Sun Microsystems Inc’s JavaSoft Inc division yesterday updated and expanded the Java platform, with a new version of the Java Developers Kit (JDK), which includes the Java virtual machine, class libraries and tools, and an electronic commerce platform based on the Java Commerce APIs and the recently-announced Java Card API. The JDK 1.1 includes APIs that support for various international languages, and the abstract windowing toolkit (AWT) element has been tweaked to give two- to three-times the performance than before, according to David Spenhoff JavaSoft’s director of product marketing, though he added that benchmarks and other numbers would be announced when it goes to beta next week. The AWT enables applications to adopt the look and feel of whatever operating system is underneath. The company has added JDBC support to the JDK to link into relational databases, its Java-only Remote Method Invocation (RMI) object transport, which requires Java virtual machines at both ends to talk. Support for Java Beans components has also been added. Security has been enhanced by stretching the Java sandbox – the area on a client machine within which a Java applet can play – enabling users to add digital signatures to applets so they can authenticate what they download. The dot release also includes the Java Archive Format (JAR) for bundling applets for download; Java Native Method Interface (JNI) to call native libraries and other stuff brought together in a white paper at http://java.sun.com/products/JDK/1.1/designspecs. The Java Commerce Toolkit has been long-brewing in the Java pot, having been first mooted in May with the Java Commerce APIs, and includes a Java Wallet,Java cassettes to slot into the Wallet, a shopping cart to keep a total and documentation and sample code to take it further. The Wallet is an interface that contains credit cards, checks and the like and is customizable. It works with the cassettes, of which there are five right now. These include one supporting the Secure Electronic Transfer (SET) credit card protocol, which CyberCash Inc helped JavaSoft develop, and cassettes supporting the formers’ CyberCoin small payments system, and the Mondex smart card system. The Commerce Toolkit will be available for early access developers in January, with pricing announced when it ships later in the quarter. Early access information is at http://java.sun.com/commerce. JDK 1.1 beta will be at http://www.java.sun.com from December 9 for Sun Solarius on Sparc and for Windows 95 and NT. It’ll evehtually support Solaris on Intel, JavaOS and MacOS as well. There’ll be more on other Java APIs on December 11 which has been declared Java Day at Fall Internet World in New York City.
