Is The Sun Setting On Java?

Java EE is a major enterprise platform, but it hasn’t had a facelift since 2013. Stewart Mitchell discovers developers are growing restless

- Stewart Mitchell

When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010,many wondered what would happen to the products that there was no obvious use for: OpenOffice and Java among them. Six years on, and those fears appear to have been realised. OpenOffice was discontinued and then jettisoned (see opposite), and some fear Java is following a similar trajectory.

Java EE is badly in need of an update, according to industry insiders, but user groups claim Oracle is stalling, amid fears the company might take it down a proprietary path. One former Oracle employee told PC Pro that work on the platform has been virtually non-existent.

More than three years after the launch of Java EE 7, plans for EE 8 have yet to move beyond the draft stage and the apparent inertia has prompted a user group – EE Guardians – to petition Oracle to take action.

The lack of progress prompted one developer we interviewed to walk away from the project entirely. “Until two months ago, I was working at Oracle and from inside Oracle it was obvious to everyone that for over six months the work to move ahead with Java EE 8wasn’t really happening,” said Reza Rahman, a former Java technologist with Oracle, now working with consultant firm CapTech. “The activity had dropped off to almost nothing.”

“It was disconcerting because I was getting concerned phone calls from all these people that work on these specifications and it was really difficult... How could I continue telling people that ‘everything is OK’ and ‘not to worry’ when it really wasn’t an honest answer? It was getting harder and in the end I decided ‘I can’t do this’ and left Oracle.”