Ajit Sagar

I'm on a trip to the holy land, Jerusalem, and writing this editorial from my hotel room, which overlooks the old city. As always, I find myself drawing parallels between what I experience in life and what I come across in technology. Various landmarks of the old city have been built, destroyed, and rebuilt over the ages. The city within the walls was excavated and layers of civilizations were discovered. Today the city stands on several layers. In the short stint that I've had with XML, I see the same kinds of patterns. XML is a simplified, Web-enabled SGML. XHTML is an XML-enabled HTML. And XML Schemas are, in many ways, the next generation of DTDs. DTDs are a legacy from SGML. They fulfilled the need for expressing and validating XML document types. However, they're not as expressive as XML. Schemas are an alternative that use XML syntax and offer a far more sop... (more)

The Commerce in Java Application Servers

Before we start on the technical front, let me tell you about my latest acquisition. I recently went out to purchase a watch. My wife wanted me to buy one of the fancy ones, but I'm more excited by watches that have all the features ­ stopwatch, backlight, barometer, altimeter, everymeter ­ and the time displayed in BOLD DIGITAL NUMBERS. I usually end up using maybe three out of a hundred features, but at least I have them. But I digress. I thought about where I could get the watch. The amazing thing is that you can buy them in nearly every kind of store ­ superstore, sports sto... (more)

So What? - It Seems That JavaOne Isn't Just Nerd Nirvana Anymore... This Is A Good Sign.

Yes, I was in San Francisco last month - but unlike the other 25,000 pilgrims, I wasn't fortunate enough to pay full homage to the Mecca of Java: JavaOne 2000. Instead, I was trapped in somewhat less than invigorating business meetings. I was also in a hurry to get back to Dallas to my wife and my brand new (two-week old) baby boy. However, I did manage to sneak out for a few hours on two separate days to the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco to sip from the Java technology cup.... Although my impressions of JavaOne this year are based mainly on this brief interlude, I've... (more)

Serving Business Applications

In the world of distributed computing, the industry has latched on to another snazzy, buzzword-compliant, omnipotent entity, the Application Server, also known affectionately as the App Server. Here's the sales pitch. You want a robust system? Fault tolerance? Load balancing? Multithreaded transaction support? Well, don't reinvent the wheel. If you're developing an application that solves a particular business problem, concentrate on solving that problem and on developing that application. Don't waste precious resources trying to focus on solving a problem that's outside your are... (more)

A Mix of Sun and clouds

First things first: I'd like to take a moment to reflect upon SYS-CON's JDJEdge Conference in light of the tragedy that shocked America on September 11. The best way to deal with a terrorist act is to not give in and allow it to disrupt everyday activities. To that effect, JDJEdge took place as planned, September 23-26. Under the circumstances, it was quite successful. On the J2EE front, most vendors attended and imparted useful information in the form of presentations, exhibits, demos, tutorials, and one-on-one discussions. Kudos to the SYS-CON crew, who worked under adverse ci... (more)