Oracle today released version 3.3 of the Java ME platform, designed to spread the usefulness of the Java language into the embedded systems market. It was just one of a series of updates across Oracle’s product lines that occurred this month, as the company began rolling out the 12c versions of its database, frameworks, tools and platforms.

Java ME version 3.3 is primarily focused on adding support for new platforms. This release actually includes a port of Java ME that runs on the Raspberry Pi, but the real meat of the cross-platform support comes in the form of the Oracle Java Platform Integrator program.

Peter Utzschneider, vice president of product management at Oracle, said that “The Oracle Java Platform Integrator program enables partners to either do more ports of Java ME embedded themselves, or to do value-add on top of Java Embedded. They could build a function API for healthcare and ship a custom binary for that industry.”

Utzschneider said that the Oracle Java Platform Integration program is tied to an “encoding layer that makes it easier for people to pick up a Java ME reference implementation and port it to a different chipset. The program is a way to expand the aperture of people and partners who have access to the market.”

Oracle’s push into 12c will culminate at its Oracle OpenWorld conference in September in San Francisco. Until then, developers can test-drive 12c-focused versions of JDeveloper, the Oracle Application Developer Framework (ADF), and the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. NetBeans was also updated.

For developers, the 12c updates mean that all three IDE choices offered by Oracle now support the 12c Oracle environment.

Bill Pataky, vice president of product management for tools and frameworks at Oracle, said, “We’ve refreshed our tool offering to reflect the updating infrastructure Oracle Fusion Middleware brings to the table.”

What’s in it for cloud and mobile?
Shay Shmeltzer, senior group manager at Oracle, said that the 12c editions of JDeveloper, NetBeans, the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, and ADF all include benefits for both mobile and cloud developers.

ADF added numerous new components for generating applications. Automated code is included to generate timelines and reports, and to cut applications down to iOS’ screen size.

Said Shmeltzer, “One very important area for us is the ADF Faces, which is our solution for building rich Web interfaces, and for getting those to mobile devices and tablets. It includes location support, and we can run on iOS and Android, using HTML5 renderings, and thanks to improvement in the screening capabilities.”

JDeveloper received the most holistic updates, as it gained core support for Git and better support for Maven. This Maven support is extended to WebLogic, thus allowing for deployments to conform more easily to the version and dependency management imposed by a Maven workflow. JDeveloper also benefited from the collaborations inside Oracle’s IDE team, as it now includes memory-monitoring code taken directly from NetBeans.

While NetBeans and JDeveloper are targeted at different communities, Oracle has been able to share development work between the two IDEs and Eclipse. Said Pataky, “Since the Sun acquisition, the NetBeans team has reported to the same group here: the Java development tools organization within Oracle. I run product management for all three tools. Each have their own role within the ecosystem.”

And while each has its own role, they will all begin sharing more code, he said. “There are other features, like the Java C compiler, that are now shared because NetBeans is such a high-quality tool, it’s easy for us to leverage it in one IDE and bring it to the other. They [the NetBeans developers] are out there pushing the limits on the high-performance aspects of the language, and we’re able to leverage that in JDeveloper itself. We are going to leverage things that have to change in both tools.”