Sun Microsystems' Rick Cattell discusses why innovative software often never sees the light of day and how to remedy this problem.
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As a mover and shaker in the creation of J2EE, you encountered a lot of resistance at Sun when you said that Java technology on the server would be important. What did you take away from that experience?
I encountered resistance because the management didn't want do too many things. That is my own rule #1 -- organizations fail when they try to do too much. I needed to convince Sun management that it was important to fund a platform for Java technology on the server. That is also one of my rules: you have to sell your ideas. With help from my colleagues, I convinced management by showing them the support for the idea from customers and partners.
There was a shared fear that the domination of one company on the client side would spread to the server. Partners like IBM, Oracle, and BEA rallied to the cause of a common platform for Java technology on the server.
I also looked at the logic of the players. When you looked at Java technology on the client, there were only a few platforms that mattered, like Windows, UNIX, and Apple. But when you look at Java technology on the server, including the hardware, the operating system, the application server and web server platforms, there were a lot of platforms. And it seemed to me that the value of Write Once, Run Anywhere would really take off on the server side, because it was important there.
The predecessor to the Java Community Process (JCP) was very helpful as well. When I joined JavaSoft, Sun's original Java technology organization, in the summer of 1995, I started working on JDBC -- Java Database Connectivity. I was surprised at how cooperative everyone in the industry was, and how effectively I was able to work with them in what we would now call an expert group. The work on JDBC went five times faster than any standards activity I've ever been involved in, and the results looked less like it was designed by a committee. I wrote up a document on my experience with JDBC for the management and my colleagues in JavaSoft, which, after many iterations, became a predecessor to the JCP document on how to effectively organize an expert group to reach adequate consensus. If you look for perfect consensus, you usually end up with a design by committee. With a strong specification lead, you can get a coherent design and still retain a high degree of consensus.
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