Oracle Looks To HTML5 With Java EE 7 Release

Oracle and the Java Community Process (JCP) have released Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 7 (Java EE 7) and the Java EE 7 Software Development Kit (SDK).

Java EE 7 features a scalable infrastructure that facilitates building HTML5 applications by reducing response times through low-latency, bidirectional communication with WebSockets; simplifying data parsing and exchange using industry-standard JSON processing and supporting many more concurrent users through asynchronous RESTful Web Services with JAX-RS 2.0.

Expansive Release

Oracle officials said Java EE 7 is the result of industry-wide development involving open review, ongoing builds and extensive collaboration between hundreds of engineers from more than 30 companies within the JCP and the GlassFish Community.

“This is the first release of the framework since Oracle took over the leadership of Java, but in many respects one of the most expansive in scope,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC. “Java EE 7 brings this widely used enterprise framework to the modern age of HTML5 and also brings significant improvement in developer productivity that will have windfalls in code quality. In this age of the polyglot programmer, Java EE will allow Java to remain one of the most widely deployed technologies for server applications on the planet.”

Moreover, to help further increase developer productivity, Java EE 7 provides a simplified application architecture with a cohesive, integrated platform and reduces boilerplate code using dependency injection and default resources. In addition, Java EE 7 broadens the use of annotations to increase efficiency and enhances application portability with standard RESTful Web Services client support, Oracle said.

Java EE 7 delivers new features to meet demanding enterprise requirements, such as breaking down batch jobs into manageable chunks for uninterrupted OLTP performance, defining multithreaded concurrent tasks easily for improved scalability, improving Managed Beans alignment – including transactional interceptors – and delivering transactional applications with choice and flexibility.

The platform also includes updates to Java Message Service (JMS) 2.0 that are designed to improve usability through annotations and Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) Beans support as well as significantly reduce the code required to send and receive messages.

Group Effort

Oracle said 19 Java user groups around the world have taken part in the “Adopt a JSR” program, providing valuable feedback and code samples to validate Java Specification Request (JSR) APIs.

“Java user groups all over the world have taken ownership of specific JSRs,” Purdy said in a 12 June Oracle Webcast on Java EE 7. “This allows our Java user groups to pick a JSR they want to support.”

Purdy also noted that more than 9 million developers use Java, making it “the largest development community ever.”