Although largely unproven as a commercial technology, Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java has seen its bandwaggon building momentum. Last week, as reported briefly, both Microsoft Corp and IBM Corp hitched their Internet ponies to the programming language, stamping it as a de facto standard. Microsoft will write a Java applications programming interface to be implemented as an Object Linking & Embedding control that becomes part of an Internet scripting language built on Visual Basic and called Visual Basic Script. The Java application programming interface and run-time environment for Windows will be turned over to Sun. The run-time environment will enable Java applets to be run under all versions of Windows. Developers will be able to write Internet applications with Java and Microsoft tools and have them interoperate. Java applets can be inserted in applications written in Visual Basic Script. Web designers will be able to write pages using the Sun-Netscape Communications Corp JavaScript and be sure of compatibility with Microsoft’s new Internet Information Server, formerly Gibraltar, and Internet Explorer Browser. Windows source licensees Bristol Technology Inc and Mainsoft Corp are to do versions of Visual Basic Script for Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and Digital Unix.
