Java EE next release will support cloud computing, multi-tenancy, elasticity and caching features. Adam Messinger, Hasan Rizvi and Cameron Purdy from Oracle team presented the future product roadmaps for micro (ME), standard (SE) and enterprise (EE) editions of Java platform at JavaOne 2011 Conference on Tuesday.
Cameron Purdy talked about the new features coming up in Java EE platform which includes the support for cloud computing. He said that today's cloud offerings are all proprietary, not standard based and we need a standard for Platform as a Service (PaaS) based cloud solutions. Many components in Java EE 7 will have multi-tenancy baked into them. The multi tenancy support will be built into VM itself to monitor, measure and control the different tenants running in the VM for better resource management.
Just like Context and Dependency Injection (CDI) manages the dependencies between the components in the application, Java EE 7 will do the same for the applications in the enterprise. JPA annotations will have the ability to map Java objects to database tables with tenancy control. There is also work being done for the Java caching to be a standard and caching will be a feature in Java EE 7.
On the Java SE side, Oracle has announced the preview release of JDK 7 for Mac OS X with GA versions to come next year. Java SE version 8 will support modularity and a managed runtime with dynamic compilation features.
There will also be improvements for JavaScript on the JVM, which include Nashorn - the next generation JavaScript engine optimized for the JVM - and full native Java/JavaScript interoperability to communicate between Java and Javascript objects.
Oracle also announced their intention to submit a proposal to open source the JavaFX platform as a new project within the OpenJDK Community. Oracle intends to initially contribute the JavaFX UI controls and related libraries; other JavaFX components are planned to follow in multiple phases. A next-generation Java Client in the form of JavaFX 3.0 which will be bundled with JDK 8 in 2013. The release date for Java 8 has been pushed back by six months to 2013.
Java ME future roadmap includes synchronizing the CDLC and JDK releases and convergence of CDC and Java SE Embedded API. Modern device support including multi-touch will also be available. Other changes include OJWC 1.1 release, significant updates to the CDC code base, and mobile services integration.
Other announcements made in the keynote presentation included the Apache Tom EE server becoming the latest Java EE 6 cerified product. Twitter also announced during the keynote that they are joining Java Community Process (JCP) and OpenJDK project.