Again dominating the discussion, , are technologies pertaining to the Swing desktop client platform for Java. Presentations are featured on such projects as the Spring Rich Client Project, jMatter, and SwiXml.

The desktop can be a better option than the Web in some circumstances, one attendee said. "For certain types of applications, desktop's the only way to go," said Rob Abbe, chief software architect at Captovation, which develops document capture software. He cited applications that need to interface with peripherals like high-speed scanners as an example.

"The Web would be better [as a deployment choice] when the footprint needs to remain low [like] in situations where administrative policies would prevent people from installing desktop applications," Abbe said.

One technology featured, the open-source , shares code with the popular Spring application framework for Java but is geared to rich client applications.

"There are hundreds of major companies using this for very large and significant production applications," said Jim Moore, a consultant at Interface21, which oversees Spring technologies.