Sun Microsystems Inc is beginning the build-up to the launch of its Java Development Kit 1.2 next month, which will emerge, as anticipated (CI No 3,493) at the Java Business Expo in New York from December 7. Sun says it’s just gone through a year of shut up and code in order to get the JDK to a position where it won’t need to be significantly changed or fixed for some time to come. Even so, it doesn’t appear to include the HotSpot compiler technology that Sun has been working on, which seems more likely to emerge in the first quarter of next year. Sun VP John Kannegaard said the release would include server side performance improvements, along with enhancements to security, Java Beans, audio, JDBC and internationalization. The JFC-Swing user interface component is added to the Java Foundation Class library, replacing the unpopular and hard to use AWT Abstract Windows Toolkit. RMI remote method invocation protocols will be implemented over the Object Management Group’s Corba IIOP Inter- ORB Protocol (CI No 3,448), and this, along with serialization support are necessary to support the forthcoming Jini distributed Java object and agent technology.
