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Oracle: Delayed Java Enterprise Edition 8 to land 'within the year'

Ladies and gents, warm up your wishlists

Oracle has committed to deliver the delayed Java Enterprise Edition 8 “within a year.”

Bill Shannon, architect at Oracle, sketched out the goal in an email to Java community members sent on August 22 and seen by The Reg.

The current date for Java EE 8 is “first half of 2017” - pushed back this year from JavaOne 2016, which takes place next week.

One community source speaking to The Reg said he believed Shannon’s comment to be an educated guess for a release at the end of 2017.

Oracle PR did not return request for comment.

Contacted by The Reg, Shannon promised Oracle would announce its plans at next week’s JavaOne conference.

Oracle’s new date will be determined by the results of a survey taken of the Java community on what they’d like to see in Java EE 8.

The firm expects to have the survey ready at the conference in San Francisco, California, where it will also take feedback from attendees.

The idea is to establish a list of features most wanted and that can be delivered.

Following that, Oracle wants to “move quickly” onto planning for Java EE 9 and “larger” improvements in the EE programming model.

Shannon wrote in his August email:

After considering the results of our survey and other feedback, we'll adjust the plans for Java EE 8, with a goal of delivering Java EE 8 within a year. Much of the initially planned work is nearly complete or well on its way, but new work will need to be done more quickly than usual. Obviously all desired work will not be able to be done in Java EE 8 and some planned work may no longer be important.

This short schedule for Java EE 8 will allow us to move quickly into planning for Java EE 9.

Shannon’s email ads a little more detail to comments made by Oracle vice president for Java EE and WebLogic Anil Gaur at an August 9 Java Community Process meeting.

Gaur said Oracle planned a new release date for Java EE 8 - but he didn’t have details on when that would be.

Oracle has taken flack this year over its commitment to Java EE 8, having gone quiet on email and community communications and with its number of code commits falling and evangelists and leaders leaving the firm.

Oracle’s engineers had told community members that they were “working on other projects internally” with no further explanation given.

That has been taken to mean that engineers had been re-assigned to work on building Oracle’s cloud, the company’s current top corporate priority.

Oracle was forced to issue a statement following the criticism confirming its commitment to Java, saying at the time that it in fact had “a very well defined proposal” for Java EE 8.

Community members now reckon Oracle has re-opened the lines of communication on Java EE 8, with more email comms starting to flow.

All eyes will now be on JavaOne. ®

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