May 6 was our big day, with four events in the afternoon. Two sessions, a keynote appearance, and a BOF interactive session; plus, of course, the robot programming contest. All sessions went fine, with a classical Java Card attendance, around 80-100 people for the sessions, and 30 for the BOF (at 8:30PM, additional courage is required). I will get back to the things that were covered in all these sessions in the coming week.
The best part of the day, though, as the endorsement of Java Card 3 by Gemalto’s CTO, Xavier Chanay. The industry has been very quiet so far about Java Card 3, so it was interesting to head what Xavier had to say, and which arguments he would use. So, here is a partial transcript of what Xavier said.
Jeet: So what developer will do with Java Card 3.0?
Xavier: Java Card 3.0, first, is going to enhance the user experience of our existing customers. In the telecom field, for instance, we believe that, thanks to the pervasiveness of mobile Web applications and Web browsers for the handsets, there is a huge opportunity to deploy new services hosted by the card, seen as a local Web server. Then, there is all the internet world, which is a new area for the smart card, where I believe that we should be able, thanks to reusing the existing technologies and concepts behind the Internet applications, we should be able to create new partnerships that are going to enable us to actually promote the strong security features of the smart card in the form of a personal, secure, portable server. And finally, there is a lot to invent, and I am counting on you all to do that. There is a lot to invent even going beyond the smart card server, with USB keys, or with SD cards, or with system-on-chip, for instance, where Java Card 3 is going to bring connectivity and tamper-resistance to new applications.
Jeet: So, you talk about needing us all. What are we doing here with developers?
Xavier: That’s another thing that we are very excited about. Java Card 3 is dramatically reducing the gap between Java Card and Java. So it brings, as you said before, the latest Java features, like generics or annotations, in addition to what was long awaited like multithreading or TCP/IP connectivity. But on top of that, what is even better is that it is going to use standard development tools. Sun, for instance, is providing a plugin to its Netbeans IDE, so that every Web application developer will be able to develop programs on the Java Card 3 platform.
I must admit that Xavier’s tone during the talk did not sound as excited as we can hear in this transcript, and that some of it is sweet-talking designed on purpose for developers (think about generics and annotations, which are hardly exciting for anybody who is not directly involved in the Java Card 3 process. Still, it is encouraging to see Gemalto participate in a keynote about Java Card 3, organize a contest, and perhaps more importantly, put a development environment and real cards on the hands of real developers.
I don’t have the courage to install all the software on my PC right now, but I will soon, and I will post some updates about my experiments with this card. In the meantime, thank you very much to Gemalto for all this, and more particularly for my ex-Gemplus colleagues who did the hard development work.
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