The Future of Java on System i

Support for Java technology in i5/OS is in the midst of fundamental change, as IBM converges on a single virtual machine implementation across all its platforms. This session details the change embodied by the adoption of this new VM - its content, timeline, rationale and impacts - and charts IBM's progress so far.

This new VM brings with it known impacts - good and bad - to compatibility, performance, and long-term migration. These impacts are outlined, along with IBM's plans for their automatic detection and mitigation in most cases.

Impacts that defy automatic mitigation are expected to be rare; i5/OS facilities for their identification will be described and demonstrated.

By the end of this session, you will understand:

• Java support in i5/OS, and how it is changing
• the timeline of the change, and where we are in it
• the impacts of the change, both good and bad
• and how to determine whether to try the new VM for yourself.

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JDK 1.5 Enhancements Overview

Java continues to evolve, in direct response to the wants and needs of its developers. The latest version of Java supported on System i - JDK 1.5 - includes many new and enhanced features, in both the language itself and the core set of Java library APIs.

This session begins with a brief overview of Java's evolution over its five major releases, continues with a high-level survey of the version 1.5 language enhancements, and wraps up with selected "deeper dives" into a few of these enhancements using examples and code snippets.

By the end of this session, you will be able to describe the 1.5 enhancements to Java: The basic types of enhancements included in version 1.5, the review and recommendation processes that made them possible, their possible impacts on existing code, and their positive impact on the design of new or re-engineered code.