At JavaOne 2011, Greg Bollella, Chief Architect for Embedded Java and Eric Jensen, Oracle Principal Product Manager and a former embedded developer, gave a session (25143) titled “Telemetry and Synchronization with Embedded Java and Berkeley DB”. Bollella has been a leader in the Embedded Java and real-time Java space since Java was first applied there.

The presentation offered a vision of the potential future of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), defined as, “a system featuring a tight combination and coordination between the systems computational and physical elements,” that was so powerful that even if the expectations turn out to be exaggerated, CPS technological change will, in a decade or so, significantly alter our lives in pervasive and unforeseeable ways. Bollella went so far as to say that CPS applications have the potential to dwarf the 20th Century IT Revolution.

He drew a contrast between where CPS applications are in use today and where they will be in use tomorrow.

Today: High confidence medical devices and systems; assisted living; process control (metal smelting, chemical plants, refineries); traffic control and safety; advanced automotive systems; energy conservation; environmental control (electric power, water resources, and communications systems); distributed robotics (telepresence, telemedicine); defense systems; manufacturing; smart structures; home automation; building automation; transportation (rail, air, water, road); retail systems (point of sale and monitoring); entertainment industry; mining; industrial control (power generation).

Tomorrow:  Distributed micro-power generation; highly advanced autonomous driver assistance features; networked autonomous automobiles; networked building automation systems; cognitive radio (distributed consensus about bandwidth availability); large-scale RFID-based servicing systems which could acquire the nature of distributed real-time control systems; autonomous air traffic control; advanced industrial and home networked robotics; intelligent traffic control systems; intelligent autonomous power (gas/electricity); distribution systems; networked personal medical monitoring devices.

A lot to take in – the technology all around us growing in intelligence! In 2009, 3.9 billion embedded processors were shipped – the number is expected to double to roughly 8 billion by 2015. Some predict that by 2025 the number will be well into the trillions. And currently, an estimated five times more embedded software is written than all other software today. If the reality is anywhere close to the projections and estimates, we are in for an interesting ride on some intelligent transport.

Telemetry

Bollella went on to discuss telemetry, a term frequently used by NASA and defined as a technology that “allows remote measurement and reporting of information”. Central to telemetry is the idea that the information does not persist on the device after measurement. Uses of telemetry in the automotive realm include streaming operational data from the vehicle to the manufacturer’s IT system for analysis, services for vehicle operator, failure prediction, and feedback to design teams on wear and failure rates. For industrial automation, telemetry is used for failure prediction and to process monitoring and reporting

Synchronization

Bollella explained that his use of synchronization is idiosyncratic to database technology and involves two synchronized databases containing the same set of data and relationships. Any change in one database appears (after some indeterminate delay) in the other. The information on the device persists on the device as long as it does on the backend

The use cases for synchronization are widespread and include:

•    Healthcare: Telemedicine, Home health systems, Mobile health practitioners
•    Industrial: Manufacturing, Mining
•    Energy: Smart Grid, Energy Management
•    Entertainment: TVs, set top boxes, automotive rear-seat entertainment
•    Distribution/Shipping: Everything from local deliveries to transoceanic cargo shipments
•    Government: Border Control, Resource Management, Customs, Immigration, Land Management, Forest Service, etc
•    Law Enforcement/Military: Police officers and soldiers in the field, also aboard Naval vessels
•    Retail: Real time inventory linked to point-of-sale transactions
•    Distribution/Shipping: Everything from local deliveries to transoceanic cargo shipments

Bollella acknowledged that serious development challenges remain. The current state of CPS connectivity is poor, with the vast majority being standalone. Given the highly connected world of social networking, mobile devices, and the web, this might be surprising. But it is important to consider that these are two technological areas have evolved in environments with different demands. CPS is focused on real-time, predictability, safety, security, and fault tolerance; the Web is a different matter.

CPS requires real-time with predictable control loops -- there are no standard communication protocols or Ethernet or “IP-over” functionality on devices. There are harsh environments, especially in spacecrafts, that can affect wired Ethernet, and there exists incompatibility of data formats and communication protocols with IT standards.

Perhaps of greatest importance, there has been little perceived need for CPS connectivity with devices. But this is changing rapidly, and with it, obstacles are being overcome as one of the major trends in embedded is connectivity development. Bollella admitted that there were a lot of unknowns going into the future, but the challenges are not insurmountable.

Oracle’s Eric Jensen took over and gave some details about the Oracle Berkeley DB and the Oracle Database Mobile Server, which he characterized as the best way to synchronize mobile or embedded applications that utilize SQLite or Berkeley DB with an Oracle backend. The embedded Java platform, when coupled with Berkeley DB and Database Mobile Server, has the ability to manage networks of embedded devices using existing enterprise frameworks in a way that could prove to be quite revolutionary

It will be interesting to look back in 10 years and see how much Cyber-Physical Systems have, or have not, changed the world.

Oracle’s Java Technology Evangelist Simon Ritter, one of the most fun-loving Java developers I know, with a long history of JavaOne gadgetry, gave a session (25011) at JavaOne 2011 on Wednesday afternoon showing how “open source APIs for the Kinect, the Wiimote combined with a tilt-compensated compass, a head-mounted stereoscopic display, and some old Sun SPOTs can build a truly immersive application.” The large audience appeared immersed throughout the session in Ritter's colorful and clearly delineated demos.

He explained that the way we interact with computers is rapidly changing and that the days of the keyboard and mouse are gone. (Maybe so, but I'm sitting here using a keyboard and mouse.) And with his usual dramatic flair, Ritter invited attendees to behold the rise of something he calls the “gestural interface”.

The presentation used the latest JavaFX 2.0 "pure Java" implementation and began with an overview of the different components being used and explained how they are all brought together to enable the user to interact with interfaces in ways never before possible. Building an interface with the new JavaFX 2.0, Simon pointed out, is a continuation of the JavaFX product line, which is now a Java API with no scripting language and most APIs ported across while features such as binding and animation have required more thought. JavaFX now embraces more web technologies and enables the use of CSS for all JavaFX controls and a web specification for Drag-and-Drop. Also, developers use Scenegraph instead of DOM. He pointed to both pro’s and con’s of using JavaFX with gestural interfaces. On the plus side, it has built-in features such as data binding and animations, is a relatively simple API, and is able to build rich, visually appealing interfaces. On the negative side, JavaFX is currently limited to a 2D environment. The engineering team is currently working on 3D support.

He contrasted this with jMonkey Engine (jME), a game engine made especially for modern 3D development, written purely in Java and consisting of a collection of libraries that has game engine facilities and a full physics engine, but is hard to program and focuses on games and not generic interfaces. Ritter proceeded to demonstrate how to use the Nintendo Wiimote with a Java interface. The Wiimote communicates using a Bluetooth stack that needs to support L2CAP, has JSR-82 Java Bluetooth API implementation plus Wiimote-specific Java APIs (IR sensors, accelerometer, etc), most of which is free and open source.

He then presented a demo making use of the Sun Spot controller, a gyro sensor for precise rotation data, three bend sensors for finger movement for head tracking and data gloves, hand and head tracking sensors and hardware and more.

This followed with a demo using the Kinect Sensor with Java for 3D sensing. Not to be lost are his larger points: Java is still a really cool and powerful language. It is easy to interface with exotic hardware using free and open source libraries to build interesting applications using modern hardware.

After a brief Q&A, Simon -- as he always does -- implored attendees to be inspired and go build their own FUN stuff.

A new article on otn/java, “Templating with JSF 2.0 Facelets,” by Deepak Vohra, offers a concise explanation of how to use Facelets, which in JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.0, has replaced JavaServer Pages (JSP) as the default view declaration language (VDL). With Facelets, developers no longer need to configure a view handler as they once did in JSF 1.2.

From the article itself:

“Facelets is a templating framework similar to Tiles. The advantage of Facelets over Tiles is that JSF UIComponents are pre-integrated with Facelets, and Facelets does not require a Facelets configuration file, unlike Tiles, which requires a Tiles configuration file.

JSF Validators and Converters may be added to Facelets. Facelets provides a complete expression language (EL) and JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) support. Templating, re-use, and ease of development are some of the advantages of using Facelets in a Web application.

In this article, we develop a Facelets Web application in Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g and deploy the application to Oracle WebLogic Server 11g. In the Facelets application, an input text UIComponent will be added to an input Facelets page. With JSF navigation, the input Facelets page is navigated to another Facelets page, which displays the JSF data table generated from the SQL query specified in the input Facelets page. We will use Oracle Database 11g Express Edition for the data source. Templating is demonstrated by including graphics for the header and the footer in the input and the output; the graphics have to be specified only once in the template.”

Read the complete article here.

A very clear and detailed article by Julien Ponge, titled “Better Resource Management with Java SE 7: Beyond Syntactic Sugar,” presents the Java 7 answer to the automatic resource management problem in the form of a new language construct, proposed as part of Project Coin, called the try-with-resources statement.

Java applications frequently manipulate different types of resources such as files, streams, sockets, and database connections that require system resources for their operations. They must be managed with great care or risk having database connections and file descriptors remain open after an exception occurs elsewhere in the code. As a result, application servers may need frequent restarts due to resource exhaustion.

The article provides an overview of resource and exception management before explaining the essentials of try-with-resources statements. It then shows how a class can be made ready to support such statements, and concludes with a demystification of the syntactic sugar behind the language extension.

Ponge concludes that the try-with-resources construct “generates correct code on behalf of the developer, eliminating the need to write boilerplate code that is easy to get wrong. More importantly, this change has been accompanied with evolutions to attach one exception to another, thus providing an elegant solution to the well-known problem of exceptions masking each other.”

Read the rest of the article here.