems Inc. licensed a pair of the underlying technologies of the Java Desktop System under the open-source LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). The two projects, JDNC (JDesktop Network Components) and JDIC (JDesktop Integration Components), are essentially to Java application developers what Microsoft's ActiveX and COM were to Windows developers--an architecture for creating easily configured application components and for integrating with the functionality of the local operating system and other applications."
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Sun's JDIC And JDNC: A Cross-Platform ActiveX? More

Sun's JDIC And JDNC: A Cross-Platform ActiveX?

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  • Not Quite (Score:5, Informative)

    by pnatural ( 59329 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @04:16PM (#9575512)
    This quote is misleading:

    The two projects, JDNC (JDesktop Network Components) and JDIC (JDesktop Integration Components), are essentially to Java application developers what Microsoft's ActiveX and COM were to Windows developers--an architecture for creating easily configured application components and for integrating with the functionality of the local operating system and other applications."

    From the JDNC project page [java.net]:

    The goal of the JDesktop Network Components (JDNC) project is to significantly reduce the effort and expertise required to build rich, data-centric, Java desktop clients for J2EE-based network services. These clients are representative of what enterprise developers typically build, such as SQL database frontends, forms-based workflow, data visualization applications, and the like.

    And then from the JDIC project page [java.net]:

    The JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) project aims to make Java(TM) technology-based applications ("Java applications") first-class citizens of current desktop platforms without sacrificing platform independence.

    The quote is misleading because it doesn't explain how ActiveX is similar to JDNC/JDIC. The similarity is platform lock-in: ActiveX and COM means you're stuck on Windows (albeit with a choice of programming languages). JDNC/JDIC means you're stuck on Java (but without real, viable choice on the language).

    The fundamental problem (IMHO) is that desktop component integration is limited to a single desktop. Yes, I can have code reuse on Windows, and I can have code reuse on Gnome|KDE|Sun(tm)Java(r)Desktop(tm), but will I ever have (or need?) component integration across the three? It seems to me that developers have enough to handle getting the core functionality right.

    This kind of thing seems like just so much... distraction.
    • > but will I ever have (or need?) component integration across the three?

      What about writing a screensaver that works on all three? Possible with JDIC and quite cool IMHO.

    • Re:Not Quite (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Decaff ( 42676 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:32PM (#9576833)
      JDNC/JDIC means you're stuck on Java (but without real, viable choice on the language).

      Well, considering how widely used Java is, its a lot better than being stuck on Windows.

      Anyway, who says you are stuck with Java? There are dozens of languages available on the Java VM, including Python, LISP, Basic, Prolog, Smalltalk, Groovy, Ada, Forth, Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon and COBOL.

      The fundamental problem (IMHO) is that desktop component integration is limited to a single desktop.

      It isn't. Just because its using code from a library labelled 'jdesktop' does not mean that it is in any way restricted to Java Desktop - if you read about it you will see it will work with any Java client system - application, Applet, or WebStart, on any platform.

      but will I ever have (or need?) component integration across the three?

      You have it automatically, as the system is portable.

      • Re:Not Quite (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pnatural ( 59329 )
        Well, considering how widely used Java is, its a lot better than being stuck on Windows.

        Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows. Ugh.

        Anyway, who says you are stuck with Java? There are dozens of languages available on the Java VM, including Python, LISP, Basic, Prolog, Smalltalk, Groovy, Ada, Forth, Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon and COBOL.

        I said "real, viable choice on the language". Are any of these real and viable? Not a troll, I'm curious

        • Re:Not Quite (Score:3, Informative)

          by Decaff ( 42676 )
          Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows. Ugh

          I was questioning your use of the word 'viable'. I mean, its like questioning if Windows is a viable desktop system. You may not like it (I don't) but there is no questioning that it is viable.

          I said "real, viable choice on the language". Are any of these real and viable?

          Most, if not all of them. Java Python (Jython) has a good solid history, and Groovy has a lot of momentum. The Smalltalks
        • >>Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows. Ugh.

          No, Java devices (now verging on close to 14 Billion total) FAR outnumber Windows devices. Java is more than just computer desktops, as are these libs.

        • Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows.

          Ummmm, Windows is NOT more widely used than Java. It's not even close. Java is in use on over 1.5 *billion* devices compared to Windows being in use on most of the ~800M PCs in operation world wide. Remove from that total the 650M PCs with Java installed and you have 150M PCs with Windows only compared to 1.5B Java-enabled devices. So, at most, Windows-only-enabled devices enjoys a whopping 10% of the
    • Thanks for clearing things up. The original story was very trollish (lets pretend trollish is a word). These project don't bring Java any closer to being like ActiveX than it already was. JDIC is just a set of Java wrappers around JNI calls (like BrowserLauncher). It has the same security restrictions as any other Java code making JNI calls (once authorized to use JNI, your not in a sandbox anymore). The same can be said of SWT, but you don't see any comparisons between SWT and ActiveX.

      That said, I th

  • Oh GAWD. Just what we ALWAYS wanted. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:14PM (#9576670) Journal
    Cross platform viruses, worms, spambots, and spyware? No thanks!

  • repeat after me - Java is *not* cross platform (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @09:12PM (#9577796) Journal
    It may have a few platforms but ubiquitous it isn't.

    It is like saying that Flash / Shockwave is cross platform just because there are a few players.

  • interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 12357bd ( 686909 )

    Thing are getting interesting,
    Sun is approaching java to desktop (hurray for them, it only took 5 years!).
    Mac is publishing [slashdot.org] rendezvous for linux, win and others (after ten years of networking, will we finally get something like a 'zero' config system!?).

    It seems that the non-windows side of the world is awakening!.

    • Actually, Macs have had zero configuration networking with Appletalk, which I think was introduced at the onset of networking for Macs.

      As for non-windows on the desktop, well, arguably, Windows is the latecomer. Macintoshes and the X Window System both existed in 1985. It would take Microsoft several years after that to come up with a usable GUI.

      It's more like the world is waking up to the non-Windows side.

      • It's more like the world is waking up to the non-Windows side.

        Yes!

        I think is because the windows side entered a comatose state when internet came and it's still there. :)

  • > JDIC also provides Java developers with a way to tap into the functionality of the client operating system they are run from. Sasaki said one of the first applications built with the JDIC project was a Java screen saver that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

    JDIC sounds like Sun has finally gave up "100% pure Java" principle and allows Java developers to access native functionality easily. For example, Swing has been burden because it has "Java only" implementation. It totally ignores all UI provide
    • JDIC sounds like Sun has finally gave up "100% pure Java" principle and allows Java developers to access native functionality easily.

      You always have been able to do this. Its called JNI (Java Native Interface).

      It totally ignores all UI provided by client OS

      No it doesn't. You can cut and paste between Swing and the client OS. You can drag and drop between Swing and and client OS. You can access Client OS information, and Client OS Print Services. There are tools available that allow you to embed A
  • Java becomes more like a usable programming language every day!

    The functionality of mailcap [faqs.org], later cloned in win32, GNOME and KDE, is now available to Java as JDIC [java.net]!

    And JDNC [java.net] provides powerful GUI functionality, including an XML format for describing GUIs, a la Glade [gnome.org], wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] XML resource files, XUL [mozilla.org] , XAML. Of course, they are all completely incompatible. Also worth mentioning here is GNU Enterprise [gnuenterprise.org], which has seemingly similar aims to JDNC.

    I don't know what all this has to do with ActiveX. For all I kno

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