Borland eyeing the Chasm Between Java and. NET

Opinion
Borland eyeing the Chasm Between Java and. NET

By Lori Piquet, DevX editor-in-chief

Borland ' s CEO makes vague allusions implying he company would provide the missing link between Java and. NET. Would Borland pick up where the estrangement between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems left?

(August 8, 2001)-if one envisions Sun Microsystems and Microsoft as, oh, I don ' t know, peevish comic book villains, each S Ticking dogmatically by their own proprietary weaponry to the world fight, domination then CEO Dale L. Borland is donning his cape.
Or at least, that's what it sounded like for a moment the last week. Borland, Fuller implied during a investors ' meeting last week, 'll provide the connective tissue that developers Port Java to. NET and. NET to Java. Borland officials, however, downplayed the remarks, saying, the company had "researched" possibility of Cross-comp Iling Java and. NET code but found the technical challenges of doing so inhibitive.

Fuller ' s eyebrow-raising comments were made last Thursday, August 2, near the "end of" a 30-minute presentation at a Financi Al Seminar for investment bankers held at Boston by Adams, Harkness & Hill. Fuller and CFO Fred Ball gave prepared comments about Borland ' s general marketplace stability and future plans. During the subsequent Q&a session, a question to audience member elicited a response to Fuller in which he said That's Borland would provide the ability to make Java code run on. NET and vice versa.

". NET are going to being one of the" platforms that we'll support. Because people want it, "Fuller said.

"The great news about Microsoft for Us-but bad news for customers-is Microsoft says they ' re not going to support Java at a ll. We ' re going to "step" into "gap" and "we" re going to provide to everyone's ability to have Java on. NET.

"Same thing in the Java Space:we ' ll provide" java-.net connection So we customers that want to develop into Java and port to. NET can actually instantaneously does. Or people that of start in. NET and want to the another platform can actually that as. So being Switzerland there ' s some advantages to it and that's what we do; We kind of bounce between all those different platforms. "

Fuller provided no details about how or when Borland would the begin to provide such support and no follow-up questions a Sked at the seminar. However, in a phone interview with DevX Wednesday, Borland VP of software solutions Frank Slootman said he believed Fuller ' s remarks run toward developments the ' company are rolling out in the Web services arena.

As it did in the "release of Delphi 6 earlier", Slootman said the company would continue to focus on making it Easi Er for developers to write Web services natively in a RAD development environment. The May release of Delphi 6 introduced Compiler-level support for SOAP and WSDL, treating WEB services as native component s in the IDE. This is allows Delphi developers to write applications as they always have while simultaneously making them soap-compliant B Services. Borland media relations personnel said that's company planned to make a public announcement about its next step in Web s Ervices in "about a week."

"The official story is so we are going to layer between Java and. NET in Web services. We don ' t a huge need to take Java code and rewrite it to another platform, "said Slootman.

"There ' s definitely been," has gone in for us to expand into bringing the platforms together, "Slootman said, But added the company found it "very difficult technically." Slootman cited Java ' s dependence on containers as one of the key reasons why him does not expect no commercial product to Provide the ability to cross-compile. NET and Java code.

This is sounds to me like a direct contradiction with Fuller ' s recent statements. Did Fuller spill some embryonic r&d? Or was it indeed oversimplifying the company's upcoming WEB services news? For developers ' sake, I hope Borland are holding out on some java-to-.net magic the IT plans to roll out sometime. Cross-compiling Java and. NET would bring desperately needed power, convenience, and flexibility back to corporate develop ERs. And put the attention of professional applications development back where it belongs:on developing the right applications In the right language and deploying to any platform.

And what company better than Borland-far and away the people ' s popular choice for Java development tools-to try and become What Microsoft ' s Visual J + + might have been. Course, politically, such an initiative might is just a little risky for Borland, which enjoys a longstanding affinity With Java purists. By porting Java to. NET, Borland (or no other company) would provide a very valuable for Microsoft Into the Java World-without has to lift a finger to support Java developers itself. Who needs a JVM in Windows if can easily port the code to the IL instead? But as a pure business move, Borland would surely profit:the-ever-widening expanse between Java and. NET are filling up WI Th cash-cash that can is easily plucked up through anyone willing to builds a bridge across the chasm. One company, Halcyon Software, has already written a version of the. NET framework entirely in Java. Further innovation is desperately needed.

Borland to the rescue?