Java Strategy Keynote

Java Strategy and JavaOne technical keynotes were delivered at the end of the first conference day, on sunday.

The Java Strategy keynote was kicked off with a “catchy” music video “coding in Java”. After the video Hasan Rizvi, EVP Middleware and Java Development, opened the more formal part of the keynote. Rizvi described how the conference theme “make the future Java” referred to two different aspect of building the future:

• a) ensuring the platform stays competitive. Competitiveness involves platform completeness, modernization and innovation, developer productivity as well as quality and security
• b) making sure that the collaborative process through which the platform is being developed, works well. The process needs open and transparent evolution, and active community involvement

Rizvi noted that “we have bet our business on Java and a lot of you have bet your business and careers on Java”. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware platform as well as a lot of (if not all) Oracle applications have been built on Java, so Oracle has in fact, made a huge bet on Java.

As for the Java roadmap, Oracle stated they’re committed to more regular platform major releases. During Sun stewardship there was a period of Java stagnation when 4.5 years elapsed between Java 6 ja 7 releases, and Java 7 was actually finally released by Oracle, not Sun. Even though evolving Java is a collaborative effort, a lot of responsibility lies on the steward. A key duty is to produce the reference implementation. The developers, partners, clients and all the stakeholders in the Java ecosystem need to be able to rely on the steward to move things forward in a consistent and predictable manner, and timeboxed releases are an important indication to everyone that the train is moving.

Rizvi gave some highlights of Java roadmap for SE, ME, EE, JavaFX, Java Card and NetBeans. These were later described in more detail by the product development leaders. He also presented results for Oracle’s Java 2012 scorecard. The scorecard is split into three different areas: technology, community and Oracle leadership.

Rizvi then handed over to Georges Saab, VP / Development who described the current state of Java SE 7 adoption. According to Saab they’re seeing rapid uptake of the new release and mentioned that Oracle supports its entire Fusion Middleware stack on JDK 7. (With the end of public Java 6 updates scheduled for 2013 february, it’s time to upgrade unless you have a Java support contract.) He also emphasized support for 2 new platforms added in the release. Support for Linux ARM seems very much related with Oracle’s aspirations for Java in the embedded space (Saab mentioned the emerging ARM microserver market).

Java 8 is scheduled for Q3 2013 with developer preview slated for February 2013. OpenJDK 8 early builds are available already to test things like Lambda. Some of the highlights of the planned release content include Lambda expressions (closures), parallel operations on core collections API, eliminating PermGen, a new JVM based JavaScript implementation called Nashorn, language interoperability, Java ME/SE convergence and new Date & Time APIs. Oracle is planning to contribute Nashorn to the OpenJDK project. Nashorn is said to be a high performance, modern JavaScript implementation on the JVM and will probably replace the experimental Rhino JavaScript engine shipped since JDK 6. NetBeans uses Nashorn internally for its JavaScript support.

Java 9 will likely include at least Jigsaw modularity, which was deferred from Java 8 and is scheduled for 2015. While some potential development areas were listed for this release the details were pretty scarce, as can be expected at this time.

Nandini Ramani, VP / Engineering, Java Client and Mobile Platforms, then took to the stage to describe plans for Java Client and Embedded. It’s interesting to note that JavaFX is not currently supported on all Oracle supported Java platforms, which would in theory seem to contradict the “write once, run anywhere” proposition. Ramani was briefly joined by people from Navis and Canoo to present a JavaFX in cargo management case study.

Then back to longer term plans for the JDK. Phil Rogers of AMD described Project Sumatra, which aims to bring heterogeneous computing platform to Java. Rogers described the hardware trends behind the project:

1) first the move from single core to multi-core CPUs and now to 2) full SOCs (system on chip) and a heterogeneous computing platform, where we combine a CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon and shared memory

High level of parallelism is required from the platform by workloads such as media processing, AI, and big data. With Sumatra developers will be able to write code that will take advantage of the heterogeneous computing platform without explicitly coding for it. The JVM will decide on runtime whether to run the code on CPU or GPU.

Ramani then came back to tell about Java in the Embedded space.  I’ve written another blog entry about this, so I won’t go into detail here. It was interesting to note, however, that Oracle seems very determined to push Java in the embedded space and they’re talking a lot about the “Internet of Things” and M2M communication. In Java Embedded their focus seems to be on small headless devices, which apparently doesn’t include smart phones. They also want to lower the barrier of entry for a Java SE developer to enter embedded development through Java ME / SE convergence mentioned earlier. This could create interesting opportunities for developers by allowing them to move between these ecosystems. Java ME / SE convergence appears to be a key driver behind JDK 9 modularization (Jigsaw). Ramani concluded her part of the keynote by introducing two more case studies: Java enabled SOC by Cinterion (Java Embedded) and MintChip by The Royal Canadian Mint (Java Card based digital currency).

Cameron Purdy, VP Fusion Middleware Development and Java EE, took to stage after Ramani to discuss Java EE status and direction. He started off by briefing on Java EE 6 adoption among application developers and JEE server vendors. He then went on to describe Oracle’s Java EE focus areas that include standardization, productivity, portability, extensibility and modularity. Like other keynote speakers, Purdy also emphasized that developing the Java EE platform and specifications is a community effort. He presented some interesting details about Java EE release dates, themes and number of specifications included up to Java EE 7. Java EE 7 is currently scheduled for Q2 2013. The release themes include HTML 5 and continued developer productivity. Features such as WebSockets, Servlet 3.1 NIO, Server Sent Events, JSON, REST are considered to fall under the HTML 5 theme umbrella while API pruning, built on Java SE 7, JCache, JMS 2.0 and batch are driven by the productivity goal. Some features that Oracle would like to see in Java EE 8 were discussed briefly, but it will be the responsibility of the eventually formed expert group to decide what will go into the actual specification. Cloud programming (multitenancy for SaaS apps, PaaS enablement) model standardization was a feature deferred from Java EE 7 and will likely be included in JEE 8. Other things being considered include NoSQL, Project Avatar, state management, JSON-B and modularity based on Jigsaw. Purdy finally invited Nicole Otto from Nike to endorse Java EE as the platform for Nike’s online services.

In the final part of the keynote, Robert Ballard, oceanographer and discoverer of RMS Titanic, talked about innovation and science education. He described how modern oceanography makes pretty advanced use of information and communications technology. He told he’s often asked what he’d like to discover next? A spaceship, he said. Why? Because then I’d never have to talk about the Titanic again 🙂

IBM Keynote

IBM was a diamond sponsor for the conference and they presented their own keynote, right after the strategy keynote. The IBM talk focused a lot on cloud enablement and optimization, multitenancy, tenant isolation and reducing footprint. Polyglot also appears to be on IBM’s Java platform agenda as they discussed support for multiple JVM-based languages. A key part of IBM’s message was that hardware matters. Even if Java developers typically work at a level where the underlying hardware is abstracted away, system hardware architecture design is still crucial for mission critical applications. Somewhere deep below all the layers of indirection, hardware virtualization and JVM simulated virtual machine, the code is still run by physical processors. And since IBM can deliver the whole stack from server hardware and storage to language runtime and middleware, all the pieces have been designed and optimized to work together. So, IBM was basically echoing the Oracle “software and hardware, engineered to work together” -value proposition. They also presented SPECjEnterprise and SPECpower_ssj2008 performance performance benchmark figures where the IBM J9 JVM came out as the winner.

Java Technical Keynote

The Technical keynote was primarily delivered by Oracle Java Platform Chief Architect, Mark Reinhold. The technical keynote focused on Java SE (Java 8) and Java EE (JEE 7) platform releases. These releases were presented against the backdrop of sample applications (Schedule builder and Angry bids). Java Language Architect Brian Goetz dropped by on stage to show how Java 8 Lambda together with changes in the collections API can make the JavaFX Schedule builder application code more beautiful, and improve code and libraries in general. A large part of the presentation was dedicated to Jigsaw, which I think will play a really big role in the future of the platform. Jigsaw will not be included in Java 8 but Lambda, compact profiles, Nashorn, data/time API and type annotations will. In addition, various smaller things like PermGen removal, bulk data operations, parallel array sorting etc. are also scheduled for Java 8.

Arun Gupta, Java EE Technology Evangelist, then talked about Java EE in more detail than in the strategy keynote. Gupta briefly talked about Java EE history and current status in terms of release dates, release theme and dates. He then dived deeper into the Java EE 7 specification content. Some of the more interesting current candidate specification requests for Java EE 7 include: JAX-RS 2.0, EL 3.0, JMS 2.0, Java Caching API, Java API for JSON and Java API for WebSocket. Many other EE specifications will also get smaller updates such as JTA, EJB, CDI and JPA. After more than ten years in the making, who would’ve thought the Caching API specification would actually get finished some day 🙂 I was happy to see that EE 7 will not only bring additions to the specification, but will also remove things by making some APIs optional. The idea of pruning was introduced already in EE 6, so it’s not new, but it’s good to see the cleanup process continuing. Gupta then moved to detail changes to selected EE sub-specifications and demonstrated how the updates would improve productivity and reduce boilerplate code.

Thin server architecture is still an emerging architectural model for designing web applications that moves view generation from the server-side to the client side. Thin server architecture is platform agnostic and it effectively moves a lot of server-side code to the browser side that has traditionally been the domain of front-end or web developers. As the name implies, the server-side gets a lot simpler and thinner, and with this change, in my opinion, comes a really big productivity challenge for developing the Java backend wrt. to dynamic languages. Project Avatar and Easel are projects that are tackling this problem and exploring what kind of infrastructure and tooling is required end-to-end to build TSA applications on the Java platform. Some of the tooling is already available in NetBeans 7.3 beta, so it’s something that can be tried out right now. A TSA sample application called Angry bids, as well as the tooling part for developing the app were demoed.

Java Community Keynote

The Java community keynote was scheduled for the last day of the conference and started off with lots of thank yous and some making waves. After that, Gary Frost of AMD was brought up by Donald Smith (Oracle) to discuss Project Sumatra that was mentioned earlier in the Java Strategy keynote. AMD has been working to make it possible for Java developers to take advantage of the GPU for a few years now, and they’ve released an open source project called Aparapi for doing this. Aparapi requires that code be specifically written to get it executed on a GPU, but Sumatra aims to make all this unnecessary. Frost showed some interesting demos of rendering a Mandelbrot set, Game of life and N body physics simulation using Aparapi. Frost said AMD is hoping to get Sumatra included in the JDK within Java 9 timeframe.

Smith then reflected on the role of Java in innovation. His approach was to separately mindmap the strengths of Java and fostering innovation, and try to see how these two could be linked together. He invited people from Eucalyptus, Twitter, Cloudera, Eclipse and Perrone Robotics for a panel discussion on the role of Java in innovation.

After the innovation panel, Martijn Verburg of London JUG, introduced the Adopt a JSR -program they had started. The purpose was said to be to prevent bad specifications, such as EJB 2.0, from happening again by engaging ordinary developers in the specification process. Verburg hosted a short panel where he asked the panelists a range of questions related to their role in the Java community and Java specification process.

After the panel Saab brought up Paul Perrone to discuss and demo a Java based robotics platform his company develops. Continuing on the robotics theme, Java creator James Gosling came up on stage wearing his Sun Microsystems t-shirt to tell about his current work at Liquid Robotics, and how they’re using Java. Liquid Robotics is building robots that float in the ocean and gather telemetric data of different kinds for various purposes (e.g. marine mammal and pollution tracking, weather data, global warming studies etc.). Java is used for analysing the data delivered by the robots, but also the newer robot generation has an ARM processor and runs JDK 7 on Linux (ARM). They’ve built a Swing based UI for studying and drilling down the data, e.g. the routes that each robot has travelled. Gosling had evaluated all of the NoSQL databases for his use cases but felt that no existing ones worked well with the telemetry data they process, so he built his own NoSQLish database. The data they receive is really valuable, so reliability is crucial, which is why they’re using 3 different hosting providers. After evaluating hosting providers he confessed to be a real Jelastic fan. So, since Gosling in his role as the chief software architect in his new company picked to build on Java and chose to present at JavaOne, I guess it means he still has a soft spot for the platform.

Conclusions

Oracle is a huge company and many people in the developer and OSS communities have had reservations about what will happen to Java under Oracle leadership, and whether Java will be submitted to its owner’s short-term commercial ambitions. But despite its huge size Oracle is not self sufficient and their long term success is very much tied to the larger developer ecosystem. This means that Oracle needs to make sure Java is a platform that developers want to invest their human capital in also in the future.

Active community participation is absolutely vital for Java’s long term viability and it’s reassuring to see that Oracle seems to acknowledge and commit to this. Recent changes in the Java Community Process (JCP), that governs the rules for creating Java specifications, require a more open and transparent way of working from the expert groups. By making OpenJDK the Java SE reference implementation (RI), Oracle has leveled the playing field with regard to other Java SE vendors, as now Oracle’s Java implementation is only one Java SE implementation among others that has to conform to the specification and RI. Oracle has also been able to engage IBM in OpenJDK instead of Apache Harmony, which I think overall will be reduce the risk of fragmentation and benefit the whole Java community.

According to the Java Community Process, the specification lead of a particular JSR is responsible for developing the specification, but also for producing a reference implementation as well as Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK or test suite). For large specifications, such as Java SE and EE, this is no small task. OpenJDK is the Java SE reference implementation while GlassFish is the Java EE RI. There’s been some speculation about whether the JDK will remain to be made freely available, as well as the future of some Sun Java products, such as GlassFish and NetBeans, under Oracle leadership. OpenJDK and GlassFish have a clear role to play in this picture as platform reference implementations. NetBeans on the other hand provides support for emerging technologies and day 0 support for new Java standards, which is important for allowing developers to actually get hands-on experience with new standards. So, currently none of these products would appear to be redundant.

Traditionally ME and SE/EE development were regarded very different and were typically performed by people with different skill sets. The plan for ME / SE convergence on platform and API level could change that in the short term (Java SE 8 timeframe). Also, with the merge of previously separate JCP executive committees for ME and SE taking place in november, work is being carried out in the process level to try and avoid the platforms from diverging in the future.

Google used to be a visible and active member of the Java community before the legal dispute between Google and Oracle started over Android. Google has also released quite a few interesting Java based components as open source so, it’s been a pity to see Google withdraw from JavaOne as well as many other Java communities. No googlers appeared to be presenting at this year’s JavaOne either. I was surprised to find out after the conference (through some googling) that Google is actually still a member of the JCP Executive Committee and they’ve also joined the Java SE 8 expert group in August 2012! Hope they will be able to have a more active role in the Java ecosystem in the future.

There’re a lot of interesting technology changes planned for Java. Some of the changes I’m really looking forward to include

• JDK modularization (via Project Jigsaw, JDK 9)
• thin server architecture support (via Project Avatar and Easel, NetBeans v7.3, Java EE 7 / 8)
• Java SE / ME convergence (JDK 8)
• compact profiles (JDK 8)
• heterogeneous computing platform support (via Project Sumatra, JDK 9?)

Many enhancements and changes that are clearly driven by polyglot requirements appeared on Oracle’s tentative roadmap plans, so they seem to be serious about improving polyglot support in the JVM.

Based on the conference and actual work being carried out by Oracle and the larger Java community, I think Java will remain viable as a community, technology platform and an ecosystem.