A community project putting the latest version of Java on Apple's newest version of OS X is inching closer to completion.

The project to port Java 6 to Apple's Leopard and Tiger has been quietly released as a second developer preview for a fresh round of testing, after the first implementation was thrashed and debugged by a core of around 40 developers.

Developers are being invited to comment on a new draft for tests in writing secure code in Java.

The exam framework, backed by the Secure Programming Council, a consortium of corporates pulled together by the SANS Institute, is designed to be a test of essential programming skills.

QCon I was fortunate to be a member of this week's QCon panel billed as the event where "influential leaders of the software development community" would debate Java's future.

QCon Fundamental divisions over whether Java should be fattened up or have bits ripped out to suit changing requirements have emerged at an industry show.

Comment Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a paradigm that is quickly gaining traction in the development world. At least partially spurred by the popularity of the Java Spring framework [1], people are beginning to understand the substantial benefits that AOP brings to development.

The subject of testing seems to be in the air at the moment - Matt Stephens recently discussed it in his "Agile" column entitled "Don't unit test GUIs". This month in the Java column we are also going to look at testing, but this time from the viewpoint of design.

Sun has given the world a (slightly) better idea of what's on the way from client-side Java.

This evening, in the lead-up to a dev-tastic cocktail party in downtown San Francisco, James Gosling and other Sun insiders talked up several new pieces of the Java puzzle, and though most of the chat was a rehash of previous announcements, they did leak a few details the company hadn't leaked in the past.

Zend Technologies is turning to application server vendors in the next phase of its work fine-tuning PHP for enterprise development.

Self-appointed PHP steward Zend has had talks with unnamed middleware partners with a view to improving the performance of its favorite scripting language on their application servers, by putting PHP inside the application server.

Apple is about to launch a consolidation portal hosting WebApps for its glorified slates, the iPhone and iTouch, whilst developing proper applications with Electronic Arts and others.

WebApps are web pages using AJAX as an application environment: for the moment they have to be re-downloaded each time you want to use them, but the catalogue about to be launched by Apple will include Remote Buddy (for remote controlling your Mac), Solitaire and a Nutrition Database as well as a WebApp launcher called iHome.

Zend PHP 07 Lately, Zend Technologies has worked to put PHP in the enterprise by optimizing its tools for Oracle and IBM databases and middleware.

Today, Zend makes its latest move on the enterprise, by throwing open early code for an up-coming PHP suite based on Eclipse. Zend thinks this will let it integrate with other Eclipse-based Java tools from IBM and Oracle.

Sun Microsystems has issued patches for several vulnerabilities in its Java Runtime Environment that leave users on Windows, Linux and Solaris wide open.

Four years into its NetWeaver strategy, SAP is finally putting its middleware in the hands of individual developers through a subscription-based licensing package.

The world's largest business applications vendor said Tuesday it's making the full NetWeaver stack available to individual developers for the first time under a one-year development and evaluation license, along with four of its Java and ABAP tools.

Having snuggled up to VMware, the proprietary and expensive virtualization platform, BEA Systems is going to the other extreme by officially backing Xen.

The middleware vendor is working to certify its recently launched WebLogic Server Virtual Edition against the free, open source Xen hypervisor by the end of this year.

It may still be baking as a technology, but that hasn't stopped Silicon Valley's vanguard from trying to squeeze rich internet applications (RIAs) on to mobile devices.

The OpenAJAX alliance has kicked off a task force for mobile AJAX to explain how developers can become successful at building mobile mash-ups. The focus of the Mobile AJAX committee is educational materials and technical standards, the group said.

There is no small irony in the prospect that Apple's Macintosh - arguably the ultimate in closed and proprietary systems, at least until the Intel alliance - could become the open source development platform of choice.

Oracle has come a step closer to releasing the next version of its popular Java integrated development environment (IDE), by posting a second technology preview.

Users running Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system are getting something a little extra thrown into their contracts: developer support.

Sun is wrapping extended support for its Solaris Express Developer Edition, previously only available to application developers, into existing and new Solaris customers' contracts without charging extra, the company said.

Microsoft's security practices seem to be rubbing off on Sun Microsystems as the company is changing the way it updates and secures Java.

Sun will synchronize releases of critical security updates to current and legacy version of Java Standard Edition (Java SE) and has promised to provide a system of alerts on upcoming patches.

Oracle this week told developers to be wary of the hype surrounding AJAX frameworks and encouraged large organizations to back JavaServer Faces (JSF) to "Web 2.0-enable" applications.

Lately I seem to be involved increasingly in systems relying on asynchronous interactions for efficient and effective integration. In these cases, the asynchronous behaviour has been implemented using JMS (or Java Message Service) queues, with message driven beans, and with the underlying message server provided by application servers such as WebLogic, WebSphere and JBoss.

As a point to note, "asynchronous" here indicates that the initiating process (the client) returns immediately that a message is sent rather than waiting for the invoked process to complete before returning. This is usually desirable if the invoked process is long running or may require human intervention.

Red Hat is suffering from JBoss reflux, according to a pair of prominent open source software watchers.

Credit Suisse analyst Jason Maynard has issued a fresh report in which he downgrades Red Hat to "neutral" from "outperform" due to what he sees as organizational struggles. The analyst once thought Red Hat's digestion of JBoss would result in a strong sales increase. Instead, Red Hat faces serious challenges learning how to be more than a one-trick Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pony.

BEAWorld BEA Systems is teaming up with Adobe to help developers build and serve up rich internet applications (RIA).

The Java middleware provider will bundle Adobe's Flex Builder 2 with the BEA Workshop Studio programming environment, while Adobe will distribute evaluation licenses of BEA's WebLogic Server with the Adobe LifeCycle Enterprise Suite (ES).

Sun Microsystems in the next few days plans to issue an update that plugs a serious security hole in the most recent version of its Java Runtime Environment, more than a week after providing a fix for the same vulnerability in an earlier version of the program. The lag has prompted a prominent security researcher to lambaste the effectiveness of the company's security team.

Azul Systems is rolling out a new generation of Java-crunching appliances armed with the ability to spread its workload across a total of 768 processing cores in a single box.

The new 7240 and 7280 models eat up 14U of rack space, and like their predecessors, are aimed at large businesses looking to offload demanding Java software workloads onto a separate box. The devices support Java and J2EE applications, freeing up data centers to work on other tasks.

BEA Systems is adding go faster stripes to its Java application server, with two products designed for time-critical work environments.

Latency of Java has always been a problem where high numbers of mission-critical transactions are involved. This is because Java stops to collect garbage from application transactions, unlike programs written in C or C++, which gives them the edge over Java in such situations.

The growing use of JavaScript in web browsers is the new security weak spot, says Brian Chess, chief scientist and founder of US security software specialist Fortify Software.

Specifically, the use of Ajax techniques to build Web 2.0 applications makes enterprise applications more vulnerable.

JavaOne It's a tough job. Convincing Java developers that any hardware vendor - let alone Intel in the wake of roadmap set backs - has any immediate relevance.

It's an even harder task sidestepping Intel's thorny heritage with Sun Microsystems over its 64-bit Itanium chipset.

JavaOne Sun is seeking developers outside the "Java rank and file" to join the Java Community Process (JCP) standards body. The company is eying up content authors and scripting developers as JCP recruits to deliver feedback and drive platform and language changes.

JavaOne Oracle has played up its open source credentials with technologies to simplify Java development. It is also making ommunity donations to advance its middleware and tools for online services.

JavaOne Sun Microsystems is introducing changes to Java, boosting speed and improving flexibility for deployment on PCs and consumer-facing devices.

Sun Microsystems is today expected to launch a media platform targeting consumer devices, pitting itself against Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe Systems.

A portal is a web application that aggregates a collection of web applications (portlets) running on a page in separate windows. A portlet is a web component (application) that runs in a portlet container, processes requests and generates dynamic content.

CanSecWest As JavaScript becomes an increasingly key component of online attacks, attackers are investing more energy in obfuscation and other techniques to make defenders' attempts at reverse engineering more difficult, a security researcher told attendees at the annual CanSecWest conference on Wednesday.

Sun Microsystems is purchasing the IP assets of mobile Java platform specialist SavaJe, which went dark in unexplained circumstances last year.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has publicly slammed Sun Microsystems for dragging its feet over licensing it claims is unfair and discriminatory to open source, five years after the pair resolved similar differences.

Whatever you think of "Web 2.0" (it's really not mandatory to release everything in permanent beta) you probably thought that this generic approach to mashups, Ajax and all that good stuff didn't change the usual coding "good practice" rules much.