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I asked BEA's CEO if the relationship between his company and Sun had changed any since Sun started bundling its own application server with Solaris (Sun also bundles BEA's Weblogic with some Solaris servers). He said, “If I thought a hardware company could make good software, I could just put my feet up on my desk and relax.” He also said that he had tried to talk Scott McNealy out of putting so much energy into the Sun ONE products, to no avail.

But he said the relationship hadn't changed, and that things were great with Sun. However, in an answer to a seperate question, he revealed that 20% of BEA's license sales were for the Linux platform now. And it wasn't a Sun exec doing a keynote on the first day; it was Carly Fiorina.

Yes, here it is, folks, the Scott Dietzen bobblehead. Adam Bosworth and other BEA execs were available as bobbleheads as well, handed out randomly to eWorld attendees.

I just got back from BEA's eWorld conference, and there's a lot to report. I'll be posting items over the next day or two as I get the chance; sorry, I couldn't blog this from there because they only had one WiFi hotspot.

Okay, so with Adam Bosworth at BEA, there's been something of a shift in the developer tools side of BEA's strategy: they're trying to create a component economy–they even call them “controls” like the VB components–around their Workshop development tool.

Workshop was originally created to build web services (and was taken directly, it seems, from the work that Bosworth had done with his attempted start-up company just before Microsoft shut him down with a non-compete clause); now, it has been applied to J2EE development for Weblogic in general. It's designed in a way that allows business analysts, or whoever, to wire together business logic components…er, controls, that can be configured by filling in a few fields and clicking a few checkboxes. Sound familiar, VB programmers?

There have been numerous efforts to create a component market around Java. There's a decent trade in Java Beans, but no Java dev tool has ever really approached the Visual Basic level of simplicity enough to create a huge demand for the components. It can be argued persuasively that VB is only where it is today because of the third-party controls market that took off around it.

It will come as no big surprise that Bosworth has brought over a few developers from Microsoft to help pull this off.

Workshop is at the center of BEA's efforts to merge application development and integration into a single environment. If it can manage to evangelize Workshop controls well enough to the developer and ISV communities, it could finally create some momentum around Java development beyond the object-oriented development faithful, making it more accessible to procedural developers and more high-level software pros. The question is whether BEA can execute.

The last time BEA attempted a major Java tool initiative, it gave us WebGain, a Java IDE spinoff that took over Symantec's Visual Café software, and proceeded (mostly through gross corporate mismanagement) to run it into the ground (The IDE tools were acquired by Togethersoft last summer, which, as you may know, was acquired by Borland in October).

Then again, you might say that WebGain was the Viking funeral ship of software companies, apparently set adrift on fire purposely by BEA to put Joe Menard out of their misery.

So hopefully, Workshop will amount to something. One has to wonder about the name, though; remembering Sun's products by that name brings back all sorts of bad memories for me (apologies to Joe Keller).

And another thing…

Wasn't giving attendees bobbleheads of BEA execs just a little narcissistic?

I am a multitasking, multi-computer person. I have a G4 “Cube” with a 17″ Apple LCD monitor that I use as my “digital hub”–with the help of a LaCie 120 GB “Firewire” external hard drive, an MAudio Quattro 4-channel audio interface, and a Canon flatbed scanner, I use it mostly for image, audio, web and print manipulation (and as the office stereo). I do most of my writing and e-mailing on my G4 PowerBook. And with my usually crap-covered desk, that makes for a severe shortage of workspace–or anywhere to scroll a mouse. (My Windows 2000 server sits at a second workstation in the corner; the monitor is almost never turned on, which tells you how much I've been using Windows lately. My company-issued Compaq laptop….well, I've been meaning to ship that back to the corporate office for a while, as it is currently acting as a bookend.)

In any case, the battle to take back some desk space led me to pick up Griffin Technology's iCurve a lucite laptop stand designed specifically for iBooks and PowerBooks. It lifts the laptop up off the desk to about the same height as the top of my 17″ LCD, and there's room to shove the full-size keyboard underneath when it's not in use.

There were a set of adhesive-backed pieces of clear rubber in the box with the iCurve. I'm guessing they're feet and a set of stops for the iCurve's laptop support arms. But the friction pads on the arms do well enough without the stops, and I'm not sure the feet would do anything for the stability of the iCurve.

For $39 bucks, it's a pretty low-impact way to make life with a PowerBook on your desk easier. Plus, it looks so…intentional. I mean, I had used a number of other jury-rigged approaches to propping up my PowerBook before; the iCurve makes my desk look almost professional.

Now, if I could only get rid of the rest of the clutter…

Last night, as I was browsing at the Apple store in Towson and my toddler got Cheetos dust on the keyboard of a demo eMac, the junior shopboy came up and asked if I had any questions. I explained that I was pretty up on everything, as I work for ZD. He looked at me in awe. He gushed about how all sorts of interesting people come into the store, like Michael Shrieve (the original Santana drummer)… and me.

Umm….I didn't know what to say to the little sycophant. So I asked him for some replacement rubber feet for my TiBook, grabbed a copy of TaxCut and the iCurve I had been coveting, paid my bill and bid him adieu.

This was almost as disconcerting as when Mike Himowitz told my wife I was one of the smartest guys he knew. I don't even know how to process those kinds of messages. My self-image just isn't compatible with them.