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Article

After Five-Year Drought, Java SE7 Is Here

It’s based on the open source OpenJDK, making it something of a novelty for a commercial release
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
August 3, 2011 02:00 PM EDT
Reads:
 2,295

Java SE 7, the Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 is out.

It's the first major release in five years and took 9,494 bug fixes, 1,966 enhancements, 9,018 changesets, 147 builds and four JSRs to get here.

It's also the first release of the Java platform under Oracle's stewardship, and threatened not to happen until Oracle put its foot down and went off and wheeled and dealed and leveraged IBM. (Remember the Apache Foundation stalking off and slamming the door?)

Still, it's based on the open source OpenJDK, making it something of a novelty for a commercial release.

There's nothing revolutionary about it. It's supposed to reduce the amount of code needed to do things (Project Coin). It comes with an updated XML stack and lets dynamic languages like Ruby, Groovy, Python and JavaScript get better performance running on JVMs. It offers a new parallelizing Fork/Join Framework and a multi-core-ready API for building applications for these newfangled multi-core systems. And it's got new networking and security features and a comprehensive I/O interface for working with different file systems that should provide more information when errors occur.

Oracle says there are nine million Java developers out there and a billion Java downloads a year. It counts more than three billion devices powered by Java, including presumably the Android widgets Oracle takes such great exception to.

Published August 3, 2011 – Reads 2,295
Copyright © 2011 Ulitzer, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

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