Sun Certification Retake Promotion

To commemorate Sun's awarding 500,000 certifications, purchase a voucher by June 20 for most Sun certifications - and should you need it, you can take the exam one additional time for free.

Step 1: Select Your Exam

Select the certification exam of interest from the list of qualifying exams below. You must use Priority Code WW48CX1 when you place your order. If you reside in the United States, follow the links below for the qualifying certification exams to research Sun professional certification and to order exam vouchers. If you reside outside of the United States, please contact your local training office or country web site.

This offer is valid in all countries where Sun certification is sold, except Brazil and India. For certification candidates in Japan, this offer begins on May 1, 2008. Check Your Proficiency

With Sun's free online Proficiency Assessment System you can check your knowledge and skill level with that required to achieve several of Sun's certification exams. When you're done, you'll receive a custom proficiency profile, and if needed, a recommended learning path to help you advance to the next level in your professional development.

Step 2: Schedule Your Exam

Exams are taken at Authorized Prometric Testing Centers, which are located around the world. After you have purchased your exam voucher, contact the desired testing center to schedule your exam date, time, and location.

Step 3: Schedule Your Retake Exam

Those who purchase a certification exam voucher using the priority code by June 20, 2008, and who do not pass the exam, qualify for the free retake. Simply contact the Authorized Prometric Testing Center in the same manner you did for your initial attempt at the exam, and provide your original certification exam voucher number. You must allow 72 hours after taking your initial exam before scheduling the free retake exam. Please also be aware that per Sun certification guidelines you must wait at least 14 days before you may retake any exam. There is no need to contact Sun to schedule your retake exam.

More Details>>

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta Blogging Contest

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta is now available to download and preview. We’re pretty excited about some of the great new features, but we want to know what you think.

Download the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta 1 and check it out for yourself. After you have a chance to test the Beta, we want you to tell the world what you think.

Whatever your experience is in using the NetBeans IDE, post a blog about it and tell everyone. Our judges will review all blog submissions and select 10 winners to reward a $500 American Express Gift Certificate. The top 100 blogs will receive a NetBeans t-shirt. More Details>>

Why Microsoft Needs Yahoo: The Real Story

So one day, Scott McNealy, founder and chairman of Sun, read in his morning newspaper how the use of Java was rapidly diminishing, courtesy of something called 'The LAMP Stack'. Furiously, he called his accountant.

Scott: "I knew this Java thing was a bad idea in the first place! I see only one solution. We need to buy this Lamp!"
Accountant: "Euh, LAMP is not a company. It's an acronym. It's Linux , Apache, MySQL and PHP"
Scott: "Then buy me Linux!"
Accountant: "But we still have this Solaris thing.."
Scott: "Then buy me Apache!"
Accountant: "That's a foundation. Nothing to buy there."
Scott: "Then buy me MySQL!"
Accountant: "We don't do databases."
Scott: "It's a database?"
Accountant: "What rock have you been living under?"
Scott: "Sweet. I can own the Lamp AND piss off Oracle at the same time!" (waves fake plastic magic wand) "Make it so!"

And so it happened.

Read Original Story>>

Sun to buy out MySql for $1 billion

Sun Microsystems will plunk down $1 billion to buy MySQL, the maker of a popular open-source database.
Sun said Wednesday that it will pay about $800 million in cash for MySQL's privately held stock and will assume about $200 million worth of options. MySQL CEO Marten Mickos will join Sun's senior executive team after the transaction closes.

The acquisition is a bold move for Sun, which has embraced open-source software and development practices in an effort to garner more revenue from its software business. Until now, it has sold support services for a competing open-source database, PostgreSQL.

MySQL is one of the most successful open-source companies founded in the past five years. It's part of the popular combination of open-source development products referred to as LAMP , for Linux Apache Web server, MySQL and the PHP development language, which is broadly used on the Internet and within companies.

Mickos had previously said that the company intends to go public rather than be acquired. Its business model is to give away the source code and its database for free and to charge customers an ongoing subscription fee for support and services.

In his blog, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said that Sun will begin offering support services to customers of MySQL before the deal closes later this year.


In a conference call, he called the deal the most important acquisition in the history of Sun.

Schwartz also outlined a number of areas of technical integration designed to optimize MySQL's flagship database--as well as MySQL's Falcon storage engine--on Sun's Solaris operating systems and servers.

He said that Sun can provide the sort of support services that large corporations demand.

MySQL is a "part of every Web company's infrastructure, to be sure. And though many of the more traditional companies use MySQL (from auto companies to financial institutions to banks and retailers), many have been waiting for a Fortune 500 vendor willing to step up, to provide mission critical global support," Schwartz said.

The size of the acquisition, at $1 billion, reflects the indelible mark that the open-source business model--in which companies give away source code and charge for services or high-end products--has left on the software business.

JBoss, another successful open-source software company, was acquired for more than $400 million by Red Hat in 2006. And last year, Citrix paid $500 million for XenSource, a virtualization software provider.


"This is a great move for Sun, and answers the question of 'SunDB' that Scott McNealy posed several years ago," said The 451 Group analyst Raven Zachary.

However, the acquisition also comes with some potential difficulties. "This raises a whole bunch of issues concerning Sun's close ties to Oracle, as well as their investment in PostgreSQL," Zachary said.

He believes other potential suitors include Red Hat, Sybase, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle.

MySQL, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., and Uppsala, Sweden, has about 400 employees. Investors include Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, IVP, Intel, SAP, Red Hat.

The deal is expected to close near the tail of Sun's fiscal third quarter, which ends in late March, or early in its fourth quarter.

Streaming API for XML - Java 6.0

Streaming API for XML, simply called StaX, is an API for reading and writing XML Documents. Why need another XML Parsing API when we already have SAX (Simple API for XML Parsing) and DOM (Document Object Model)? Both SAX and DOM parsers have their own advantages and disadvantages and StaX provides a solution for the disadvantages that are found in both SAX and DOM. It is not that StaX replaces SAX and DOM. read full article

Introduction to Java Server Faces

Java Server Faces (JSF) simplifies the development of User Interfaces in a typical Web application. It provides a Component-based Pluggable Architecture for developing and representing User Interface Components. Also bundled with JSF is a whole set of various new features like Event Handling Mechanism, Page Navigation, Input Validation and Conversion. This article provides an overview about JSF Framework and the various core elements that form the basis for a JSF Framework. It then provides a detailed overview about the various phases in the JSF Request Processing Life-cycle. Explained further is the structure of the JSF Configuration File. And finally the article is concluded by providing a sample application that demonstrates the various new features.read full article

Sun CEO: Java open source in 30-60 days

Sun Microsystem will announce the open-sourcing of the core Java platform in 30 to 60 days, said Sun President/CEO Jonathan Schwartz at the Oracle OpenWorld conference on Wednesday morning.

Java will be offered via an open source format under an OSI-approved (Open Source Initiative) license similar to the one used for open-sourcing of the Solaris OS, he said during a keynote presentation.

Sun officials have talked about Java being offered via open source in stages later this year and into 2007.

Sun Dropped 2

Sun also made a more superficial change to Java. As expected, it dropped the "2" in its Java 2 Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Mobile Edition versions. Future versions of those products will be called Java EE, Java SE and Java ME, respectively.