Harmony has been the subject of years of controversy, with Sun and then Oracle unable to reach agreement with the Apache Software Foundation about terms of a technology compatibility kit for Harmony to verify its compliance with Java standards. Reinhold declined to comment on Wednesday when asked if there would be any break forthcoming in that stalemate.

Reinhold reiterated plans for the upcoming and also noted ambitions beyond these releases. Due in July, Java Development Kit 7, a component of the Java 7 platform, will focus on small language improvements to boost productivity via Project Coin. Version 7 also features dynamic language capabilities, new I/O APIs, and an asynchronous API.

Java 8, planned for late-2012, is set to offer a more modular approach to Java, including the ability to work with OSGi, although OSGi would be the modular technology used within Java 8. "I don't think [OSGi is] a very good fit for Java developers," Reinhold said. For Java 9 and possibly later releases, Oracle is pondering accommodations for multi-core processors, NUMA, multi-tenancy, and hypervisor integration.

Also at EclipseCon on Wednesday, Oracle's Markus Hirt, an architect, team lead and engineering manager for the JRockit Mission Control team, updated attendees on the company's HotRockit project for Java Virtual Machine convergence. The project aims to converge the HotSpot Java Virtual Machine Oracle acquired when it bought Sun and the JRockit VM Oracle took charge of when it bought BEA Systems. HotRockit, or whatever the merged VM is eventually called, will feature JRockit's flight recorder, for recording events, and its deterministic garbage collection. JRockit will not be maintained as a separate product once the merger is complete, Hirt said. Some of the VM effort will make its way into the OpenJDK project.