History and Acknowledgements

Of course, a foreword to a book like this requires a history of the people behind the project. My own involvement began in 1995, when I transferred to the JavaSoft division to work on JDBC database connectivity with Graham Hamilton. We liked the Java platform because it combined the best features of many programming languages we had used in our careers. At the time, it was gaining popularity for use in Internet browsers, but our intuition was that it had wider appeal . Indeed, in the years to come, the Java platform proved more popular in distributed computing than anyone could have envisioned in 1995.

In 1996, Mark Hapner joined us to help with JDBC, and then with a group of application programming interfaces (APIs) I was calling "enterprise Java." Over the years that followed Mark participated in the design of more of the evolving J2EE platform than any other individual, becoming the central architect. Vlada Matena joined us later in 1996, leading the design of a transaction API and then Enterprise JavaBeans, which became a cornerstone of J2EE. Vlada wrote the original summary for a J2EE specification, which later evolved into Part I of this book, written by Bill Shannon.

The Java Web Server project also began in 1996. Through the work of a lot of dedicated people, this project eventually culminated in the servlet and JavaServer Pages APIs. James Davidson and Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart most recently led these efforts. Along with Brian Behlendorf, Jon Stevens, and others, they pioneered the use of the Apache open source model to provide a widely-adopted implementation of these APIs. Servlets and JavaServer Pages also became cornerstones for the J2EE platform. These component models have been widely-adopted as the basis for web applications, by themselves or as a front-end to Enterprise JavaBeans.

Jon Kannegaard joined JavaSoft as vice president and general manager in late 1995. He was the single most important person involved in the delivery of Java technology in the years that followed. J2EE in particular would never have happened without his fight for the cause. He got it. He had faith. Jon and I recruited Mala Chandra to direct the enterprise work in mid-1996. I was very glad to have her on board; I was doing all management and no engineering by that time. Mala built an impressive organization very quickly. She utilized her wide respect in the industry to build support. She provided a clear vision for a J2EE platform. She led us to success.

Mala hired her former colleague Shel Finkelstein soon after her arrival. Shel managed most of the J2EE architecture team and served as a core J2EE architect himself. More importantly, he handled technical diplomacy with the partners . Partnership turned out to be the quintessential element of the project: Without the long list of people and companies that committed to the J2EE effort and industry consensus, the platform would not have developed the tremendous momentum it has today.

By the beginning of 1998, Mala's engineering team numbered 60 people. Two key additions were Jeff Jackson and Bill Shannon. Bill became an essential member of the core architectural team, resolving the many technical issues in our weekly meetings. We really needed his insight. Jeff Jackson wandered the halls chanting the mantra "4, 6, 9, 1" ”the months we had targeted in 1999 for the prealpha, alpha, beta, and final releases of J2EE. We made those dates, and after the successful 12/99 release Jeff was promoted to direct J2EE engineering.

It is not practical to acknowledge here the dozens of people in J2EE engineering who worked beyond the call of duty for the cause. However, I must mention Sanjeev Krishnan, Carla Mott, Vivek Nagar, Vella Raman, and Anil Vijendran, whose contributions were truly outstanding. You will find many others acknowledged in the J2EE specifications and elsewhere.

The excellent engineering management team is also due credit for the timeliness and quality of J2EE: Janet Breuer, Carla Carlson, Jim Driscoll, David Heisser, Jim Inscore, Tom Kincaid, Stans Kleijnen, Kathy Knutsen, Margot Miller, Steve Nahm, Karen Tegan, and Connie Weiss. Bill Roth, Sharada Achanta, and Gina Centoni managed J2EE marketing.

However it should be said that the most important contributors were not Sun Microsystems employees . J2EE was an industry-wide effort. Experts from dozens of partner companies successfully developed and reached consensus on J2EE APIs. These APIs encompass a broad range of capabilities including naming and directory services, distributed transactions, OMG CORBA connectivity, asynchronous messaging, security, web server development, enterprise application integration, EJB, and JDBC.

Dave Rosenberg from Oracle and Ian Brackenbury from IBM had the tough job of bringing together the diverse viewpoints of their large companies to facilitate consensus on these APIs. Rod Butters, Mathieu Devin, Hal Hilderbrand, Larry Jacobs, Julie Basi, and Gary Hallmark from Oracle, Jack Boyce, Elias Bayeh, Mike Connor, George Copeland, Paul Cotton, Don Ferguson, Tom Freund, Simon Nash, Peter Niblett, and Tony Storey from IBM, Scott Dietzen, Ed Cobb, Mark Carges, and Pete Homan from BEA, Johannes Klein from Compaq, Mary Leland from HP, Steve Holbrook and Art Navajjrez from Novell, Paul Butterworth and Sean Fitts from Fort , Vijay Anand, Yarden Malka, and Peter Yared from NetDynamics, Marc San Soucie from GemStone, Richard Pledereder from Sybase, John Goodson from Merant, Yeh-Heng Sheng from Informix, Larry Ciscon and Bernard Barcio from Modulus, Terry Olkin from Open Horizon, and Pete Ohler from Tibco were particularly helpful in bringing their expertise and their company viewpoints to the J2EE effort. Many others are acknowledged in the J2EE specifications for their contributions to various APIs.

The consensus-building process which began with JDBC was refined through these and other efforts, and eventually became the Java Community Process. This process has proven very successful in achieving industry adoption of real standards while minimizing the "design by committee" that often plagues formal standards processes. The Java Community Process avoids a "paper design" through the participation of engineers whose success depends on delivery of products that implement an API, and by demanding a reference implementation and compatibility test suite that give the standard substance.

The Java platform has come a long way from the first JavaOne conference in 1996. At that conference, we introduced JDBC to an audience of developers who were using the Java platform primarily in client-side Internet browsers. At the third JavaOne in 1998, nearly 8,000 developers attended the presentation about the enterprise Java platform. Over half of them raised their hands when I asked who was writing server-side Java code. In early 2000, a dozen vendors have already announced server products expected to comply with the J2EE specification and compatibility test suite by year-end. 100,000 enterprise developers have downloaded the J2EE reference implementation in just the few months since its December release. We're delighted . We hope that you too will find our work useful.

Rick  Cattell,  Distinguished  Engineer,  Sun  Microsystems  
Cupertino,  California,  March  15,  2000