TOKYO - Sun Microsystems Inc. has begun offering a new version of its Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) Wireless Toolkit, the company announced at the JavaOne Japan conference this week.
The wireless toolkit includes the reference implementation of Java that is sent to all handset makers for embedding in their telephones, in addition to a compiler, emulator and associated development tools. The system can be used on its own but is commonly used as the base on which a commercial IDE (integrated development environment) runs. Commercial IDEs offer a much more powerful programming and emulation environment.
Compared to the previous version, the new version 1.0.3 software will integrate much better with commercial IDEs such as Borland Software Corp.'s JBuilder MobileSet, Metrowerks Inc.'s CodeWarrior for Java and Sun's own Forte software, said Eric Chu, group manager for industry marketing at Sun's software systems group.
With the new version, the toolkit also supports for the first time over-the-air (OTA) provisioning for wireless devices. Using OTA, developers are able to simulate not just Java running on a handset but also the download of the code across the network and into the telephone. Such a feature will enable developers to get a much better feel for what users will experience when accessing and downloading their software from handsets, said Chu.
The J2ME wireless toolkit version 1.0.3 is available for Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms and can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/products/j2mewtoolkit.
