The Hindu : IT professional develops application server

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 21, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

IT professional develops application server

By K. Satyamurty

BANGALORE OCT. 20. It is too easy to dismiss him an IT "whiz kid" who brags. But, R. Premjith (24) has done by himself what teams of developers do over a 100 man-hours or more.

Premjith is perhaps the first Indian IT professional to have developed a new application server through his own efforts.

"I worked on it for close to one year without disturbing the projects given by the company I am working at. Sometimes I slept for only three hours a day," he says.

Asked to explain what exactly is an application server, Premjith thinks for a minute and goes on: "It can be described as a container to keep software applications, reducing complexity for programmers and with more reusability."

A lot of tedium and worry can be reduced, he adds.

As a software engineer, he always felt that the more you know about an underlying system, how it reacts to a piece of code or how better you can make the system respond to your programme, the better programmer you can be.

"I was crazy about Java and particularly J2EE (Java 2 platform Enterprise Edition), and this made me go deep into application server internals. I believed it would shape me as a fine J2EE architect. The outcome is the new application server," he says.

It was hard work, coping with the demands of his job and going ahead with his passion.

His father, Jayaram, a primary school headmaster near Calicut in Kerala, was very supportive. "Through those long weeks of struggle with little sleep, I even wanted to quit my job but my father felt I could do both. He does not know much about software technology but gave me ideas to overcome difficulties," he says.

His mother, Premalatha, a housewife, was equally supportive, encouraging him from hundreds of km. away. Younger brother, Ranjith, an engineering student in Belgaum, also helped him.

"When I completed the application server, I rang up my father and told him it is a working model and was he thrilled," he says.

The application sever which Premjith has developed is completely written in Java, exploiting the advantages of Java programming techniques.

In today's fast moving world of e-commerce and Information Technology, enterprise applications have to be designed, built and produced for less money with greater speed, and with fewer resources than ever before. This is what he has achieved.

His moment of crowning glory came when Floyd Marinescu, Director of the U.S.-based Serverside.com, a ranking agency for the J2EE Community, and author of EJB Design Patterns, sent this message: "It's extremely great to develop a new application server. Sounds like you are very well on your way to being a master." Praise well worth the sweat and tears.

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