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Java Mustang
At Formtek we’re using Java as the engine for our core API that we use to build browser-based content-centric business applications and Web Services. The current release of Formtek software is based on Java J2SE 5. With SUN beginning to talk more about their J2SE 7.0 Dolphin, we thought that it would be good to look to see what’s available in the soon-to-be-released J2SE 6.0 Mustang.
J2SE 6.0 started in July 2005 and has been in a Beta 2 stage for a number of months. It is nearing its expected release date of fall 2006. Part of what’s of interest with the 6.0 release is what’s not there. JSR-270 guidelines are working their way into J2SE6.
JSR-270 attempts to remove and transform some bloated rarely-used Java features into modular components that could be optionally used. What’s driving this is that many people feel that as Java has developed it has become more and more unwieldy.
Some examples of functionality that may be cut from the standard release of Java are MIDI instrument support and possibly CORBA. Reducing this kind of functionality has the benefit of shrinking the size of the minimum Java runtime environment download, although additional new features of the 6.0 release may cancel out any savings. This would be the first time that a new release of Java comes out where some features have actually been cut.
Other highlights of the 6.0 release include JVM performance improvements and an updated version of JDBC with some features to improve ease of use. The new version will also support the embedding of scripting languages like PHP and JavaScript, and some improvements to Swing UI building and the building of Web Services.
There’s not that much terribly new in this release. Smaller and faster are always good. Many people are already using some sort of simplifying wrapper layer around JDBC so that any minor usage improvements made to JDBC may largely go unseen. And we’re not doing any new development with Swing. So, from our perspective, J2SE 6.0 looks like it will be more like just another maintenance release, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
