Sun is enticing developers to try the Sun Grid Compute Utility with new programs specifically designed for developers, such as offering developers access to 100 free CPU hours on the Sun Grid; a contest in which developers can win up to US$100,000 in prizes; a private project space for independent software vendors (ISVs); and a Compute Server community project.

To demonstrate extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of massive volumes of data into a data warehouse, Sun and SAS teamed up their products and set a second, world-record ETL performance benchmark. The solution consisted of the Sun Fire E25K server running UltraSPARC IV+ processors and the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) with SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server.

Sun will be hosting a live virtual class on the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 this coming June 6 and 7. This expert-to-engineer session will be delivered live over the Internet and will include demonstrations as well as a question and answer period following each session.

Two Sun certification coaching programs are now available for your administrative and programming teams - the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) Certification Coaching Program and the Sun Certified Java Programmer Coaching Program. Both programs present details about the certification process and test objectives along with practice exams and expert one-on-one feedback.

Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz opened up to eWeek's Peter Galli on open-source Java technology in a recent interview. Galli found Schwartz "...a huge fan of open source and of lowering the barriers to entry for developers and customers across the world."

Interoperability of such enterprise features as security, reliable messaging and atomic transactions are the preoccupations of both Sun and Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) engineers, who are working on a joint endeavor known as Project Tango - an open-source part of the GlassFish Community.

Sun's corporate position on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) in Electrical and Electronic Equipment as adopted by the European Union was articulated in YoungGon Lee's Sun Weblog recently. He noted Sun's intention to become fully compliant with the restrictions.

Sun is offering a new set of service and training offerings for the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS) that aims to help customers maximize their existing IT investments and create new applications quickly, making their enterprises more competitive and responsive.

The CoolApps Developer Challenge is actually two competitions among developers to (Contest A) create the best application that runs on Sun Grid Compute Utility and to (Contest B) create the best application built with the Compute Server Plugin for NetBeans. The contest is open to participants worldwide, even those currently unable to access the Sun Grid Compute Utility.

The support for annotations newly provided in the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 makes the developer's task easier, writes Ryan Lubke in his Sun Developer Network article "Web Tier to Go With Java EE 5: A Look at Resource Injection." This improvement stems from the ability of annotations to enable injecting dependencies, resources, services and life-cycle notifications into a Java EE 5 platform application.

Rahul Biswas and Ed Ort explain the improvements to be found in the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0(EJB) technology available in version 5 of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE). Without compromising the power and functionality previously found in the platform, users will discover EJB a much easier to learn and use feature of the new release, one that requires far less coding than was involved in using EJB 2.1.

The Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java 5) was launched during the 2006 JavaOne Conference held May 16-19 in San Francisco, touting development ease, rapidity, economy and support for all of the latest SOA technologies, including a major revision to the programming model, updated web services standards and simplified web application creation.

Take advantage of the early access Sun is offering to a suite of tools and platform products supporting the new standard blueprint for next-generation Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME) application development. These new products are based on the new Mobile Service Architecture - Java Specification Request (JSR) 248 and JSR 209 (Advanced Graphical User Interfaces) specifications.

Winners of the fourth annual Duke's Choice Awards, which recognize the most innovative Java technology-based applications of the year, were honored during the 2006 JavaOne Conference held May 16-19 in San Francisco. Winners are selected by Sun Fellow and CTO of Sun's Developer Products Group James Gosling along with a panel of Java technology experts at Sun.

The NetBeans organization issued its first edition of NetBeans Magazine as part of the third annual NetBeans Software Day and the 2006 JavaOne Conference that took place in mid-May. This special first edition of NetBeans Magazine showcases a wide selection of IDE and extension features, from desktop and web development to plug-in module creation.