Oracle chief Larry Ellison confirmed his company's long-term
commitment to Java at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.
Sharing the stage with Sun chief executive officer, Scott
McNealy, Ellison said, "Oracle's middleware strategy is based 100%
on Java. It is open and it allows us to extend the platform. Our
Fusion applications are built entirely on Java and we will have the
first ever CRM and ERP products built on a standard [Java]
platform."
With its planned
acquisition of Sun and the
purchase of BEA in 2007, Ellison said Oracle had invested more
in Java than any other company and would "continue to invest in
Java".
In particular, Ellison believed that
JavaFX, the Java
programming framework for building rich Internet applications, will
revolutionise Oracle's software. "All of our products apart from
the database are Java-based. We are looking forward to seeing
libraries coming out of OpenOffice that use JavaFX - going to
JavaFX will allow us to build fantastic user interfaces."
Ellison hinted that Oracle is considering developing netbooks
and mobile phones that run Java applications, using Google's
Android operating system.
He said, "I have been reading a lot about devices based on Java
that use [Google] Android. Netbooks will be based on Android. I do
not see any reason why devices like telephones and netbooks can't
come from Oracle. These devices will fundamentally be based on
Java."
During his keynote, McNealy suggested that Ellison convince
Apple CEO Steve Jobs to put Java on the iPhone.