Oracle's Java EE 7 proposal approved by the JCP

The development proposal for the next Enterprise Java, submitted by Oracle to the Java Community Process (JCP), has been approved by the organisations involved in the Java Specification Request (JSR). Twelve of the 13 parties of the JCP Executive Committee voted "Yes with no comment" in the ballot on Oracle's Java EE 7 proposal. Only IBM included a remark, for instance, pointing out that the next Enterprise Java should provide the basis for modular Java capabilities in the Java Standard Edition that is to follow it (Java SE 8).

A unanimous result: All parties voted in favour of Oracle's proposal.

The main focus of the next Enterprise Java will include such topics as multi-tenancy, which is one of the main requirements for cloud environments, application versioning and the support of non-relational databases. Providing first modularity capabilities in Java EE 7, as mentioned by IBM, could also begin to conclude the discussions about a modular Java that have been ongoing for years. Modularity is considered a requirement for cloud scenarios. The support of such web-related developments as HTML5 and web sockets could potentially also be included in Java EE 7.

The specification will be developed within JSR 342. This JSR will act as a "container" for a number of further JSRs that are to be released with Java EE 8. JSRs already submitted to the JCP include 340 (Java Servlet 3.1), 341 (Expression Language 3.0), 343 (Java Message Service 2.0) and 344 (JavaServer Faces 2.2). Potential further JSRs could provide new versions of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Bean Validation, and CDI. Appropriate JSRs already exist for further potential components such as JCache, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE, JAX-RS 2.0 and JPA 2.1.

The release of Java EE 7 is planned for the third quarter of 2012. A road map for Java EE 8 has also already been released. It is to follow in late 2013.

(crve)