Java EE 7 work focusing on the cloud

Work on the next enterprise edition of Java is proceeding at Oracle, with the company eyeing improvements for cloud computing, REST Web services, and other capabilities, an Oracle representative confirmed on Friday.

Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition) 7 is due in 2012. Capabilities for deploying cloud computing applications and infrastructures will be key to the upgrade. "[Version 7] will be the basis for how to make Java EE relevant for the cloud," said Oracle’s Ajay Patel, vice president of product management, in a webcast last week.

The upgrade also will feature significant developments geared to JavaServer Faces, for building server-side user interfaces; the Web tier, Java persistence; and JAX-RS (Java API for RESTful Web Services), according to an Oracle Java team blog post. Java EE builds on Java SE (Java Platform, Standard Edition) and is geared to enterprise-level Java computing. The Glassfish application server has served as a reference implementation of Java EE. Modularity was cited as a goal for Java EE 7 at last fall’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco. See more..