An open source project involving members of the Java ME ecosystem aims to address fragmentation issues while speeding time-to-market for Java-based devices and applications.
The project, dubbed JATAF – the Java Application Terminal Alignment Framework – was founded by industry bigwigs France Telecom/Orange, Sony Ericsson, Sun Microsystems and Vodafone. Each company made open source contributions to the project.
“At the 2008 JavaOne conference, executives from Orange, Sony Ericsson and Sun made a commitment to address Java fragmentation, which is due in part to Java’s rapid growth to over 2.6 billion Java-enabled phones in the marketplace today,” said Martin Wrigley, chair of Unified Test Initiative (UTI), in a statement. “All parties agreed that the Java mobile industry must collaborate in order to maximize ROI opportunities as the ecosystem evolves to focus on an enhanced user experience. Today’s deliverables show what can be achieved through collaboration.”
The project aims to provide a more consistent platform for development by attracting more developers, operators and OEMs to the testing effort.
Participants can contribute to a series of open source tests, and then require the tests be performed to ensure device implementations function across a range of deployment scenarios. All Java ME developers are encouraged to participate in the JATAF community at no cost.
Initial tests have been contributed under the eclipse public license by Sony Ericsson and France Telecom/Orange. The tests are built to run on the Java device test framework, contributed by Sun, and available to the community under the GPLv2 license.
“Due in large part to fragmentation, we ship hundreds of thousands of SKUs to market every year to ensure broad reach of our consumers,” said Jason Loia, COO of Java ME game publisher Digital Chocolate, in a statement. “JATAF has the potential to greatly reduce this deployment overhead for publishers and we welcome its arrival.”
UTI also announced new Java-verified program capabilities for application testing. The new capabilities include a tamper-proof digital certificate identifying the application’s origin and provider, improved testing for functionality issues and streamlined test procedures thanks to new UTC v 3.0 testing criteria.
