OpenWorld and JavaOne 2013 so far! - Part II

In part I of this blog you read about the numbers of OpenWorld and our activities at OpenWorld and JavaOne. So what about the news? Almost all new products and further development of existing products are centered around the support of multi-tenancy, cloud-based computing, and the processing and analyzing of data and events from the billions of devices connected to the Internet (Internet of Things). Furthermore the traction around User Experience keeps growing.

Some concrete news that showcases this:

Oracle announced its in-memory database feature for 12c. This feature speeds up both OLTP and OLAP by storing and accessing data both in row and column format. Enabling the in-memory option for tables and partitions seems pretty simple based on the keynote demo. The in-memory option is transparent and works out-of-the-box: application code doesn't need to be rewritten, and features such as offered by RAC remain intact. Together with the in-memory database, Larry announced the "Big Memory Machine": a new box called M6-32 with lots of cores and RAM aimed at running in-memory databases. Finally, the Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance was launched. An appliance specifically designed for protecting databases.

There was an update on the developments in the Fusion Middleware product stack. Service Bus, SOA Suite, BPM Suite, and so on are enhanced for mobile computing and cloud integration. Among others by providing better support for REST and JSON in SOA Suite, new Cloud Adapters to integrate with 3rd parties such as Salesforce, and using ADF Mobile to build code once and run it one various mobile platforms. WebLogic 12c supports Web Sockets and better integration with the multi-tenant Oracle Database 12c. The BPM Suite is shipped with prepackaged processes (accelerators) that can be used as blueprints for several processes. BPM Suite is also extended to support case management.

Coherence GoldenGate HotCache was presented. When using caching there is always the risk of stale data when data is modified outside the caching layer; e.g. directly in the datasource. A popular caching solution is Coherence. The new Coherence GoldenGate HotCache feature enables you to push data updates from the database to the Coherence layer instead of invalidating the cache and/or periodically pulling the data from the caching layer.

There was also news at JavaOne. Java ME and Java SE are being converged in both terms of language and APIs in JDK 8 and further on. This means that developers can use common tooling, that code compatibility increases, and that only one skillset is needed. This will make it easier for Java developers to create code for the "Internet of Things". Both Java SE 8 and ME 8 are available as Early Access downloads. The JDK 8 is scheduled to be released somewhere in the Spring of 2014. Important new features include Lambda expressions (JSR 335), Nashorn (JavaScript engine), Compact Profiles, Date and Time API (JSR 310), and several security enhancement. Lambda expressions are one of the biggest changes in the history of the Java language making it easier to write clean code and avoid boilerplate.

This summer the Java EE 7 spec has been released. Java EE 7 is aimed at providing better developer productivity and to offer better support for HTML 5 through Web Sockets, JSON support, and REST support. Other new features are batch APIs and support for the new, and simplified JMS standard. GlassFish 4, the reference implementation for Java EE 7, is available for download. Project Avatar has been open-sourced, a JavaScript services layer focused on building data services.

The Tuesday keynote was all about the Cloud. Oracle adds 10 new services to the Oracle Cloud including the Compute Cloud and Documents Cloud. Oracle and Microsoft announced a partnership that makes it possible to run Oracle Databases and Oracle WebLogic Servers on Oracle Linux on the Microsoft Azure platform.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Visit the OpenWorld site to watch all the keynotes.