Check out this photo of Steve Harris's keynote at Devoxx; Sparky has a new friend! Twitter is full of positive comments. I need to do a pass to separate the interesting ones, but raw data at: #glassFish OR glassfish, #JavaEE6, #glassfish and #Devoxx. Looking forward to a complete report from Alexis (this photo is from the standing-room only JavaEE 6 University talk that he and Antonio gave). PS. Thanks to whoever took Steve's photo. I'll add attribution as soon as I find the author Aaron Houston for Steve's photo.

This week carries a new episode in the Sun/Oracle/EU saga: The EU Comission has issued a statement of objections on the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

Since I am a Sun employee, I will just provide the basic links, no matter how tempting it might be to go beyond that... • (Nov 9th) EU issues SoO - I've only found indirect references to the SoO, like Sun's K-8 Filing. • (later that same day...) Oracle reacted with a PR Statement. • (a bit later...) The DOJ issued their own comment on the EU SoO. • (next morming, Nov 10th) And the EU comments on the DOJ comment (Reuters) • (and, on Nov 11th) According to eWeek Europe, the next step is a hearing on Nov 25th.

The material would make for good pulp fiction. It's very sad to see the impact on people, but today I was talking with a friend that was affected and he was being very good at keeping things in perspective, so I thought of using the front cover of a true pulp fiction: Doc Savage - which I first encountered in an old Spanish translation in a storage room in my grandfather's flat in Barcelona (together with copies of The Shadow and El Coyote).

Perhaps also time to watch again the movie? Blu-ray, pretty please?

The Devoxx conference is around the corner (in just over a week) and will take place in Antwerp, Belgium as every year, only a bit earlier than usual (December was just too close to the Christmas holidays). This week-long conference runs as follows: the first two days are 3-hour sessions to go deeper into the technology (they're called University sessions). The regular conference starts on the third day and offers keynotes and 1-hour sessions. Devoxx also has "Tools in actions" (30-minute), "BOFs", Quickies (15-minute), white boards, and more.

First and foremost, the Wednesday Sun and Oracle keynotes should not be missed (or to be watched later on Parleys) :
• Java, the Platform for the Future - Steve Harris (Oracle)
• Java EE 6 and GlassFish V3: Evolution of a Platform - Roberto Chinnici and Ludo Champenois.

But there's a also long list of GlassFish and Sun-related session for this year's session :

University talks :
• Enhancing the JavaServer Faces 2.0 Component Model - Roger Kitain
• SOA, OpenESB and OpenSSO Programming with Passion - Sang Shin
• The Java EE 6 Platform University - Antonio Goncalves, Alexis MP

Sessions:
• JDK7 Update - Mark Reinhold
• The Java EE 6 Platform - Antonio Goncalves
• Writing Asynchronous Web application (Comet) using the Atmosphere Framework - Jean-Francois Arcand, Paul Sandoz
• Project Coin - Joe Darcy
• Using BTrace and DTrace to Instrument and Analyse Java Applications - Simon Ritter
• Enhancing the JavaServer Faces 2.0 Component Model - Roger Kitain
• Managing GlassFish on OpenSolaris - Simon Ritter
• The Modular Java Platform & Project Jigsaw - Mark Reinhold
• Deep dive on the Java EE 6 platform with GlassFish V3 - Roberto Chinnici, Ludo Champenois

BOFs:
• Grizzzly Servlet Container - Jean-Francois Arcand
• Update JDK 7 - Mark, Alex, and Brian
• The Modular Java Platform & Project JigSaw - Mark Reinhold, Alex Buckley

Quickies:
• Java EE 6 and OSGi. Ludo Champenois

See you there!

Oracle has updated their page on Oracle and Sun and it now includes a PDF entitled "Oracle and Sun Overview and FAQ".  Check it out for comments on many topics covering Sun's Hardware (SPARC, Storage, x86) and Software offerings, including NetBeans, OpenOffice, MySQL, xVM OpsCenter, OpenSource, VirtualBox and GlassFish.

The first 4 recordings of the keynotes from Oracle OpenWorld are now available. The recordings are very well done: they are available for download in multiple formats (flash video/audio, mp4, mp3, ppt, txt) and the web viewer synchronizes video, audio, slides and transcript; nice! One of the recordings is of Scott's Keynote. He did a bit of a retrospective on Sun, including some early days clips and a couple of top 10's. Scott's biggest applause was for his "proudest innovation":

"Kicked Butt, Had Fun, Didn't Cheat, Loved Our Customers, Changed Computing Forever"

The rest of Scott's keynote included a short visit by James and a longer one by John where he talked about the latest, benchmark-leading, flash-based, Sun systems. Larry closed the session, using the new systems to tease IBM on multiple fronts.

Scott's keynote was on Sunday; Larry's just finished a few minutes ago (Wednesday).

Larry's recording should be available "soon"; when it does, you may want to do a skim through the slides/transcript and slow down to video for those sections on which you are most interested. He covered four topics: an update on Oracle Enterprise Linux adoption, Exadata/Hardware, new Support Offering that combines MyOracle and their Enterprise Manager (quite similar in spirit to Sun's efforts), and an overview of the new Fusion Apps. He mentioned the cloud multiple times! Ah, and our Governator came for a quick visit!

The section on Fusion Apps was very interesting - I think Larry does a very good job to show the value prop (to the customers!) of the newly rewritten Apps. I had not really understood what the rewritten Apps really meant to Oracle and their customers. For example, he emphasized several times that Business Intelligence is built-in into the Apps, and that the UI is driven from there.

That's it for me on OOW. I spent about a day and a half at OpenWorld and Oracle Develop and I enjoyed the experience - although Very Different to JavaOne! You can get a feel for the content and experience from the web posts - posts at Blogs.Sun.Com, Blogs.Oracle.Com, Twitter posts and Flickr images.

Added - Also see this Flickr set of Fusion Apps screenshots.
Added - Additional keynotes now available: Thomas Kurian.
Added - Direct link to Scott's Higlights Video.
Added - Link to Ted Farrell's @ OTN (uses livestream, which broadcasts "channels", not a plain recording; I think that link will start the channel into your client from the beginning of the clip, but not 100% sure).

I've updated the list of GlassFish-related sessions for Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle Develop at our GlassFish Conferences Wiki. Some details still shimmering, but pretty nice list so far. Added - We now have 5 sessions at the Unconference.

Added - Also see the list of demos for the booth and the MEP demo.

Oracle has posted an FAQ on the Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server that's worth a check. It's full of interesting bits; the first one that caught my attention was: Q: Can the Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server hardware or software be modified or customized? A: No, customizing or modifying the Sun Exadata Server Hardware or the Oracle Exadata Server Software is not supported. In addition, customers cannot install additional software on the Exadata Storage Servers. If a customer modifies, customizes, or installs additional software on the Exadata Storage Server, then the Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software cannot be supported.

Go to the front page of Sun.com and Follow the link for an invitation to this Event on Tuesday. You're Invited to See the World's First OLTP Database Machine With FlashFire Technology Hosted by Larry Ellison; John Fowler will also attend.

The boards of directors for both companies Approved the Sun-Oracle Deal, Sun's Shareholders Approved it and the US DoJ Approved it, but the European Union is still investigating. The EU Commission is the executive branch of the EU and its cabinet has 27 Commissioners. Of these, Neelie Kroes (@Wikipedia, @CNet) is the Commissioner for Competition and her office just announced an In-Depth Investigation (also see NYTimes). As they say, story evolving...

Related news are tagged Sun+Oracle. I also post links to related industry news at TheAquarium@Twitter.

Added I've not done any systematic tracking of how the press is reacting to this announcement, but the sources I follow are negative on the motivations spelled out in the EU ruling; see below for a few links:

• NYTimes: New Snag for Oracle in Sun Deal
• InternetNews: EU May Delay Oracle-Sun Nuptials
• InformationWeek: Global CIO: Oracle Nailed By EU Protectionism As HP And IBM Raid Sun .
• CNet News: The EU's Christmas gift to Oracle
• ComputerWorld (check the comments): Why the EU should block Oracle/Sun

Oracle's web site is running a teaser on Sun + Oracle is Faster that says: Check back on October 14 as we demonstrate Oracle's commitment to Sun hardware and Sun SPARC. October 11-15 is Oracle OpenWorld, which is held at Moscone Center, like like JavaOne. Unlike J1, the bulk of the presentations at OW are about the Oracle Applications (Wiki, General Sessions). OpenWorld does include a Developer Event that is happening at the Hilton Hotel, but all this is more than six weeks from now and we are Still Waiting, so we don't know if we will be able to Register as Employees, whether we should plan to give presentations, or who-knows-what...

Added - Also see this message from Larry (I've been told it will run as an Ad in a few places, including the WSJ).

Ken Jacobs (Dr. DBA) has Announced Plugin 1.0.4. This release has significant performance improvements, including a number of key 3rd Party Contributions. Reactions from the community so far seem very positive ([1], [2]). Hopefully this is good news for everybody out there reading tea-leaves on how Oracle will treat its not-yet-there new projects.

Two pieces of new of interest to people tracking Oracle and the Sun Acquisition: • Sun's Shareholders Approve the Merger (but still pending regulators approval). • Changes in the Leaderhip of Software Development at Oracle. BTW, I've started posting short posts of this ilk at Twitter.

Added - After the post I realized it might be useful to add some more background on Thomas Kurian, so...

• JavaOne 2006: General Session, day 2 (podcast 1, podcast 2)
• JavaOne 2007: General Session, day 2 (video 1, video 2)
• JavaOne 2008: General Session, day 2 (video 1, video 2).
• Oracle World 2007, Keynote (Keynote)
• Biography at Oracle

Several pieces of good news on Sun's OpenStorage products. Earlier this week the product line was refreshed, both the 7110 and the 7210 offerings. At the same time the SS7000 Simulator has been updated and is now available as an OVF format and can run on the latest VirtualBox (2.2.2). Overall, the product line is doing very well and is the "fastest ramping new product in Sun's storage portfolio ever". Check the Product WebSite for more resources and links.

OpenStorage is an example of the benefits of a Systems Approach to products that leverages both hardware and software, and, on that general topic, check out this Interview with Larry Ellison (available from Oracle.com/sun).

Oracle to Buy Sun Sun and Oracle today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash. The Sun Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer. More.

Oracle Buys Sun On April 20, 2009, Oracle announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems (Sun). The proposed transaction is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently, and it is business as usual. Learn More