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Rich Green

Increasing Developer Productivity with Project Rave:
A Conversation with Rich Green
by Janice J. Heiss
October 2003

At the 2003 JavaOne conference, Sun Microsystems, Inc., demonstrated a next generation tool for Java application development. Code named Project Rave, the tool is designed to address three developer needs: increase application development productivity while decreasing deployment time; reduce application development complexity; and deliver solutions based on portable and interoperable Java technology standards.

Project Rave addresses the needs of skilled developers whose primary, day-to-day concern is how to rapidly deliver the business-critical applications they're asked to build. With the initial product release focusing on Web applications, Rave will use the power of the Java platform to more easily solve business problems.

By utilizing and building on JavaServer Faces technology, Rave simplifies Java coding by handling the details of transaction processing, persistence, and other complexities, while providing well-defined points for incorporating the business logic necessary to solve the problem at hand.

To explore the future of Project Rave, I met with Rich Green, vice president of Sun Developer Tools and Java Software for Sun, where he drives the strategy and delivery of the developer tools portfolio. Project Rave's manager Ken Wallich and software architect Robert Brewin, both of Sun, also contributed to the interview.

How can developers try out Project Rave and suggest improvements? And what kind of feedback are you seeking?

We want to target features that will enable developers to rapidly create the solutions they need. Our initial release, for instance, is focused on Web application-based, database-centric applications. So, we want feedback about both the breadth and the depth of the tool. We're trying to prioritize which features are first release features, which are second release, and which are features that developers really don't need at all. How well does this tool perform? Are the right set of data sources and services available for use within the application? What needs to be added? What features are unnecessary for those apps? What kind of databases are you talking to? Are you creating Web services? Are you consuming Web services? Are you consuming Enterprise JavaBeans technology?

Separately, we want to ask, "What are the other types of apps that you would like Project Rave to aggressively support in subsequent revisions? Would using this actually make you more productive?"

Technology Preview Buddies

What are the specific ways developers can try out Rave?

We're overwhelmed by the response from developers who are anxious to review the technology preview as soon as it's available. So, we're giving technical reviews and demos and assessing who wants to participate. And we're going to assign engineers we're calling "technology preview buddies" for the customers to work through real solutions, and see whether we're solving the problems they need to solve.

To sign up for free early access to Rave 1.0, which we will release later this year, go to: http://see.sun.com/Apps/DCS/mcp?q=ST1D003TFMRg9a6

We hope to get specific feedback late in the fall of '03. And then offer a larger scale access program in the spring of '04 to many more developers. Based on that feedback, we'll calculate the final release date -- the current plan is for mid-year of 2004.

What is the significance of the programming that Rave offers?

The real significance relates to the process you need to get the problem solved, which generally is writing the business logic code behind the objects, and not the end-to-end program that you would ordinarily have to write to create the same solution. You don't have to worry about developing all the classes, just the relevant code behind the objects.

Architecturally, the most innovative things in Project Rave are in what's not seen. Its design-centric view keeps you focused on solutions, rather than technology, and it leverages new technologies like in-sync to transparently keep everything self- consistent behind the scenes. A developer using Rave need only be concerned with the components they use, and the event handlers for those components.

Moving from Three to Ten Million Developers

Sun aspires to move from three to ten million Java technology developers some time in the next several years, in part through Project Rave products. Even a couple of million more Java technology developers would be a big change. How might this affect Java developers at large?

It will be good for all members of the Java community. I think that Rave will be one of the first, and, we hope, one of the best tools to facilitate this growth. But the truth is, the community really has come together to focus on ease of development, and has worked over the last year and a half to make the Java platform simpler so that tools like Rave could be built. Two or three years ago, you could not build Rave -- it could not be done. And it was actually the work of the whole community to enhance the Java platform, thus enabling the creation of these tools -- so others can now do it, too.

"We're overwhelmed by the response from developers who are anxious to review the technology preview as soon as it's available." - Rich Green, vice president of Sun Developer Tools and Java Software, Sun Microsystems

Enhancements to the platform may be at the root of the growth of the developer community. And so, Project Rave will also benefit many other tool vendors and ultimately many other developers who will continue to have choice because it's Java technology. So, I think that's a big deal.

While Sun is working hard to build the best-of-breed development tools, we readily acknowledge that there are a variety of good tools out there for the enterprise market. Java technology would benefit greatly by many new developers joining its ranks, and Rave is the first tool to focus on that.

I'm sometimes asked whether Project Rave is really a new idea for Java technology, a shift in the tools design center as we've claimed. You need to look at the overall paradigm of the tool. The paradigm for Rave is application assembly and service consumption, while the overarching paradigm for all other existing Java tools is writing source code -- granted, with accelerators and other adjunct pieces that can help you create source code more quickly. But it's still a tool for source code writers. And the design center for Rave is a tool for assemblers.

Sun has two goals with Rave. First, we're one of the world's foremost software companies, so it's important for Sun to have tools that allow developers to build applications that allow them to be productive in deploying applications on Sun's Java technology standards products. Sun's products are all based on Java standards. We want tools that allow people to build and deploy applications quickly on these standards-based products. So, that's good for Sun. But as I said earlier, it's also good for the Java community to bring more developers into the fray. Thus, Rave satisfies both our goals.

What are the machine requirements for Project Rave?

"Architecturally, the most innovative things in Project Rave are in what's not seen." - Rich Green, vice president of Sun Developer Tools and Java Software, Sun Microsystems

Any machine that can run modern Java applications can run Project Rave. If the machine has the horsepower for you to productively use Java applications on it -- the same horsepower that runs Windows or Office -- Rave will run just fine. This is just an app written in the Java language.

Sun's Software Strategy

How does Project Rave fit into Sun's overall shift in software strategy that's manifested in Mad Hatter and Project Orion?

Sun's overall software strategy is based on the Java platform. Sun recently announced the Sun Java Enterprise System, which is principally Java technology interfaces and standards. And so, given that Sun's platforms are all centered around Java applications, Sun is putting a lot more effort into Java tools for different constituencies. For the high-end solutions crowd, we have Java Studio Enterprise. For the open source community we have NetBeans. And for the rapid application development market we have Project Rave. But everything Sun is doing is Java-powered now. And so we're backing it up with tools and programs for developers.

What future might Project Rave have in eventually building enterprise applications?

My standard answer is to say "indirectly" because it's hard to imagine a single tool that can support such a level of richness and complexity and still be useful to the folks it's currently intended for. It's more likely accurate to say that we might be adding certain Project Rave design concepts to our enterprise tools. But these are somewhat disparate and discrete markets with different and discrete applications and different and discrete skill sets, and we don't believe that one size can fit all.

Also, we already provide enterprise tools with Java Studio Enterprise. We might be able to add a class of enterprise-level apps by incorporating code created by our enterprise class folks that we would be able to encapsulate.

"Sun's overall software strategy is based on the Java platform." - Rich Green, vice president of Sun Developer Tools and Java Software, Sun Microsystems

The knock on Sun's creation of Java development tools is that it is too little too late.

I think that's an easy one to squelch by pointing out that Java technology has been amazingly successful. We've captured the enterprise market. We've captured the technologist market. We've focused a lot of our time on that, and it's been huge. Now Java software has advanced to the point that such tools like Rave can be produced. And we're bringing it to yet another audience. Is that too little too late because we've succeeded everywhere else?

Looking ahead, what's next for Project Rave?

First and foremost, we are really focused on the Technology Preview and product release. But looking out further, we're currently examining mobility-enriched clients for the next release. The design center for successor releases is about building desktop applications and building mobile client applications. We are listening carefully to developers to determine what's needed.

See Also

Project Rave
http://wwws.sun.com/software/products/projectrave/

Early Access to Project Rave
http://see.sun.com/Apps/DCS/mcp?q=ST1D003TFMRg9a6

Features and Benefits of Project Rave
http://wwws.sun.com/software/products/projectrave/features.html

Project Rave FAQs
http://wwws.sun.com/software/products/projectrave/faqs.html

Project Rave White Papers
http://wwws.sun.com/software/products/projectrave/whitepapers.html

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