Hewlett-Packard took its crown jewel to the world’s biggest Java ball last month, showing off the HP e3000 server at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

The e3000 division (CSY) exhibited an entry-level HP 3000 on the show floor at the conference, the biggest gathering of Java experts and experimenters. HP’s Java expert for the e3000, Mike Yawn, was at the show, along with division engineers Eric Vistica and OnOn Hong. Marketing representative Peggy Ruse was also in attendance from the division.

“In previous years, we’ve had literature available and 3000 ISVs in attendance at other booths,” Yawn said. “This year you could actually go to the HP booth and find Java applications running on e3000 servers.”

The CSY technical staff demonstrated a new use for Java technology in its full report on the conference, posting a Zaplet about sessions the engineers attended. The Java report can be viewed at zaplet.zaplet.com/servlet/Z?m=2_QAupDzRaXVCxk4uaNKKS_lbC.

Yawn reported Java’s Reflection Technology (not related to the WRQ product of the same name) “is a way to discover information about an object at runtime. It’s very analogous to using DBINFO calls to get structural info about a database. Reflection was introduced in JDK 1.1 to support JavaBeans. The APIs were improved in 1.2, with minor refinements coming in the 1.3 release.”

Yawn said Java Reflection “can be used to dynamically determine everything you might need to know about the objects you’re dealing with.

“There are lots of neat things you can do to create dynamic behavior,” Yawn said, “and using Reflection is generally more bullet-proof than other ways (such as using instanceof) which may prove fragile if new subclasses are added to the system.” In 1.3, Proxy and InvocationHandler classes are being added, which allows objects to delegate behavior to other objects.

On the evolving product front, HP gave demo space in its booth to third-party solutions that rely on Java for e3000 users. Minisoft’s Web Dimension was demonstrated (see the story in our May issue for details on the client-server development suite).

HP also showed off the newest LegacyJ software in its booth, according to LegacyJ president Chuck Townsend. The company’s ViewJ 2.0 displays VPlus applications’ interfaces on remote Java clients. Townsend said that this version of ViewJ does not require that HP 3000 applications be recompiled or modified to use the remote client software.

The software converts VPlus screens to Java. LegacyJ said the screen conversions process all VPlus elements so the converted interface functions like the existing VPlus application.The software automatically generates menus and maps function keys to menu items.

Forms that ViewJ converts are platform-independent as Java graphical screens. ViewJ operates via peer-to-peer communication using standard TCP/IP links between e3000 server and client. Extension scripting can be in COBOL, using PERCobol or Java.

LegacyJ also demonstrated the 2.5 version of its PERCobol product, a compiler which bridges COBOL and Java technology and runs on platforms including the HP 3000, HP 9000, and Windows NT and 2000.