LimeLight on Embedded Java

This article throws more light on the embedded aspect of java . If you are passionate java developer I'm sure this will help you understand embedded concepts more. So you’re a regular Java developer. You have done years of service developing apps on the server side and get your kicks with any number of server- and client-side APIs. You might have even developed some MIDlets for the Java ME environment. You think you’ve done it all. But suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about a new technology: embedded Java. Can Java really go so small? You thought that the era of resource-constrained programming was over. With the advances in the architecture of Android, iPhone, and Java ME devices, lack of memory was no longer an issue. Suddenly, lack of resources is a reason to celebrate. As you might have guessed, we are not talking about consumer devices (at least, not direct-toconsumer devices). We are talking about devices such as the Raspberry Pi and other microcontrollers with which you can manipulate circuit boards and small resource systems. Such microdevices allow you to manipulate and work directly with the onboard circuitry. Embedded versions of Java use the same Java technology that you work with now—except the embedded versions are bite size. For example, Oracle Java ME Embedded has a footprint smaller than that of Java ME, and it is targeted at devices that power set-top boxes, vending machines, sensors, or, well, microcontrollers. Java can be defined and adapted to different devices using either Oracle Java ME Embedded or Oracle Java SE Embedded. In this article, we look at how to do that and we look at how Oracle Java ME Embedded technologies are adapted to the embedded environment. Oracle Java ME Embedded is defined by the  Information Module Profile-Next Generation (IMP-NG) specification (JSR 228). (There is a separate specification for Oracle Java SE Embedded.)As you might have guessed, this JSR is an extension of the really old JSR 195, which was—not surprisingly— called the IMP specification. That JSR never got off the ground, but adding the next generation  bit has done wonders. Or it could be that the time is right for the new specification. An Information Module Profile is a strict subset of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP), which you are probably well acquainted with. So, if we were creating MIDlets using MIDP, we must define a new name for the applications that we create with IMP-NG.