Oracle releases Java 7 platform

9494 bug fixes, 1966 enhancements, 9018 updates, 147 builds and four specification requests have gone into developing the latest Java Platform 7 and Oracle has now released JDK 7 as a general availability release. It is the first major release of the Java development environment since Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems.

The new version of Java is based on OpenJDK. This is the first time that an open source version of the Java platform has served as the basis for a commercial release. Consequently, JDK 7 brings few surprises – large parts of the code have, after all, already been seen in the wild as part of OpenJDK. JDK 8 promises more excitement; development work on this has already started and will focus on support for lambda expressions and on the modularity of the Java platform in general.

In the newly released version 7, Oracle has focused on performance on multi-core systems, to which end it has added a new join/fork framework and better support for dynamic and scripted languages. There are also updates aimed at improving security, international support and web standards.

Despite uncertainties and issues such as the withdrawal of the Apache Software Foundation, the process of involving the open source community in the development process by means of OpenJDK has, according to Mark Reinhold, Oracle's lead architect for the Java platform, proven an great success.

(djwm)