Will Java EE 8 meet its schedule?

What's currently the scope of Java EE 8?

Last September, Oracle revealed the changed plans for Java EE 8 during the JavaOne conference: to be more relevant with the currently ongoing 'Cloud' trend, and with an ambitious time schedule that includes a final release in the second half of 2017 (yes, that's this year!). It was communicated as a proposal, and the final decision would not be taken before a new Community Survey was kept. When the results came in late December (details here), the resemblance with the proposed changes was striking...

In short, this is what it boiled down to:

• Servlet 4.0, JAX-RS 2.1, JSON-B 1.0 en JSON-P 1.1 received enough votes to remain in the planning unchanged
• JSF 2.3, CDI 2.0 and the late-to-the-party Bean Validation 2.0 were not part of the technologies that were surveyed, but it was decided that enough progress was made to keep them in
• In the results, support for OAuth and OpenID Connect was relatively high in demand, but these will not be included in Java EE 8 in order not to jeopardize the planning; Security API 1.0 is in, however, but with a different scope
• Management 2.0 and JMS 2.1 were deemed irrelevant, so these updates were withdrawn, and the existing versions are kept
• MVC 1.0 scored rather low as well, and will be transferred to the community as a 'stand-alone component'
• Even though they were introduced/proposed at JavaOne, Configuration en Health Checking will be postponed to another version as well, to keep the schedule feasible

Is the development of the various JSRs on track?

During the half year since JavaOne, there could clearly be more activity detected than in the period before that, when work seemed all but abandoned for most JSRs. But is this sufficient to meet the deadline? Not a single 'final draft' is published, so none of the standards will be finished early.
JSON-B seems to be in the best shape, the ballot for the 'public review' was passed successfully in August. JSON-P, JSF and CDI have just entered the 'public review' period, and the remaining five are at some point of the 'early drafts' stage.

I tried to plot the various JSRs and their 'position' regarding the JCP process:

It seems that there is plenty of work to be done to make sure that all of the nine JSRs that make up Java EE 8 will be ready for a 'final release' before the end of the year.

So, if you're interested in helping out, go to your local JUG and join their Adopt-a-JSR program! If such a program is not in place yet, help them get one started!

Oh, and if you happen to be living in the Netherlands: contact us at jcp@nljug.org, and we'll assist you in getting your contributions where they count!