2013 has been a stellar year for both the Java EE and GlassFish Server communities. On June 12, Oracle and its partners announced the release of Java EE 7, which delivers on three major themes – HTML5, developer productivity, and meeting enterprise demands. The online event attracted over 10,000 views in the first two days!

During the online event, Oracle also announced the availability of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, the world's first Java EE 7 compatible application server. The primary role of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition has been, and continues to be, driving adoption of the latest release of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition. Oracle also announced the Java EE 7 SDK, which bundles GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, as a Java EE 7 learning aid. Last, Oracle publicly announced the Java EE 7 reference implementation based on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4. Java EE is a popular platform, as evidenced by the 20+ Java EE 6 compatible implementations available to choose from.

After the launch of Java EE 7 and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, we began planning the Java EE 8 roadmap, which was covered during the JavaOne Strategy Keynote. To summarize, there is a lot of interest in improving on HTML5 support, Cloud, and investigating NoSQL support. We received a lot of great feedback from the community and customers on what they would like to see in Java EE 8.

As we approached JavaOne 2013, we started planning the GlassFish Server roadmap. What we announced at JavaOne was that GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014. Here is an update to that roadmap.

• GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014
• We are planning updates as needed to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition, which is commercially unsupported
• As we head towards Java EE 8:
• The trunk will eventually transition to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 as a Java EE 8 implementation
• The Java EE 8 Reference Implementation will be derived from GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5. This replicates what has been done in past Java EE and GlassFish Server releases.
• Oracle will no longer release future major releases of Oracle GlassFish Server with commercial support – specifically Oracle GlassFish Server 4.x with commercial Java EE 7 support will not be released.
• Commercial Java EE 7 support will be provided from WebLogic Server.
• Oracle GlassFish Server will not be releasing a 4.x commercial version

Expanding on that last bullet, new and existing Oracle GlassFish Server 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy.

Oracle recommends that existing commercial Oracle GlassFish Server customers begin planning to move to Oracle WebLogic Server, which is a natural technical and license migration path forward:

• Applications developed to Java EE standards can be deployed to both GlassFish Server and Oracle WebLogic Server
• GlassFish Server and Oracle WebLogic Server have implementation-specific deployment descriptor interoperability (here and here).
• GlassFish Server 3.x and Oracle WebLogic Server share quite a bit of code, so there are quite a bit of configuration and (extended) feature similarities. Shared code includes JPA, JAX-RS, WebSockets (pre JSR 356 in both cases), CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT.
• Both Oracle GlassFish Server 3.x and Oracle WebLogic Server 12c support Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Coherence, Oracle Directory Server, Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Manager and are entitled to support for the underlying Oracle JDK.

To summarize, Oracle is committed to the future of Java EE.  Java EE 7 has been released and planning for Java EE 8 has begun. GlassFish Server Open Source Edition continues to be the strategic foundation for Java EE reference implementation going forward. And for developers, updates will be delivered as needed to continue to deliver a great developer experience for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. We are planning for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 as the foundation for the Java EE 8 reference implementation, as well as bundling GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 in a Java EE 8 SDK, which is the most popular distribution of GlassFish. This will allow GlassFish releases to be more focused on the Java EE platform and community-driven requirements. We continue to encourage community contributions, bug reports, participation on the GlassFish forum, etc. Going forward, Oracle WebLogic Server will be the single strategic commercially supported application server from Oracle.

Disclaimer: The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.