Oracle lays out its Java roadmap for Indian developers

12th May 2011
Oracle  lays out its Java roadmap for Indian developers
Java jai ho! at the JavaOne conference in Hyderabad (IndiaTechOnline photos)

Over 1.1 billion desktops run Java. Some 930 million Java Runtime Environment downloads each year . A billion mobile phones run Java, A 100% of all Blu-ray Players Run Java. 1.4 billion Java Cards are manufactured each year. There are some 14 million Java developers in the world with nine million using Java regularly during the work day…. One could go on.

The numbers were always big. Now new ‘owners’ Oracle are saying: we want to make it bigger, because as Steven G. Harris, Oracle's Senior VP of Application Server Development points out, “All of our middleware -- when we talk about Fusion Middleware -- is written in Java. If Java is not successful, we will fail. We really want Java to be successful, so keeping Java open, and having developers working in Java is really critical to our success.”
The first ever JavaOne event to come to India – Hyderabad, May 10-11 ( along with OracleDevelop)– saw some 3000 plus Indian Java developers assure themselves that Java was alive and kicking albeit under new management.
Guest speakers like lead sponsor Juniper Network’s Chief Technology Officer Hal Stern underlined the sheer ubiquity of Java, even as smarter networks, chased smarter clients.

Product demonstrations highlighted how the Java EE 6 Web Profile reduces the size of the Java runtime for light-weight web applications, reducing overhead and improving performance.

Oracle announced that it was now is working to modernize the Java mobile platform by delivering Java with Web support to consumer devices and is planning other enhancements including new language features, small-footprint CPU-efficient capabilities for cards, phones and TVs, and consistent tooling and emulation across hardware platforms.

The announced roadmap for the OpenJDK  ( Java development kit) which accelerates the availability of Java SE with two releases, one in 2011 and one in 2012, was meant to assure Java developers of Oracle’s commitment to bring Java releases to a more metronomic rhythm after a few years of irregular releases in the last sun-ny years. These OpenJDK releases will continue to serve as the basis for the Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 and JDK 8.

Oracle also unveiled plans for a major thrust to take on graphics rich environments and tools like Flash and Silverlight with JavaFX. The promise was to deliver advanced graphics, high-fidelity media, and the ability to render HTML content within Java applications through a programming model that combines the power of Java with the ease of JavaFX.
JavaFX would be tightly integrated with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to enable better performance and improved usability and a hardware-accelerated graphics engine that will enable JavaFX applications to render stunning interactive 2D and 3D experiences in real-time.
It was left to Amit Zaveri, Vice President, Product Management ( Oracle Fusion Middleware) to make what was arguably the best news for the assembled geeks: the availability of the free to user Oracle App Development Framework (ADF), with over 150 plus components as well as a special SADF avatar to fuel development in the burgeoning , mobile space. The tools were gratis -- and for India’s developers, possibly a good stimulus to go out and innovate in the world’s most popular programming environment, Java, -- From Anand Parthasarathy in Hyderabad. May 12 2011See our previous JavaOne story: http://www.indiatechonline.com/javaone-hyderabad-2011-473.php