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Project Valhalla proposes to bring value types and specialized generics to Java. In this talk, Java Language Architect Brian Goetz offers some of the highlights of the progress and pitfalls of adding these features to the Java Language and VM.

More information:
Project Valhalla - http://openjdk.java.net/projects/valhalla/
Java 9 - http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ 

Congratulations to the new Java Champion David Blevins!

David is a member of the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of the OpenEJB (1999), Geronimo (2003), and TomEE (2011) projects.  He founded the company Tomitribe (2012), encouraging developers to contribute to the Open Source communities he created. He is a veteran of Open Source Java EE for both the implementation and definition of Java EE specifications for over 10 years in order to make Java EE as simple, testable and as light as Java SE. 

In this new article, JavaServer Faces (JSF) spec lead Ed Burns explains two kinds of model view controller (MVC) as part of the JSF framework. The article's goal is to show the continued commitment to JSF evolution and to clarify the complementary usages of these two view technologies.

The two kinds of MVC in question are UI component oriented MVC and action oriented MVC. This article first goes over these two different styles of MVC, then explains the rationale for filing a separate JSR for MVC 1.0 and explains how this new specification will relate to the next version of JSF. 

In this video, Brian Oliver (Oracle) and Greg Luck (Terracotta) share news on the progress of the long-awaited Java Caching Standard, to be finalized early in 2014, and discuss the decade-long JCP process behind this emerging Java specification. More information on the Java Caching Standard is available at JCP.org and https://github.com/jsr107.

Thanks to Architect Community Manager Bob Rhubart. You can view more OTN videos on the YouTube OracleTechNet Channel. 

Over at the Java SE demo booth, Oracle’s Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro, Senior Group Product Manager, briefly discussed JDK 7 and  JDK 8.

“People may not realize that we’ve recently added new functionality to JDK 7,” he said. “So with JDK 7 u40, we added Mission Control and Flight Recorder to the JDK, something we're very proud of. Flight recorder is a feature that works a little like the flight recorder on a plane; you leave it on and it doesn’t really impact your production. It simply runs, and if you encounter an issue, you can go back and discover what triggered it after the fact. It’s quite useful in debugging horrible problems that occur only in production that you cannot really catch when you’re developing because you need it to be going for 15 days with a slow memory leak, but you don’t want to have to reproduce that because it’s costly and you don’t know when it happens. With flight recorder you just leave it on, set a trigger, and when something goes bad, it helps you figure out what triggered that event.”

I asked him about Java SE 8, which is scheduled for release in March of 2014.

“If you want to play with it, go to https://jdk8.java.net/ and download the developer preview. We’d like you to first try your existing projects, which should work just fine. Then after that, you should start playing with the new features like lambda and JSR 310, the Date and Time API. Lambda is the biggest change to the developer programming model. We are very excited about this.”

Ed Burns, Consulting Member of Technical Staff, and Kinman Chung, Principle Member of Technical Staff, both at Oracle, presented a session on Monday in which they described new features in JSR 341, Expression Language (EL) 3.0. They discussed the APIs for the use of EL in standalone environments and EL syntax for new operators, plus lambda expressions, and support for collection objects, all the while offering copious code illustrations.

Burns remarked that he was pleased that Java Champion and JavaOne Rock Star Adam Bien had referred to EL 3.0 as “the hidden gem of Java EE”. “I don’t know how hidden it is,” said Burns, “but I think it’s a gem.”

He discussed the origins of EL, which has a long and active history in the Java platform. EL began in 2004 as part of the Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL 1.0), moved to JSP 2.0 in 2006, and became an independent specification with JSR 341 in 2011. It is used in JSF, CDI, and Avatar. Now, 9 years after its inception, it is an independent specification that is heavily used in JSF.   

Burns observed that the presence of EL is the key differentiator between Java server and non-java server stacks. “Java server-based web frameworks are likely to use EL,” said Burns. “When you show someone who is not familiar with EL how easy it is to move things together from disparate parts of your application, it’s very compelling.”

The most important feature that EL 3 brings is lambda expressions – developers do not have to wait until Java SE 8 is released. It all runs on Java EE 7, which requires Java SE 7 -- which means that it is currently available. Burns gave a brief discussion of lambda expressions, which basically behave like an anonymous function -- lambdas in EL are EL expressions. They offer full access to the EL environment within the body of the EL lambda expression, something not available from Java SE lambdas. “You won’t be able to refer to other EL things from a plain old SE lambda expression,” said Burns.

The goal of EL 3 is to provide greater expressive power for applications and to use it outside of Java EE. Burns and Chung provided an overview of collection operations and explained EL’s support for stand-alone environments. EL 3 is easy to use outside of Java EE and provides standard data structures: ELContext; ELResolvers; and local variable and function repositories.

They explained that it enables direct EL operations and has: EL expression evaluation; Bean definition; and Function definition. They emphasized that other key parts of Java EE can also be used standalone, such as: Bean Validation; Persistence (JPA); and Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI). They encouraged developers to consider the possibilities for cloud deployment in: Defining functions and variables and defining beans.

They spent the rest of the session illustrating their key points with a healthy dose of code.

Links and Downloads:
* JSR 341: http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=341
    Download spec and API javadocs

* Project home: https://java.net/projects/el-spec/
   Report spec bugs or RFE for el.next

* RI: https://java.net/projects/uel/
   Maven artifacts available from Maven Central
   Download source and report RI bugs

* Integrated in Glassfish 4.0: https://glassfish.java.net/

You can listen to this session in early October on Parleys.com.

by Timothy Beneke and Janice J. Heiss

In a festive room teeming with over 200 people, including many celebrated Java luminaries,
along with excellent food and drink, the 9th annual JCP Program Awards were handed out atop the majestic Hilton Hotel on Monday night. As the JCP states, “The Java Community Process (JCP) program celebrates success. Members of the community nominate worthy participants, Spec Leads, and Java Specification Requests (JSRs) in order to cheer on the hard work and creativity that produces ground-breaking results for the community and industry in the Java Standard Edition (SE), Java Enterprise Edition (EE), or Java Micro Edition (ME) platforms.”

The JCP added a new awards category this year for Adopt-a-JSR program participants, bringing the total to four: JCP Member/Participant of the Year, Outstanding Spec Lead, Most Significant JSR, and Outstanding Adopt-a-JSR Participant.

The room was full of good cheer, playful humor, a music band of Java developers, and enthusiastic appreciation of much that has been accomplished on behalf of Java technology in the previous year.

The nominees and winners in their respective categories were:

JCP Member/Participant of the Year

--Azul Systems, Gil Tene

--London Java Community (LJC), Ben Evans, Martijn Verburg, Richard Warburton, Graham Allan

--Mohamed Taman

The winner was Azul System’s Gil Tene. The JCP said, “Gil has worked diligently to provide clear advice on matters of Software Patents, IP and licensing that seeks to benefit both non-profits/individuals etc as well as organizations with vested commercial interests in Java. It's not easy delving into the depths of the legal aspects and the potential impacts of changes to the JCP, but with help from folks like Gil we're hopeful for a solid and fair outcome.”

Tene characterized his approach to the JCP as follows: “I represent Azul Systems on the JCP EC, but I try to apply an approach of ‘do the right thing first’ in my choices and positions. Coming from a small company that depends on Java and its ecosystem for its livelihood, I see my role as representing the interests of an entire sector of non-big-company commercial folks and of individual and professional developers out there, and providing some offset and balance to the normal mix of such boards.”

Outstanding Spec Lead

--Brian Goetz, Oracle

--Jitendra Kotamraju, Oracle

--Anatole Tresch, Credit Suisse

--Chris Vignola, IBM

The winner, Oracle’s Brian Goetz, was recognized, “For tirelessly working away at an incredibly complex JSR - JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language. From a community point of view, we've appreciated his willingness to listen and consider ideas from other technologists as well as spending time with groups of developers to understand the impact of Lambdas on Java.”

Goetz offered a statement in response to the award for his leadership in creating Lambda Expressions for the Java Language, which also won for most significant JSR. He said that lambdas, “represent a coordinated co-evolution of the Java SE platform, including the VM, language, and core libraries to provide developers with a powerful upgrade -- quite likely the largest ever -- to the Java SE programming model. We started this JSR in early 2010, but the topic of closures-in-Java had already been in play in the community for many years prior, and, of course, there was a broad diversity of opinions as to what direction, how far, and how fast to evolve the Java programming model. In the end, the most significant dimension of the challenge turned out to be: how do we integrate these new features in the language and libraries without them feeling grafted on after-the-fact. I think developers will find programming with this ‘new and improved Java’ to be a very pleasant experience -- I know I have.”

Most Significant JSR

--JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language

--JSR 344, JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.2

--JSR 352, Batch Applications for the Java Platform

--JSR 354, Money and Currency API

--JSR 355, JCP Executive Committee Merge

The winner, as previously mentioned, was JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language, which the JCP praised as follows:

“This brings Java kicking and screaming into the modern programming language age and is seen as a catalyst for the second age of Java. It's underlying discoveries and improvements with regards to Type Inference has also resulted in a stronger JVM for all.”

Spec lead Brian Goetz, in picking up the award, remarked, “This is something we’ve been working on for three-and-a-half-years and it’s nice to be looking at it through the rear-view mirror.”

Outstanding Adopt-a-JSR Participant

--BeJUG, Johan Vos

--CeJUG, Helio Frota, Hildeberto Mendonça

--JUG Chennai, Rajmahendra (Raj) Hegde

--Morocco JUG and EGJUG, Mohamed Taman, Faissal Boutaounte

The winner was Morocco JUG and EGJUG, Mohamed Taman, and Faissal Boutaounte, who were praised, “For adopting JSR 339, JAX-RS 2.0 specification, along with many other JSRs. One JIRA issue filed by Morocco JUG on JSR 339 was classified as a ‘release-stopper’. A quick JIRA search using the ‘adoptajsr’ tag shows that most of the JIRA issues have been created by MoroccoJUG members. Several presentations and source code have been organized by these groups. Mohamed presented sessions about the upcoming technologies to widen the range of users in the future, especially Java EE 7 JSRs and spreading of community progress and contributions that make us encouraged to participate. Mohamed sent a clear message that Africa is here and is full of talented people who are willing to take it to the next level. Mohamed was responsible for translating an Arabic Adopt-s-JSR web page to allow more Arabs to participate.”

Taman said that, “Currently, I hold two positions, one as a Business Solutions Systems Architect and design supervisor and Java Team leader, at a big financial services company in Egypt, which affects all the country by building solutions affecting Egyptians every day, by providing more facilities for businesses and enhancing the economy… I am passionate about Java. I really love it and have fun coding, and love seeing it grow, day by day, as if it were my kid.”

The Annual Java Community Process Program Awards at  JavaOne is an event and party not to be missed!

The Java Community Process