Any large Java source base can have insidious and subtle bugs. Every experienced Java programmer knows that finding and fixing these bugs can be difficult and costly. Fortunately, there are a large number of free open source Java tools available that can be used to find and fix defects early in the development life cycle. In this article, we'll look at a few examples of specific uncommon[1] or unusual defects that can happen in code and see how different Java static analysis tools detect them.

Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a multi-year agreement with On2 Technologies to add comprehensive video capabilities, using On2 Technologies TrueMotion video codecs, to Sun's JavaFX, a family of products for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content across all the 'screens of your life'.

My first technical session was about Java SE presented by Danny Coward from Sun. It was about the current situation of Java SE 6 and the roadmap to Java SE 7. The talk started with a few encouraging stats. For example, Java's performance increased 220% between Java SE 5.0_04 and Java SE 6.0_05P. It's always nice to hear this kind of good news.

It's only taken Borland two years but it's finally dumped its CodeGear tools division, responsible for Borland's hereditary JBuilder, Delphi and C++ Builder lines as well as its new web ventures into PHP and Ruby, said to be used by 7.5 million developers. Embarcadero Technologies is buying it for about $23 million and the transaction's supposed to close in 30-60 days. Thomas Cressey Bravo the private equity house that bought Embarcadero and took it private last year, is fronting the money.

Sun's mule train has finally pulled into Indiana after three years on the road. Indiana is the Linux-friendly Fedora-like OpenSolaris project meant to move the Solaris-shy Linux community off Linux and on to Solaris tempted by Solaris widgetry like the highly scalable, rollback-easy, 128-bit ZFS default filesystem, Linux-like network-based Image Packaging System (IPS) application install accelerator, DTrace predictive self-healing and scalable Containers virtualization, not to mention its Gnome 2.22 front-end and built-in Firefox browser.

At WaveMaker, we have hitched our wagon to Java so I hope very much that JavaOne is showing us the ghost of Java present, not the ghost of Java to come. The Sun promise to put Java runtimes everywhere is meaningless if nobody wants to develop for those runtimes. Adobe and Microsoft are doing a far better job making their tools simple enough for mere mortals and focusing on the presentation layer.

Virtualization Journal now reaches more than 60,000 online readers with monthly digital editions and weekly newsletters. The premier issue of the magazine's print edition, which debuts on May 6, 2008, at JavaOne in San Francisco, as a media sponsor of this event, will be available on newsstands worldwide. Article submission inquiries can be directed by email to editorial(at)sys-con.com and the world's most targeted advertising opportunities can be explored by contacting ad vertising(at)sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

MySQL has backed off a plan to charge for some encryption and compression backup widgetry in the next version of the database - and, heavens, NOT OPEN SOURCE THE STUFF, an idea it trotted a few weeks ago and predictably caught hell for. Sun, which bought MySQL for a billion dollars, a good reason to try to make some of the money back, took the rap.

db4objects has announced that its db4o object database is now optimized for Microsoft's LINQ. With the new support, developers can choose an object-oriented optimized engine without changing the API or compromising performance. db4object's db4o database offers a persistence solution to store objects of any complexity natively with a single line of code.

Kaazing Corporation and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance to deliver the scalable and advanced real-time Web 2.0 platform. The integration between Kaazing's real-time Rich Internet Application (RIA) solution, Enterprise Comet, and Sun Microsystems' open source Java EE application server, Glassfish, enables customers to create and deploy scalable mission-critical real-time solutions such as trading systems, betting and gambling applications, and interactive sports and news broadcasts, to the Web.

Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a multi-year agreement with On2 Technologies to add comprehensive video capabilities, using On2 Technologies TrueMotion video codecs, to Sun's JavaFX, a family of products for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content across all the 'screens of your life'.

According to Sean Walsh, President and CEO of Skyway Software, 'Our Skyway Community is thriving and our members are very talented. We truly look forward to their RIAs submittals and Skyway Builder extensions and are excited that all of the contributions will benefit the entire Skyway Community.' With Skyway Builder CE, Java developers get an open source Eclipse-based plugin that offers a seamless blend of coding and modeling for delivering RIAs and Web Services in Spring. Unlike any other modeling tool, Skyway Builder CE provides comprehensive modeling capabilities at four distinct application layers:

Virtualization Journal now reaches more than 60,000 online readers with monthly digital editions and weekly newsletters. The premier issue of the magazine's print edition, which debuts on May 6, 2008, at JavaOne in San Francisco, as a media sponsor of this event, will be available on newsstands worldwide. Article submission inquiries can be directed by email to editorial(at)sys-con.com and the world's most targeted advertising opportunities can be explored by contacting ad vertising(at)sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

Skyway Software, announced a SOA developer contest. The SOA design and delivery solutions provider announced the contest with a prize of a $2500 gas card for the winner. The company feels that the basics are very easy. The winner would also get a copy of the Skyway SOA Platform - Developer Edition. The Developer Edition is valued at $5400.

Parasoft announced they will be featuring the next generation of application security solutions at JavaOne. Improving security without impacting productivity, Parasoft's Application Security Solutions establish a continuous process that helps ensure security verification and remediation tasks are ingrained into workflow across every stage of the SDLC.

CodeGear announced it has teamed with Instantiations to fully integrate the Instantiations Swing Designer visual layout tools into CodeGear JBuilder, making it the commercial Java IDE to include this technology. Java developers using JBuilder will now be able to construct more sophisticated and reliable Swing-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that enhance the user experience for enterprise applications.

The Ubuntu Linux-based gOS operating system from Good OS LLC (www.thinkgos.com) includes so many Google applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google News Google Maps and YouTube that it's often referred to as the Google operating system. It also includes Firefox, Skype, Facebook and OpenOffice 2.3.

TIBCO announced it is demonstrating how the combination of SCA and the TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid provides a highly scalable Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) combination for enterprise developers looking to reap the benefits of both models. Using SCA helps in part by laying a common framework for organizing, modeling and composing services within the enterprise. SCA goes beyond previous interoperability standards and provides a design standard that allows enterprise architects and developers a model driven approach to creating composite service oriented applications.

EnterpriseDB released a plug-in for Postgres Studio that creates an AJAX-enabled Java application based on a Postgres database table or schema. Postgres Studio is a graphical database administration console that is built on the widely admired pgAdmin foundation and only available as part of Postgres Plus. The plug-in generates Java source code, scripts, NetBeans, and Eclipse project files for screen-based applications that can create, read, update, and delete records in target Postgres databases. The plug-in extensively leverages the JBoss Seam Framework, creating a pre-configured Seam environment for Postgres Plus.

Instantiations announced that its customer base has grown to more than 10,000 customers. Instantiations reached this milestone through increased enterprise adoption of its Eclipse-focused product lines. An early participant in the commercial Eclipse market, Instantiations continues its growth with its WindowBuilder Pro and CodePro AnalytiX product lines. As a result, the company has achieved year-over-year revenue growth as well as record growth in the past two quarters.

Sun Microsystems and the GlassFish community announced the availability of the technology preview release of the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server version 3 and new Sun GlassFish Communications Server. Sun also announced a new GlassFish Partner initiative designed to provide developers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and System Integrators (SIs) with access to a large number of frameworks and applications running on the GlassFish application server.

Sun Microsystems and the OpenPortal community announced a new open source initiative with Liferay to develop a common Web presentation platform that incorporates portal and integration technologies from both companies. Developers will now have access to a new, stable, standards-based Web presentation platform. The Sun and Liferay products resulting from this initiative will bring developers simple, lightweight presentation capabilities for GlassFish, Sun's open source Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server.

Mainsoft announced the release of its SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes. This add-on to IBM Lotus Notes 8, an Eclipsed-based Rich Client Platform based on Java, provides point-and-click access to Microsoft SharePoint content, including Word documents, Excel worksheets, and PowerPoint presentations, from within Notes. Mainsoft professional services can also build composite applications across SharePoint data and Java or .NET line-of-business applications.

Continuing employing an open application model, Sprint introduced the latest version of its developer toolkit, relaunching its Professional Developer Program and preparing to deliver new Sprint devices and a new Java platform that will open the door to millions of developers who have traditionally designed for a desktop environment.

Rogue Wave announced that Patrick Leonard, Vice President, Engineering and Product Strategy, will be a panel member at the 2008 JavaOne Conference. The panel session, 'Open Standards for SOA and Java,' will take place on Wednesday, May 7 at 4:10 PM. The discussion will address questions about the Service Component Architecture (SCA) standard and its relationship to Java and C++ technology-based SOA development. Of particular interest to Rogue Wave customers is how these standards can assist with parallel computing for high-performance applications.

Coverity announced the release of Coverity Thread Analyzer for Java. The product is a dynamic analysis tool for multi-threaded applications that automatically detects concurrency defects that can cause data corruption and application failures. Coverity Thread Analyzer can also be used in concert with Coverity Prevent, the static analysis tool, to create a software quality solution that will help developers control the complexity of writing multi-threaded applications.

Mobile phone maker Nokia has announced that they are now going to work with Ikivo to develop tools for java development on the mobile platform. The two companies announced their collaboration at the JavaOne conference. They would offer a tool set that integrates Nokia?s Platform SDK for Java, Adobe Illustrator, Ikivo Animator, and NetBeans.

Genuitec announced the availability of the initial milestone release of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 6.5. Among noted enhancements is the upgrade of MyEclipse Spring tools, which provides the most up-to-date technology as well as the integration of the latest Spring framework 2.5 libraries. Also in the milestone release, JSF developers can expect to see an improvement to the JSF/Facelet visual page designer with all new support for coding and WYSIWYG preview of custom components.

Truvo has launched a downloadable Java search service for mobile users in Belgium based on mobilePeople's liquid platform. Truvo, formerly called World Directories, is an international directory publisher that adds multiple content sources in a searchable format next to their own yellow and white pages listings.

AccuRev announced the release of its process-centric software configuration management (SCM) plug-in for m2eclipse, the popular Maven plug-in for the Eclipse development environment. Maven is a Java project management and build automation tool used for building and managing any Java-based project to make the day-to-day work of Java developers easier and provide build and project management for any Java-based project.

Kabira Technologies announced that it is building a Java technology-enabled product to work with its core product technology, the Kabira eXtreme Transaction Platform (KXTP) software. Marrying a Java technology development environment to the Kabira Runtime enables an application developer to inherit integrated transactionality, high performance, transparent distribution, persistent shared memory data, high availability and high-speed channels from Kabira's technology into native Java applications, while preserving the robustness of the Kabira runtime technology.

Apple picked up PA Semi, the low-power PowerPC start-up, last week to do who knows what with, and Sun picked up the assets of Montalvo Systems, the laconic, heading-for-the-crapper start-up that was supposed to be doing an Intel-competitive low-power/mobile four-core x86 chip for reasons it hasn't shared yet. It apparently plans to integrate the Montalvo technology into its own processors to what effect remains to be seen. Popular wisdom thinks Sun's interest has nothing to do with x86 compatibility.

The Morph Application Platform for Java, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that virtualizes the application environment and leverages cloud computing resources such as the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is now in limited developer preview. Webtide, the team behind Jetty, has brought that Java web server to the Morph Application Platform. Through its developer advice and support, Webtide has played a key role in the implementation of Java into the Morph Application Platform to extend the functionality to include deploying and delivering Java applications.

In his opening keynote at the annual CommunityOne open source developer conference, Ian Murdock, vice president for Developer and Community Marketing at Sun Microsystems, will discuss the increasing role communities play in the software industry, how technologies and the companies and communities that create them are increasingly interconnected, and how the power of community can and should play a role in next generation platforms. Additional Sun executives keynoting at the event include Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, and Rich Green, executive vice president of Software.

Sun's back in the red again after five profitable quarters and five years in the red following the dot.com bust. The March quarter turned sour on it, starting, it said, with the first week in March when the channel stared reporting a drop in sales, a miasma that spread to its end-user business as the month progressed. It blamed the US economy, where business was down 10%, some of it traceable to smaller businesses and the government, it said. (Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy runs Sun Federal.)

Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans community announced the availability of the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Early Access for PHP scripting language, bringing the power of NetBeans to Web 2.0-style developers. Additionally they announced the general availability of the NetBeans 6.1 IDE.

Sun Microsystems announced two new offerings that will expand customer choice by providing users with access to Sun's innovative open source software running on the Amazon Web Services platform. Sun's OpenSolaris Operating System (OS) will be available on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a Web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud and changes the economics of computing by allowing customers to pay only for the infrastructure software services and capacity that they actually use. Additionally, Sun is adding premium technical support for its MySQL database running on Linux and Amazon EC2 to its global support and services offerings.

What do - in no particular order - Microsoft's GM of Virtualization, VMware's CTO, the Founders of JBoss, XenSource and VirtualLogix, the former and current CEOs of Sun, the Presidents of WaveMaker and Embotics, the CTO of Adobe, the executive leader of DataDirect Technologies and the Technology Director of Parallels all have in common? They are just a tiny handful of the tens of dozens of top industry executives and practitioners featured in the world-class online and offline coverage by SYS-CON Media & Events of the fast-moving, interlocking worlds of i-Technology and Enterprise IT. With experts on i-Technology (Internet technologies) and Enterprise IT such as this, there's no shortage of daily examples, but just to give a taster here's...

Many young programmers don't read books anymore. They google. They argue, 'When I need to find a solution it's just a click away. Why bother purchasing books that are outdated by the time of printing? Real programmers learn by doing - trial and errors'. I do not agree with this.

Sun Microsystems, Canonical and Red Hat announced the inclusion of OpenJDK-based implementations in Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server and Desktop editions, furthering the promise of Sun's open source Java technology initiative. In addition, the NetBeans 6.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is being delivered as part of the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release and Canonical has certified Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition on several Sun x86 systems.