IBM i (AS400) updates on new Java releases / Java 7

Question

Since Java 7 is comming I was wondering how much time it would take to have the IBM JVM running Java 7 on IBM i systems? (AS400)

I was searching IBM's site to find some roadmap but didn't find anything yet. Do you have past experience on the older java release?

Answer 1

IBM cannot even start development until the Java Community Process has published the Java 7 specification. And so far, Oracle hasn't even started the specification process. In fact, there isn't even a roadmap for when the specification process might start.

Also, some of Oracle's competitors fear that Oracle might not start the specification process until after they have released a final version of JDK7, thus giving Oracle a 1–3 year head start. (Actually, it was Oracle who accused Sun of that tactic. In general, Oracle sided with IBM and Apache against Sun in the quest for more democracy, transparency and fairness in the JCP. It remains to be seen how committed they are now that they are the ones benefiting from the broken process.)

Answer 2

It seems like the iSeries JVMs typically lag behind Sun's by 12 - 24 months.

Answer 3

The process has been sped up due to the transition to the AIX J9 JVM instead of using the Classic JVM which compiled to MI-code. This requires less work, and hence can be done faster.

For now, just be extremely happy that you even have Java 6. We develop for V5R3 where the latest version is Java 5.

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EDIT 2013-08-01: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/ mentions that Java 7 can be downloaded from the Entitled Software Support Site. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas1d588abe7e2f3e641862579d4007145a9 mentions that Java 7 is only supported on V7R1.