About the Java Tools Community (JTC)

Executive Summary

Overview

The Java Tools Community (JTC) is the result of a quest to address two outstanding issues in the Java tools market today. The first was a growing desire by tools vendors and the community at large to allow a more diverse set of developers to contribute to building applications on Java architectures in a more productive manner. The second issue concerns the lack of effort surrounding interoperability between Java development tools and development tools platforms.

As a result, a number of Java tools vendors and other interested parties have jointly developed a lightweight model designed to assist the efforts of Java tool vendor community. It will do so by enabling like-minded Java Community Process (JCP) tool vendor members to align their interests -- and that of their non-JCP customers -- with respect to JCP initiatives in a transparent, productive approach.

Mission

The JTC mission will be limited to Java tools and to related Java design-time issues/standards. Specifically, the goal will be to promote the creation, adoption, and advancement of JCP standards for "toolability" and interoperability in the design-time area, both of which are critical to the continued acceleation of Java.

• Toolability describes how much consideration a particular technology gives in the building of good tools used for its support. While most of the Java Community standards today are focused on the runtime architecture, there can, and should, be thought as to how to make the technology more accessible to developers and tool vendors. Toolability does not dictate how to build tools, but rather how to make the standard APIs friendlier for tools. The result of increased toolability is that developers will be able to more easily utilize these technologies and adoption is likely to take place more quickly.

• Tool Interoperability is used to describe commonality between APIs that allow for the adding of extensions. The common APIs allow tool extensions to interoperate and plug- in, for instance in areas such as data models and deployment APIs.

The community's output will be based upon making public recommendations, studies, opinions and JSR submissions through established and accepted processes of the JCP. The JTC is not be a legal entity, does not hold IP, nor will it endeavor to develop code, TCKs, certification suites, nor standards of any type beyond activities related to the JCP.

Value propositions

Overall, the JTC helps provide long-term insurance against fragmentation or weakening in the Java industry by helping maintain diversity, establishing compatibility, and focusing on customer needs. By aligning the design-time community, the overall design ecosystem can better agree on standards and compete on implementations while strengthening the overall Java platform and JCP. Specifically,

For the JCP, the JTC

• Helps it become more inclusive of outside domain expertise
• Promotes improved toolability, thereby strengthening the tool community -- which is core to growing the overall Java/JCP developer pool.

For Tool/Extension Vendors, the JTC

• Helps align the joint needs in design-time to the JCP and Expert Groups (EGs) more effectively
• Accelerates adoption of new Java APIs in tools, leading to faster adoption in the marketplace
• Increases interoperability between tools, thereby improving the competitiveness of the Java ecosystem.
• Increases alignment for plugins by making them more widely compatible, in turn increasing the market for the tools themselves.

For Tool/Extension Customers, the JTC

• Assures that new APIs or standards will be quickly and effectively implemented on their favored development platform(s)
• Ensures opportunity to participate in the tools community as "advisors" regardless of JCP membership

Activities & Output

Since the JTC's goals focus on toolability, interoperability and inclusion needs and opinions, the following high-level activities for the community will be pursued:

• JSR Initiatives -- identification and proposal of suitable tool and design-related JSRs for submission to JCP
• JCP Expert Group Liaison -- designation of individual members to provide two-way cognizance between JTC member organizations and JSR leads
• JCP Expert Group Observer -- an observer mail list associated with "JSRs of interest" to ensure JTC member company awareness of JSR development (pending permission by JCP rules)
• Approval/Disapproval polls -- a tool for the JTC to signal approval/disapproval of a given JSR with regards to toolability and tool interoperability in an open, yet non-binding polling vehicle
• User / Member voice -- facilitate member, participant and advisor feedback / commentary on tools and design-related topics to the vendors themselves

Agenda & Roadmap

Insofar as the JTC is an open community, there is no set agenda as of yet for proposing any new tooling-related JSRs. However, these may come about as a result of discussions between members, advisors and other participants.

As far as discussions as concerned, the JTC will work to populate and manage a number of threads on existing topics and JSRs. The complete list of propose topics can be found in the JTC Overview Presentation.

In general, there are 4 main domains for discussion regarding better toolability and/or interoperabilty in the Java Design space. These include:

1. Plug-in APIs
   • Help standardize tool extension APIs
   • Beter define interaction between plug-ins
   • Foster interoperability between tools from different vendors
   • Allow tools-ready access to platform objects and associated metadata
2. Application Management
   • Standardize interaction between tools and platform during design, development, deployment, runtime
   • Standardize interfaces for application build and software assembly
3. Application Frameworks
   • Tools mostly focus on improving usability of low-level technologies
   • Success of platform depends on improved higher-level app frameworks
   • Tool vendors have a vested interest for common application frameworks
   • JTC will try to built consensus among tool vendors
4. Tool-enabling
   • Technologies for tool enabling have started to emerge
   • Early in the adoption cycle
   • Little real-world feedback
   • JTC can act as a feedback channel

Membership and organization

Although initiated by Java tools vendors, the JTC seeks to achieve the broadest possible reach into the Java design/development space. To that end it actively seeks participation by other Java tools and extension vendors who are members of the JCP (and thus are able to abide by its rules and confidentiality). To ensure that the JTC aligns with the needs of users and customer organizations, it will additionally seek the regular participation of "advisors" -- Java tool users and customer organizations who need not be JCP members -- to participate in discussions, needs analysis, etc.

The JTC currently anticipates 3 forms of participation;

• Core members, who will form a steering committee
• General members, who will chiefly be Java Tool vendors
• Community Participants, who contribute the bulk of "advisory" customer input

The role of the steering committee will help determine the agenda for the community, help allocate representation of liaisons into the JCP, and represent the community to outside bodies. Participation in the JTC is free, with in-kind contribution of time and resources for simple infrastructure maintenance and related tasks.

(Page last updated 15 January 2004)

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