In the past Sunday used to be a more relaxing day with ‘just’ some JavaOne activities going on. Sunday used to be a soft day to prepare yourself for an exhausting week. This is now over as JavaOne is expanding; Sunday is now an integral part of the conference. One of the side effect of this extra day is that some activities related to JavaOne and OpenWorld such as MySQL Connect are being push to start a day earlier on Saturday (can you spot the pattern here?).
On the GlassFish front, Sunday was a very busy day! It started at the Moscone Center with the annual GlassFish Community Event where the Java EE 7 and GF 4 roadmaps were presented and discussed. During the event, different GlassFish users such as ZeroTurnaround (the JRebel guys), Grupo RBS and IDR Solutions shared their views on GF, why they like GF but also what could be improved. The event was also a forum for the GF community to exchange with some of the key Java EE / GlassFish Oracle Executives and the different GF team members.
The Java Strategy Keynote and the JavaOne Technical Keynote were held in the Masonic Auditorium later in the after-noon. Oracle executives have presented the plans for Java SE, Java FX and Java EE. Here are some personal takeaways from those keynotes.
Modularity
Modularity is a big deal. We know by now that Project Jigsaw will
not be ready for Java SE 8 but in any case, it is already
possible (and encouraged) to test Jigsaw today.
In the future, Java EE plan to rely on the modularity features
provided by Java SE, so Project Jigsaw is also relevant for Java
EE developers.
Shorter term, to cover some of the modular requirements, Java SE
will adopt the approach that was used for Java EE 6 and the
notion of Profiles. This approach does not define a module system
per say; Profiles is a way to clearly define different subsets of
Java SE to fulfill different needs (e.g. the full JRE is not
required for a headless application). The introduction of
different Profiles, from the Base profile (10mb) to the Full
Profile (+50mb), has been proposed for Java SE 8.
Embedded
Embedded is a strong theme going forward for the Java Plaform.
There is now a dedicated program : Java Embedded @ JavaOne
Java by nature (e.g. platform independence, built-in security,
ability easily talks to any back-end systems, large set of skills
available on the market, etc.) is probably the most suited
platform for the Internet of Things.
You can quickly be up-to-speed and develop services and
applications for that space just by using your current Java
skills. All you need to start developing on ARM is a 35$
Raspberry Pi ARM board (25$ if you are cheap and can live without
an ethernet connection) and the recently released JDK for Linux/ARM. Obviously, GlassFish runs
on Raspberry Pi.
If you wan to go further in the embedded space, you should take a
look Java SE Embedded, an optimized, low footprint,
Java environment that support the major embedded architectures
(ARM, PPC and x86).
Finally, Oracle has recently introduced Java Embedded Suite, a new solution that
brings modern middleware capabilities to the embedded space. Java
Embedded Suite is an optimized solution that leverage Java SE
Embedded but also GlassFish, Jersey and JavaDB to deploy advanced
value added capabilities (eg. sensor data filtering and) deeper
in the network, closer to the devices.
JavaFX
JavaFX is going strong! Starting from Java SE 7u6, JavaFX is
bundled with the JDK. JavaFX is now available for all the major
desktop platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). JavaFX is now
also available, in developer preview, for low end device running
Linux/ARM. During the keynote, JavaFX was shown running on a
Raspberry Pi!
And as announced during the keynote, JavaFX should be fully
open-sourced by the end of the year; contributions are welcome!.
There is a strong momentum around JavaFX, it’s the ideal client
solution for the Java platform. A client layer that works
perfectly with GlassFish on the back-end. If you were not
convince by JavaFX, it’s time to reconsider it!
As an old Chinese proverb say “One tweet is worth a thousand words!”
HTML5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7
HTML5 got a lot of airtime too, it was covered during the Java EE
7 section of the keynote. Some details about Project Avatar,
Oracle’s incubator project for a TSA (Thin Server Architecture)
solution, were diluted and shown during the keynote.
On the tooling side, Project Easel running on NetBeans 7.3 beta
was demo’ed, including a cool NetBeans debugging session running
in Chrome!
HTML 5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 deserve separate posts...
Feedback
We need your feedback! There are many projects, JSRs and products
cooking : GlassFish 4, Project Jigsaw, Concurrency Utilities for
Java EE (JSR 236), OpenJFX, OpenJDK to name just a few. Those
projects, those specifications will have a profound impact on the
Java platform for the years to come! So if you have the
opportunity, download, install, learn, tests them and give
feedback! Remember, you can "Make the Future Java!"
Finally, the traditional GlassFish Party at the Thirsty Bear
concluded the first JavaOne day. This party is another place
where the community can freely exchange with the GlassFish team
in a more relaxed, more friendly (but sometime more noisy)
atmosphere. Arun has posted a set of pictures to reflect the atmosphere of the
keynotes and the GlassFish party.
You can find more details on the others Java EE and GlassFish
activities here.