Java EE 5 Development Waiting on Vendors

twofish writes "Java EE 5 was a major update and most of the major application server vendors do not yet have compliant versions released. Dr. Dobb's reports that this is delaying most solution providers from developing products based on it, as their customers are not ready for them. However there is some significant movement among the big players. Among the major vendors, Sun has released support, WebLogic is close with JBoss following soon after. Oracle has not announced a road map and IBM is lagging significantly behind, with full support not due until 2008."

Comments

Not that big a deal.

[MythMoth]

Companies in the market for significant numbers of Java EE application servers and their attendant support contracts are rarely in a hurry to adopt the newest and latest technologies. Companies I work with usually lag at least a major revision - sometimes two - behind the bleeding edge.

Re:If Java 1.4 works for you....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the main reason to switch to 1.6 is that earlier versions won't run under Vista. (Of course, that assumes you're running Vista in the first place...)

As for Java 1.5, the main reason to switch to it is for generics which are very useful server-side. Of course, there's no technical reason that generics couldn't be backported to 1.4, but Sun refuses to allow code with generics to generate Java 1.4-compatible bytecode, so if you want generics, you're stuck with 1.5. (Despite the fact that generics are implemented via what's effectively a compiler preprocessor.)

But other than supporting Vista, I know of no reason to upgrade to 1.6. As far as I can tell, it offers nothing that anyone would want. (The only major upgrade is the addition of various scripting libraries, in yet another Sun library-bloat move. There's no reason Java should require 500MB, but that's the size of my Java directory.)

Re:It's just too damn complex.

[MythMoth]

The architecture of Java 5 EE is unnecessarily complex.

This usually translates as "I don't understand all of the Java features - therefore it must be BAD.

No. Java is necessarily complex. The features aren't their for Sun's entertainment - they're there because certain customers need and use them. It's not the most appropriate environment to build a "little" website, but that doesn't make it "unnecessarily" complex when building big ones.

Re:IBM and Oracle

[Tim C]

Then there is Oracle...gads..when Microsoft finally gets SQLServer up to speed (and they will...they have a 20 year history of turning crap into gold)...Oracle is going to be standing out in the weeds wondering what the hell happened

What exactly does MS SQL Server and Oracle's RDBMS have to do with J2EE 5 and Oracle's Application server? You may or may not be right about SQL Server eventually supplanting Oracle as the big name RDBMS, but regardless, that's not what's being discussed here. The application server is completely separate from the DB server.

but having to trust IBM and Oracle to keep up is a major problem, without them showing REAL plans: I am left with Sun driving the bus ?

Hardly; JBoss and BEA (producers of WebLogic) have already released compliant servers. Given that I've only heard bad things about WebSphere (or indeed much of IBM's technology stack), I'm really not too concerned.

well we all know what can happen when you let geeks (and I am one) run free, then don't execute on what they make

What tends to happen in my experience is that they get it more or less good enough for their own use, then move on to the next thing that captures their imagination. That's all well and good, but someone needs to put in the remaining, tedious 80% of the effort to do all the boring tidying up, polishing, documentation, possibly accreditation, etc.

Re:It's just too damn complex.

[kevin_conaway]

No, Java is often unnecessarily complex. Most languages get by with arrays; Java has arrays, Arrays, Vectors, and ArrayLists, all with subtly different APIs. Ditto Hashtable and HashMap. Mostly this explosion of APIs has happened because Sun hasn't thought through the design before adding stuff to the language.

The differences you describe are there for concurrency. A Vector is a thread-safe List. A Hashtable is a thread-safe Map.

Futhermore, you shouldn't be programming to concrete implementations like Vector, ArrayList or HashMap anyway. You should be programming to interfaces like List or Map so that implementation differences don't matter.

...and Vendors Waiting On Customers

[kimanaw]

I'm sure the /. ubergeeks will reel off a dozen reasons to upgrade to EE 5, but my customers are still beating up their vendors for forcing them to move to JDK 1.4, and practically begging me to continue supporting JDK 1.3/J2EE 1.3. Making such upgrades costs money, and unless the end user's core business (which usually is not about building out app servers) sees a real ROI in upgrading, its not likely to happen...unless/until vendors force them kicking and screaming to upgrade.

I.e., if it ain't broke, don't fix it.