The Future

Products promised in the near future:

New class libraries and API's

Multimedia

New ways to handle sound and graphics

Display movies and live video using Java

Animation

2-D for now

Telephony

Programming kit to write voice-communications applications

Electronic Commerce

e.g. secure transactions

Database Connectivity

JDBC

• Builds on ideas of ODBC

• Simple but complete mechanism that allows Java to access SQL databases

• To be supported by a variety of vendors

  Information: http://splash.javasoft.com/jdbc

Java-in-an-OS

Forthcoming releases of various operating systems will have a built-in Java virtual machine

Windows

Mac-OS

Solaris

Java-OS

Stand-alone mini operating system that is really just the Java VM plus some device drivers

e.g. for the `Internet PC'

Java for embedded systems

Stripped-down Java for use in appliances and other devices

Integration with Microsoft's ActiveX

• Use Java to write controls and scripts for all Microsoft applications

• E.g. Call Java from Visual Basic or Microsoft Excel

  - or vice-versa

• Information: http://www.microsoft.com/intdev

• Note that some consider ActiveX to be a superior substitute for Java

Predictions (not to be trusted)

• Java will be a dominant language over the next 5 years

• It will probably exceed C++ in usage within a couple of years.

• There will be many extensions and changes that may cause headaches for developers.