Showing posts with label Oracle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oracle. Show all posts

17 September 2024

Oracle wants to use AI for mass surveillance

 Larry Elisson, Executive Chairman of Oracle, said the company is going all in on using AI fro mass surveillance, the register reports. At he Q&A session of the 2024 financial analyst meeting Elisson said:

  • Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting,
  • Drones could be used to pursue police suspects instead of relying on patrol vehicle chases.
  • Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, If there's a problem AI will report that problem to the appropriate person.

14 September 2021

Java 17 LTS released

 Oracle released Java 17 today.

While there are some technical goodies, the most important news is that Oracle stops the licensing nonsense it entered in with the previous LTS release (Java 11).

Updates will remain available from Oracle for three years, which is one year after the next LTS (Java 23).

Oracle Java is again free for production use as well.

It remains to be seen if this will lure back devs from the AdoptOpenJdk/Adoptium distributions.

From a technical point of view Sealed classes are introduced, giving a more fine grained (if cumbersome) control over which classes may inherit from a class/interface.

Some deprectations for removal of some old friends as well: Security Manager and the applet API, stars of the original Java buzz.


20 September 2020

TikTok deal with Oracle

Part of the global activities of TikTok will be sold to Oracle and other investors.
Oracle will also run the TikTok US infrastructure.
Seems like Larry Ellison has invested his money wisely.

19 September 2020

Windows: which java version do I use?

 On windows oracle java uses quite a complicated way to find the java executable.

> echo %PATH%
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;...

Starting from javapath it uses quite a complex mechanism, which well explained in this stackoverflow answer.

Ultimately the windows registry is used, like I also explained earlier.

When you frequently have to hop from one Java version to another, it is a good idea to store the path to your java binaries in the JAVA_HOME environment variable and prepend that to your windows path.

11 August 2019

JDK distributions

Since Java 11 Oracle has changed the licensing of its Java SE distribution: it is no longer free for commercial use. Oracle's OpenJDK is still free for commercial use. It has the same functionality (although some tools may be missing) but does not get updates once the next version is out (after 6 months). The community, led by RedHat is however updating LTS (Long Term Support) java distributions (8, 11...). A good distribution is AdoptOpenJDK. Several other companies are offering distributions and paid support. You can find a good summary of this on the JetBrains blog.

If you want to download a prebuilt javadoc for local use, you currently have to download it from the oracle Java SE distribution.

AdoptOpenJDK gives you a choice between Oracle's HotSpot VM and OpenJ9 VM, an Eclipse incubator project, based on VM code donated by IBM.

Differences between AdoptOpenJDK en Oracle OpenJDK are  summarized in the table below:

Oracle JDK 8 proprietary component Alternative component OpenJDK 8 OpenJDK 11
Java Web Start IcedTea-Web yes no
JavaFX OpenJFX no no (coming soon)
T2K font rendering engine Freetype yes yes
Monotype Lucida fonts Relicensed Lucida fonts no (coming soon) no (coming soon)
Ductus 2D renderer Pisces/Marlin yes (Pisces) yes (Marlin)
Kodac Color Matching System (KCMS) library LCMS yes yes
SNMP Use JMX (or SNMP4J) yes (not bundled) yes (not bundled)
Sound drivers Use Windows sound drivers yes (not bundled) yes (not bundled)
Java Flight Recorder (JFR) Java Flight Recorder no (coming soon) yes
Java Mission Control (JMC) Use JDK Mission Control no (coming soon) no (coming soon)

21 March 2018

Java 10 released, codename "boring"

With a release 10, you'd expect some jubilee fanfare and marketing blitz. At least they could have waited one day to launch at march 21 for spring (maybe that term is too much associated with another java ecosystem).
But it's axe time for Java at Oracle, so this is the most under cover release ever. At the java SE download page you have to dig deep for anything coming near to a decent what's new presentation.
To be fair, this is also related to increased release frequency that was introduced for Java. Like many platforms these days, java will be released on fixed time points with whatever is ready at that moment. The first release in such a system is always a bit underwhelming, think of EcmaScript 2016, for example.

The one big addition in Java 10 is the introduction of var declarations for local variables. If the compiler can infer the type of a local variable from the initialisatioin, you don't have to type it anymore. So Java 9 code

  ArrayList<String>list = new ArrayList<>();   
  Stream<String> stream = list.stream(); 
can in Java 10 be written as 
  var list = new ArrayList<String>();
  var stream = list.stream();
Always takes a bit of getting used to, but I think the older syntax is clearer. You'll start seeing plenty of code, where the classes being used are not clear for somebody that is less familiar with the API being used. They will not even be present in the import statements.

Some other enhancements:
  • inclusion of root CA certificate
  • Graal compiler as an experimental option

We mentioned axe time: so with this release stuff is effectively getting removed and being marked for removal. One remarkable removal is the desktop policytool. It is replaced by your favourite file editor.

19 March 2018

Oracle will remove Java FX from JDK

Oracle released a Java Client Roadmap Update.
Starting with JDK 11 Oracle plans to remove its little used Java FX desktop libraries from the JDK. Java FX will live on in the OpenJFX, which was created in 2011.
Java Webstart will also be removed from JDK 11.
Swing and AWT remain part of JDK 11.
Just as it handed over Java EE to Eclipse, it is looking to transfer  stewardship of Java FX, Swing and AWT to another party.
With java 9's project Jigsaw, Java became a modular system, making a separation of this part of Java easier.
As a consequence the JDK will become leaner and Oracle hopes to evolve it at a faster pace in the future.

Java EE becomes Jakarta EE

With the move of Java Enterprise edition from Oracle to the Eclipse foundation, Oracle did not transfer the right to use the Java brand.
The reference implementation will still be Glassfish, which now becomes Eclipse Glassfish.
The standard governance will move from JCP to the Eclipse EE.next  Working Group.

22 November 2017

Oracle discontinuing Java Tutorials?

The long running and excellent Java Tutorials by Oracle (and earlier Sun) now contain this message:

The Java Tutorials have been written for JDK 8. Examples and practices described in this page don't take advantage of improvements introduced in later releases.
This seems to indicate that the Java Tutorials won't be updated anymore for recent JDK releases.
Just another sign of Oracle's disinvestment from Java.

11 October 2017

Oracle handing over java products and standards

Oracle is reducing its Java costs and commitment. The latest platform releases (Java SE 9 and Java EE 8) were surprisingly low key.
With the releases out of the door, Oracle is drastically reducing its teams and handing over control of related products.

Given that the EE spec moves to an organisation whose main product is a Java IDE, Apache seems a second choice for Netbeans.

9 November 2016

Oracle and ANSI SQL

ISO SQL is a rather weak standard.
First you can not get it unless you pay for it, which is not a good thing if you want your standard to be succesful. You can find draft versions of the latest SQL 2011 on the web however.
Second there is no official independent compliance verification.

Appendix B of the Oracle Database SQL language reference gives a detailed overview of Oracle standard compliance.

In oracle you can set the FLAGGER variable, to verify whether your command complies with the standard. It only checks compliance with the ISO SQL/92 standard though:


Finally, here's a neat overview of compatibility of SQL statements for the most popular databases.

16 August 2016

Oracle Virtual box extensions install fails with VERR_ACCESS_DENIED due to McAfee

Installing Virtual Box 5.1.2 extensions on windows 10 failed with this error:

VBoxExtPackHelperApp.exe: error: Failed to rename the temporary directory to the final one: VERR_ACCESS_DENIED ('D:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\ExtensionPacks\Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-_-inst-4288' -&gt; 'D:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\ExtensionPacks\Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack')
After seeing several people on the net pointing to the antivirus, I disabled the McAfee real time virus scanning that came for 1 year with my Dell PC:
  1. Right click System Tray McAffee LiveSafeIcon
  2. Change Settings > Real Time Scanning
  3. Turn off
    1. Leave In 15 minutes
Then I reran the extensions installer and all went well.

12 August 2016

Oracle SQLDeveloper connection fails / TNS listener not starting

I had a problem today connecting to my Oracle express database from SQL Developer on Windows 10 with the error: The network adapter could not establish the connection.
Connection did work from SQL*PLUS (Run SQL Command line).
The OracleXETNSListener service was stopped in my services and restarting it did not work.
Turns out the problem was that I changed my computer name yesterday and the service does not use localhost, but the computername.
To solve this I changed the hostname in these files:
%ORACLE_HOME%\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\network\ADMIN\listener.ora
%ORACLE_HOME%\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\network\ADMIN\tnsnames.ora
Stopped/started the database and everything's fine.

Saw these alternate solutions (did not test):
solution 1: Add the old hostname to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
solution 2:

SQL> alter system set LOCAL_LISTENER='(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=localhost)(PORT=1521))' scope=both;
SQL> alter system register;


13 February 2016

Oracle SQL info

  • Oracle 11g SQL reference
  • SQL developer keboard shortcuts
    •  Tools>preferences>shortcut keys
    • CTRL+SHIFT+D: copy current line down
  • Changing the password
    •  change it in the database
alter user user_name identified by "new_password" replace "old_password"

27 December 2015

Oracle 1-character constraint_type codes


code description
C check
not null
P primary key
U unique
Rreferential, foreign key
v view with check
o read only on view

Oracle reference documentation

22 November 2014

Customer Journey

Slightly modified version of Oracle Customer Journey to emphasize the shift to "pay as you go" consumption from a presentation by Matthew Banks:


28 July 2014

Forrester on Digital Experience Delivery platforms

Forrester published a report on products supporting the digital customer experience life cycle. The picture below shows how Oracle defines this process:


Currently no product supports the entire cycle. Products partially supporting the cycle come from the Web Content Management and E-commerce market segments. Even if vendors have products supporting the entire cycle, the integration is not seamless.

Hybris and Adobe are seen as  strategic leaders. They are also partners.
Adobe, Hybris, SDL and Sitecore have the strongest offerings.
Oracle has the largest installed base but comes out remarkably weak in the evaluation, probably because it did not participate in this evaluation.

7 September 2012

Oracle drops Java EE7 out of the cloud

Cloud support (PaaS) was Oracle's main focus for Java EE7.
Oracle has now proposed to the expert group to remove cloud support from Java EE7 in order to keep the planned release schedule.
Expert group members react positively.
I just don't know: dropping your main feature to reach your deadline?
We delivered your car on time, Sir (but the engine's missing).

18 March 2012

NetBeans 7 new features (edit)

NetBeans 7 is approved for release now. Here's a list of new features
  • Remote glassfish interaction
  • Java 7 support
    • Maven 3 support
    • HTML 5 support
    • JSON formatter
    • Git natively integrated
    • JUnit is now an unbundled plugin (Oracle legal had problems with the old CPL license)
    • easy JPA 2 metamodel generation
    The netbeans 7/Java 7/Glassfish 3.1 combination is still a bit flaky though.