Oracle Outlines Java Technology Roadmap

At its JavaOne conference in the city, Oracle provided a glimpse of the future opportunities that Java provides. JavaOne is Oracle's flagship conference for Java developers and partners and was held in Hyderabad over May 8 and 9. The conference also showcased Oracle's continued commitment to the stewardship of Java with Oracle's continued investments in the Java platform and technology.

At the event, Oracle also laid the roadmap for the future versions of Java and said that each major release will have a gap of two years. The company said that in 2016, the programmers can look forward to features like Jigsaw, Generic language interoperability, GPU programming and enhancements for cloud in version Java 9.

The JavaOne event brought together world's foremost Java experts, Java developers and Java users to help understand how the technology is being used across industry verticals and across devices from personal computers to mobiles to automation devices.During the keynote address, Georges Saab, Vice President of Software Development, Java Platform Group, Oracle said that the new version of Java, JDK 8 (Java Development Kit 8) is scheduled for release in the first quarter of next year.

Java 8 will have a number of new features, the most important of which are being worked out under ‘'Project Lambda''. It is the Java Programming Language initiative aimed to support multi-core programming by adding closures and related features to the language.

JDK 8 will also feature Java Script interoperability and JVM convergence (Merging of the Sun HotSpot Java Virtual Machine with the JRockit JVM, to produce a single JVM).

Oracle highlighted that from enterprise application development to cloud computing to embedded machine-to-machine systems; Java continues to drive the applications and devices that enrich our interactivity with the world around us.

Speaking at the session Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications of the international digital security company, Gemalto highlighted that the company uses Java in its devices to enable better Machine to Machine (M2M) communications and build a smarter connected world.

Presenting Oracle's strategy for Java EE (Enterprise Edition) during the keynote address, Anil Gaur, Vice President of Server Technologies, Oracle said that Java EE7 will be released shortly. Some of the highlights of Java EE 7 are its batch capabilities, WebSocket, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), and concurrency utilities for asynchronous applications. He added that Oracle is aiming to put together a standards based cloud programming model in the next version Java EE 8. It will deliver cloud architecture; enable multi tenancy for SaaS applications, incremental delivery of JSRs and modularity based on Jigsaw.