A product of wabasoft.com, Waba is essentially a restricted version of the Java programming language, designed for mobile and handheld devices.

Waba programs can run on PalmOS devices, Windows CE devices, or any machine that supports Java 1.02 or later.

The Waba virtual machine (which is not technically a Java virtual machine (JVM) because it doesn't implement all of the Java lanuage) and foundation classes only require around 60KB or memory so they are very light weight. This light weight comes at a cost, however: much of the Java language and class libraries are missing from Waba. It defines its own user interface classes, avoiding the standard AWT (not to mention Swing!) classes.

Exceptions are absent. UI event handling is dramatically different from the AWT methods that most Java developers are used to. Performance is slow compared to native PalmOS programs.

That said, Waba fills its niche extremely well. The light weight and platform independence allow developers to write and maintain programs that will run on Palm, WinCE, and other memory-constrained devices.

The Waba language is only loosely related to WABA.org. ;-)