The joint community survey on Java EE 8 by the Java EE Guardians and DZone ends September 7. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly suggest participating in the survey now.
The Context
For those unaware, the primary motivation for the survey is to make sure the right features make it into Java EE 8. After months of silent inactivity, Oracle has announced that it is committed to delivering Java EE 8 in time. While this is undoubtedly good news, a potential problem is that Oracle appears to wish to significantly shift the focus of Java EE 8 compared to the initially promised, highly community-driven scope. The best way to figure out if what Oracle seems to be proposing is the right thing to do is by asking your opinion on Java EE 8 scope through a survey.
You Will be Heard
The survey is deliberately kept brief, high-level and simple. There is also ample opportunity to provide your own comments. You should not underestimate the impact of the survey. Both the Java EE Guardians and DZone will ensure your voice is heard in every avenue possible including the JCP Executive Committee, the umbrella Java EE 8 JSR as well as individual JSRs like Servlet 4.
Some Intermediate Results
So far the survey has done quite well in the short time frame that it has been open. We already have about 600 input points, which is enough to draw some reasonable conclusions on what the community thinks about Java EE 8. However, with a bit of your help, it would be great to cross 1,000 input points for strong consensus based results we can move forward with.
We should all wait just a bit longer for the final results and analysis to be published on DZone in a few weeks. However I think it’s useful to share some initial observations on the input so far:
- The survey completion rate is 100% which shows how serious the folks that are participating are.
- Almost 70% said they were OK with follow up questions, which shows how engaged the folks that are participating are.
- There are a good number of very thoughtful comments from participants.
- The response is fairly predictable for items such as Servlet 4, the Security JSR, JSON, Java SE 8 alignment, JCache, NoSQL, etc.
- People don’t really mind EJB 3+ and don’t prioritize replacing EJB functionality with CDI quickly.
- A significant number of people want Java EE applications to be more configurable.
- A significant number of people want to wait a bit before too much standardization around reactive programming.
- Although opinion is clearly split on microservices, a significant number want to see things like uber-jars standardized.
- A significant number of people want Java EE to take a relatively conservative approach to standardization.
- A very large number of people would like to see the Java EE release frequency accelerated.
Some Final Thoughts
One of the things about Java EE pretty much every Java EE Guardian values is the fact that it is an open standard that has become more and more community driven over the years. This is why we all continue to believe in the JCP. While the JCP isn’t perfect, it is the best mechanism we have today to make sure community input is incorporated as a matter of required due process and transparency into a vendor-neutral technology we can all depend on in the long run. Despite the tough few months the Java EE community has had what we have quietly demonstrated through active engagement is that no one can control the fate of Java EE single-handedly – not even the steward.
I hope that is a powerful motivator for you to do your part and take a mere few minutes to fill out a very important and meaningful survey. It all begins and ends with you.