When it comes to Java, do IS users want the impossible? Microsoft seems to think so. And that may explain why its version of Java doesn't work right.

Java is a computer language based on a simple idea: Once you've written a program, you shouldn't have to rewrite it.

Instead of a version for Windows and another for Macintosh and others for terminals and Unix workstations and DOS PCs, with Java you write one version that runs everywhere without change. That makes programs simpler to develop and a lot easier to maintain.

And according to Microsoft impossible. It was Microsoft's Java program manager, Charles Fitzgerald, who laid it out for me just a few days ago.

``We [Microsoft] certainly play in an environment where compatibility DOS compatibility, random pieces of hardware we have an awful lot of experience in dealing with those issues,'' Fitzgerald said. ``And quite frankly, anybody who tells you they can deliver binary compatibility across all that level of complexity I just don't think it's possible.

This is the guy spearheading Microsoft's Java effort, and he thinks cross- platform Java compatibility is impossible. Fitzgerald knows cross-platform Java is what IS shops want. In focus groups, user after corporate user says ``write once, run anywhere'' is how they want to use Java. It's ``a mouth- watering goal,'' Fitzgerald said.

But those focus-group users also agree that Java doesn't work the same way across different platforms.

One reason for that lack of compatibility is Microsoft itself. Other vendors, such as Netscape and Sun, have concentrated on making their Java implementations as standard as possible. Microsoft, instead, has focused on beefing up performance in its version of Java and stitching in support forMicrosoft's own ActiveX components, which run only on Windows.

That would be fine if Microsoft's version were a clean, tight true-to-the- standard Java. But it isn't. Microsoft Java doesn't handle regular Java components properly. It even lets some Java applets run illegally even illegal applets written in ``pure'' Java.

It's buggy, and it's incompatible. And now Microsoft says Java's goal of cross-platform compatibility is impossible.

Impossible? Corporate IS shops don't want to hear that from a vendor. Corporate IS shops are asked to do the impossible every day.

Fixing the year 2000 problem before that non-negotiable 1999 deadline is impossible. Pushing past the show-stoppers to get SAP R/3 working for the whole organization is impossible. Whacking all the bugs in a World Wide Web- based commerce application that's impossible.

Impossible budgets, impossible schedules, impossible performance demands sometimes it seems the ``I'' in IS stands for ``impossible.''

But cross-platform Java is impossible? That's hard to believe. IS shops have to make things work consistently across multiple platforms from a variety of vendors all the time.

And if Microsoft can't figure out how to accomplish that with Java, maybe it should ask for some help from corporate customers to do the impossible.

Source: Computerworld