Java 11

Building JDK 11 Together–Oracle has released an interesting blog entry on the developer stats for Java 11. Interestingly 20% of fixes in Java 11 were committed by developers outside of Oracle, and 51 of them were by individuals rather than companies.

Manual on Java 11: One small step for the new Java release train, one giant leap for Java 8 users–JaxEnter talks to some Java experts on their thoughts about Java 11 compared to Java 8.

Java 12

JDK 12 roadmap: The new features coming to Java 12–You might be forgiven for thinking that Java 11 only came out like a week ago or so, but Infoworld has a list of features likely to appear in Java 12. The ones I'm particularly interested in is the switch expressions and raw string literals.

Project Valhalla

Value types, encapsulation, and uninitialized values–Brian Goetz posted to the OpenJDK mailing list to discuss a design issue they have with value types and default values. If you want to see how the sausagelanguage features are designed, check out the discussion.

Java spec changes for value types in L-World2–I'm sure you love nothing more than reading dry changes to dry language specification documents. If so, Oracle has got you covered. Enjoy reading all the technical details required to the JVM to make value types work.

Q-Types in L-World 10–Just when you're waiting for an article about Project Valhalla and three turn up at once. John Rose discusses Q-Values and how they differ from the L-Values we all know and love. What do you mean you don't know what L-Values are?

Entering the next phase of Project Valhalla–But wait, there's more. Brian Goetz has posted a status update on Project Valhalla.

Testing

Introducing Exemplar for Automated Samples Testing–The people behind Gradle have announced Exemplar for automated testing. Gradle uses this library to verify examples in docs and guides, and remove boilerplate from integration tests.

Requests for comments on Mockito 3 features–The guys over at Mockito have a call for comments on what you'd like to see in Mockito 3. If you have an opinion, head over there and let them know.

Tutorials

Persisting fast in database with JPA–Jerónimo López has published an article about the steps he took to improve the performance of bulk inserted data into MySQL and PostgreSQL with JPA. Given that he ended up with a 3000% improvement, you might want to check it out in case you're missing out on that sweet sweet inserts-per-second record.

Cloneable, a Java design gotcha–Nicolas Fränkel has a discussion about the weird design of Cloneable.

Java Lambda: Method Reference–DZone has a tutorial on using method references with lambdas. Well worth a read, as it can improve the readability of your code.

Using jlink to Build Java Runtimes for non-Modular Applications–jlink is the tool that allows you to create a custom JDK image that only includes the modules you need, reducing deployment size. A lot of people think you can only use it with a fully-modularised application, but Simon Ritter, from Azul, demonstrates how you can use it with any application.

Other news

Oracle Introduces Helidon – A Lightweight Java Microservices Framework–Oracle have announced Helidon, a new microservice framework.

Java 11 Released

JDK 11 General-Availability Release–This is the big news of the week. Java 11 has been released. The main developer facing changes are local type inference for lambda parameters, the HTTP client moving out of the incubator and the ability to run a single source code program. Along with lots of little API improvements throughout the JDK.

JDK 11 Release Notes–Where would we be without official release notes. If dry, technical updates is your thing, Oracle has got you covered. For everyone else, I recommend Benjamin Winterberg or Simon Ritter's guides to the API changes.

An Example-driven Guide to Java 11–Benjamin Winterberg has an excellent guide to some of the new features in Java 11, with examples. It's so good that there's no point in me writing a guide, because he's covered pretty much everything worth saying.

Java 11 and IntelliJ IDEA–Trisha Gee, over at Jetbrains, explains IntelliJ's support for the new features in Java 11. If you're an IntelliJ user, I recommend giving the article at least a quick browse.

Java 11 features videos–The official Java YouTube account has created a playlist of six videos demonstrating some of the new features in Java 11.

90 New Features (and APIs) in JDK 11–Simon Ritter from Azul lists all the API changes in Java 11. Many of them aren't life changing, but they do make things just that little bit easier. My favourites are String.repeat() and Predicate.not().

Oracle JDK Releases for Java 11 and Later–Oracle discusses the differences between the Oracle JDK and the OpenJDK build from Oracle. This is an important read for everyone looking to deploy on Java 11.

The future of Java and OpenJDK updates without Oracle support–Andrew Haley at Redhat announces that he intends to assume leadership of OpenJDK 8 and 11 once Oracle have moved on to Java 12. He's lead the community support of Java 6 and 7, so this is a continuation of that process. One of the important parts of this announcement is that he wants to see OpenJDK release official builds themselves once Oracle stops providing new builds. Whether that involves folding in AdoptOpenJDK or a brand new build effort from Redhat remains to be seen.

Installing OpenJDK 11 on Ubuntu 18.04 for real–If, like me, you were surprised to discover that the Ubuntu 18.04 openjdk-11-jdk package contains Java 10, Laszlo Csontos explains how to install the real Java 11 JVM while we wait for Ubuntu to release their official build.

Spring

R2DBC – Reactive Relational Database Connectivity–R2DBC was announced at SpringOne this week. It's one of several efforts to prove a fully asynchronous API for talking to SQL databases. It will make Spring's recent WebFlux reactive programming model more useful for applications using a SQL backend; currently only MongoDB is fully supported.

This Week in Spring – September 25th, 2018–Check out the Spring blog for your recent news in the Spring ecosystem.

What’s new in Spring Data Lovelace?–Spring has an article on the new features in the recently released release train for Spring Data. For me, I'm looking forward to the improved startup time for JPA repositories. If you're a Spring Boot user, you can expect all these goodies with next month's 5.1 release.

Spring Tools 4 GA released–The Spring project has announced the release of version 4 of their IDE plugins for Eclipse, Atom and Visual Studio Code. If you use one of these environments with Spring, this is a must for you.

GraalVM

Building a 22 Megabytes Microservice with Java, Javalin and GraalVM–Johannes Bruederl describes their experience with GraalVM to build a lightweight microservice. The future is looking very exciting for the microservice and Function As A Service space.

Native microservice in GraalVM–Roy van Rijn continues his articles about building microservices with GraalVM.

Other news

Get “Learn Java The Easy Way” for $1–The latest Humble Bundle includes Learn Java The Easy Way, so if you're new to Java, that might be a cheap way of learning the basics.

Free Java Production Support on Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack–Thanks to Azul, you can now deploy Java applications to Azure without additional support costs. Check out the DZone article, or Azul's press release for more information.

JavaFX links of the week, October 1–If JavaFX is your thing, Jonathan Giles has a number of news items from the last week.

Thread Pool Self-Induced Deadlocks– Tomasz Nurkiewicz has written an article about dead locks in thread pools and how to avoid them.

A Guide to Logging in Java–Have you ever wondered why there are so many options for logging in Java? Should you use Log4J, SLF4J or Logback? Well, Marco Behler has you covered with a comprehensive guide to the various options.

23 Guidelines For Writing Readable Code–Artur Śmiarowski has written an excellent article on how to write readable code, which I think most people can learn something from.

Proposed schedule for JDK 12–Mark Reinhold, Chief Ar­chi­tect of the Java Plat­form Group at Or­a­cle, has announced the proposed release schedule for Java 12. Spoiler: March 19th 2019.

What does it take for Java to compete in the serverless space?–JaxEnter talks to several Java experts about how the trend for "serverless" computing will impact Java in the future. GraalVM's AOT compiler and native binaries seem to be a big part of that future.

Oracle JDK Releases for Java 11 and Later–As we're getting closer to the Java 11 release, Oracle have posted a blog post discussing the differences between the Oracle JDK and OpenJDK releases.

On Writing Beautiful Tests–Emily Woods provides some excellent advice on writing clean and useful tests, with examples written with JUnit and Mockito.

What’s new in JUnit 5.3–It's been just a year since JUnit 5 was unleashed on the world. Last week, the third feature release was announced. Billy Korando provides a short introduction to all the new features, including the related news that Maven Surefire now supports Junit 5 natively.

Key Managers and Key Stores–Will Sargent has written about how the KeyManager and KeyStore work together. If you're interested in handling TLS certificates in a fine manner, I recommend reading his series of articles on the certificate framework in Java.