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Tuesday Sep 29, 2009

Student Views and Reviews recently spoke with Mambo Banda, a 22-year-old software engineering student in his final year at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. Mambo began using JavaFX in September 2008, learning the language in his spare time. He noted that the primary source of information he used in learning JavaFX was the API documentation which he said “is great, it has lots of examples and detailed information.” Mambo said that to this day he still relies on a lot of online blogs to learn JavaFX, such as Jim Weaver's blog, which he noted can have “great JavaFX samples and tips.”

In response to a question asking what he liked most about JavaFX Mambo stated: “I like the whole idea, the whole platform for creating visual applications.” Mambo said he likes the fact that with JavaFX “you can be creative and productive from the moment you pick it up.” Mambo also pointed out that one of the reasons he was drawn to JavaFX was its ability to access Java easily which “allows you to use traditional programming methods without sacrificing anything. Java is a rich language with a lot of years invested in it and you get all that for free in JavaFX.”

Read more of Mambo's interview and listen to him talk about JavaFX with Maijaliisa Burkert in Student Views and Reviews.

Friday Sep 25, 2009

Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert discuss this week's announcement of key technology enhancements across Sun's Unified Storage systems portfolio.

Friday Sep 18, 2009

Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert give a quick rundown of Sun news this week including the Sun and Oracle Exadata Database Machine Version 2 announcement, upcoming Software Freedom Day events this Saturday, September 19, and highlights of Sun's 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.

Friday Sep 11, 2009

Catch up on Sun news this week by listening to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert recap the JavaFX TV platform announcement from Amino Communications as well as the Sun MySQL Enterprise subscription update.

 

Friday Sep 04, 2009

Listen to the short segment below as Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert review what happened at Sun this week.

Reviews Interactive recently spoke with Jeff “JavaJeff” Friesen, a freelance software developer and educator specializing in Java technology. Jeff teaches Java at a local college and has written several books on Java, as well as numerous articles for java.net and JavaWorld.com. Jeff has an upcoming article on JavaFX 1.2's animated transition classes that is scheduled to be published in September at InformIT.com.

Jeff's primary involvement with JavaFX is currently academic, helping developers learn how to best use and extend Sun's JavaFX technology. Much of Jeff's research is presented in articles on his Web site at javajeff.mb.ca. Jeff's most recent JavaFX research projects include the "Painter's Canvas" article, which “provides the means to introduce complex graphics, such as fireworks, into a scene that cannot be (easily) generated via nodes,” as well as the recently published Units Converter application for JavaFX 1.2. Jeff reported he is currently working on some new and interesting JavaFX applications and has written additional articles on various JavaFX 1.2 APIs that will be posted in articles on his Web site later this month.


When asked what Jeff liked best about JavaFX he said how the technology “simplifies the development of rich internet applications.” He said “this write-once/run-anywhere capability greatly reduces the learning curve in developing applications for your customers.” Regarding the JavaFX 1.2 release Jeff feels the most helpful new features include added support for NetBeans, and the overall performance increase of JavaFX itself.

Looking to the future Jeff said he is eagerly anticipating the 1.3 release to see the new performance upgrades as well as the new APIs. He stated: “I understand that performance will be improved in part by replacing JavaFX's dependence on Java2D with an equivalent technology known as Prism,” but pointed out that it may not happen in time for the 1.3 release. He also said he is really looking forward to working with the JavaFX Authoring tool, stating “I think this tool has the potential to save developers lots of time in laying out their user interfaces,” and also believes the if the tool is successful it “will greatly help to further JavaFX adoption.”

To read more of Jeff's interview click here.

Jeff Friesen
Jeff Friesen


The Sun Fire X4270 server running SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode) with Oracle(R) Database on top of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) delivered the highest two-processor Unicode result on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark. Sun's server, equipped with two Intel Xeon X5570 processors (8 cores, 16 threads) supported 3,800 SAP SD Benchmark users(*).  This result surpasses the 3,752 SD Users score posted by IBM System 550 server, equipped with four POWER6 processors (8 cores, 16 threads), making the Sun Fire X4270 server the fastest eight-core system on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application benchmark.

The SAP Standard Application SD Benchmark is a two-tier ERP business test that represents full business workloads of order processing and invoice processing, while demonstrating the ability to run both the application and database software on a single system. For more detail on this benchmark result visit:http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/sun_x4270_world_record_sap1

(*) Two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark based on SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) as of 08/21/09: Sun Fire X4270 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,800 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon x5570, 48 GB memory, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10, Cert# 2009033. IBM System 550 (4 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,752 SAP SD Users, 4x 5 GHz Power6, 64 GB memory, DB2 9.5, AIX 6.1, Cert# 2009023.For more details, see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.