Sun hopes to find 7 million new Java developers by introducing rapid-application-development tools targeted at developers whose skill levels and business needs call for simpler technologies. At the JavaOne conference, Sun demonstrated these tools and touted the ease-of-development initiatives that it hopes will attract these developers to Java.

The 8th annual Java developers' conference was surprisingly un-enterprisey, with major attention not just on wireless but on consumers. There were, however, ripples of enthusiasm for Java language enhancements planned for "Tiger," version 1.5 of the JDK.

Generics is one of the hottest features of the upcoming JDK 1.5 release. This article describes the new generics feature by investigating the example pre-release implementation provided by Sun. You'll use the generics feature to create an extensible multimedia application, and show how generics make the code simpler. (from the Java Zone)

Use this simple, step-by-step solution to download and configure both WebLogic platform 8.1 and MySQL, and develop a Web service that ties the two together. (from the Java Zone)