December 07, 2009, 3:44 PM — Sun Microsystems, which has been pretty much silent in recent months while awaiting its merger with Oracle, will open up on Thursday about the latest developments in its Java technologies.
The company plans a teleconference with the media and analyst to discuss Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (EE) 6, and other software. The Java EE 6 specification was approved by the Java Community Process last week and Sun's implementation of the specification, the pre-eminent implementation of Java, is anticipated this month.
[ At the JavaOne conference earlier this year, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison pledged a commitment to Java technologies. ]
"Sun executives will provide in-depth details around the new releases of Java EE 6, Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3, and NetBeans 6.8. The call will also cover the larger significance of the three product announcements as well as how the new software releases will impact the worldwide Java community," according to Sun's media bulletin on Monday morning.
Sun officials scheduled to be on the call include Tom Kincaid, executive director of the Sun application platform; Kevin Schmidt, director of product management and marketing in the application platform organization, and David Folk, director of developer tools engineering.
Java EE 6 features capabilities such as Web profile, for Web developers. Accommodation for dynamic languages and REST (Representational State Transfer) are in the specification as well.
The NetBeans 6.8 IDE is due to ship soon. A release candidate already is available. Version 6.8 features support for Java EE 6, with improved support for the JavaServer Faces 2.0 specification and Facelets. Improvements also are featured for the editor and integration with Ruby, Groovy and C/C++ projects. Other highlights include PHP 5.3 support and accommodations for the Maven build manager for Java projects.
GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 has been set to feature a modular OSGi architecture and Java EE 6 backing.
Sun is in the process of being acquired by Oracle via a $7.4 billion merger. But that process has been held up over issues the European Union has had with Oracle's potential ownership of the open source MySQL database, which currently is Sun property.
While Oracle has expressed its commitment to Java and GlassFish, questions have remained about Oracle's commitment to NetBeans, since the company already has endorsed other technologies in the same product spaces. GlassFish, however, also competes with the existing Oracle WebLogic application server.
This story, "Sun to shed light on latest Java technologies," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in application development at InfoWorld.com.
