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. .

Initial Java Specification Requests pertaining to Java EE 7 were approved by the Java Community Process in January, including JSR 338, for Java Persistence API 2.1, and JSR 339, for JAX-RS 2.0. JPA is designed for use with Java EE and SE and deals with the way relational data is mapped to Java objects and the way the objects are stored in a relational database for access at a later time. Capabilities like multi-tenancy and additional mapping for metadata are being considered for JPA 2.1. JAX-RS provides an API for building Web services using the REST architecture. Key features of the new JSR include a Client API, improved support for URIs, and a Model-View-Controller architecture.

Final release of the two JSRs is planned for 2012. Other JSRs pertaining to Java EE 7 will be submitted soon. Aside from Java EE, version 2.0 of JavaFX, a rich media platform based on Java, is due this summer with such capabilities as a high-performance graphics engine and dynamic language capabilities, Patel said.