Servoy and the Future of Java

[sean]

Hi Servoy Community,

Oracle has made some announcements regarding the Java roadmap. And we have seen several inquiries about the future of Java and Servoy.

We have published an article containing information on how this affects Servoy applications.

You can reply to this forum post for discussion and questions.

Thanks

[Bernd.N]

Hi Sean,
thank you very much for the PDF that brings some light on this topic.

A) When someone runs Servoy 7 and smart client and wants to stick to that for the next two years, what should he do?
Something like this?
(1) Tell the customers who run Servoy smart client to license Oracle Java 8 comercially, in order to be able to get security updates in the next two years
(2) Get an Oracle Java 8 comercially license for the own developer desktops

B) Is there any need for a Servoy 7 fan to switch to Java 11 in the near future?

C) When switching to Java 11, I understand you can no longer use Servoy 7 but you have to migrate to Servoy 8?

[swingman]

Hi Bernd,

In your situation I would try to persuade my clients to upgrade to 8.x Smart Client. I use a lot of table-events and found that in 8.x I had to write code to ensure that they don't cause circular updates. These changes are needed both for Smart Client and NG Client.

I converted a large, old, but well-maintained system in 6 weeks from start of conversion to final deploy. That included time for the client to do their testing.
One time-waster was that I did not realise I needed to up the memory on the Tomcat server, so we had some bugs related to low-memory.

Before you set up the new CSS it can look quite bad, but the end result is a system which looks 98% the same as the Smart Client system, the NG system actually has cleaner, tidier, layouts.

And it loads much faster, particularly when working remotely. So I have a bunch of happy users and no more Java issues on the client-side.

I'm hoping to get go-ahead to convert to NG from my other clients soon, I'm kind of finished with the Smart Client. An old friend has been superseded...

Christian

[Bernd.N]

Hi Christian,
thanks a lot for sharing your experience, though it is not my client who needs to be persuaded but myself.

Our situation is that I do not see a necessity to upgrade at the moment only because Oracle charges money now.
Because I consider it a huge project where a lot can go wrong, while the current system runs perfectly.

A necessity where I would consider to upgrade is when Oracle says its end of life for Java 8 and there are no more security updates.
But to my knowledge that is not yet the case.

[mboegem]

Hi Sean,

thank you for this clarification.

One question still:
How is Java support compared to smart-clients of the different Servoy versions 7.4.x to 8.3x?
Is this the same as the Servoy Developer Version overview?

[rodney]

Hi Sean

This is a much worse outcome for the smart client than expected.

No free security updates to JRE 8 to help with the transition timeframe
No JRE 11 Only JDK 11
An OpenJDK 11 that our end users cannot install themselves

We had expected that all JRE versions would be free only the JDK 11+ would need to be licenced.

We use the table tree component in our smart client application and push it to its limits, not sure if there is a similar standard component for this in NG client.

Rod Siebenhausen
Director - Aerotrack Systems

[Joas]

It surprises me that the Electron client isn't mentioned anywhere here. Is this still seen as the successor of the smartclient when connecting to local devices?

I'm currently planning to do some projects with it, but it worries me a bit that I haven't heared any electron-news lately and the last commit to the Servoy/electron project is 5 months ago.

[sean]

Hi Rodney,

I understand your disappointment. Long-term, Oracle's decision is an unfortunate outcome for the Smart Client.

However keep in mind that end-of-updates for Java 8 is not a total cliff in January. From a security point of view, Java is not opening sockets, open to external attacks and should be secure and stable for a while to come. (Many of our customers run older versions of Java)

The long term solution probably involves making a runtime image via JLink and a custom installer that does things to make jars more "clickable" like setting system vars and registry keys.
We are researching this.

Regarding the tree bean, there is an equivalent web component for NG client.

Also, if you have considered upgrading to NG Client, please checkout this webinar on the topic.

[sean]

Hi Joas,

Yes, we are still pursuing the (Electron-based) NG Desktop client for Servoy as part of our strategy for 2019.
We don't have any announcements at the moment, but still see this as the best way to deliver great applications having desktop integrations.

We are looking for projects and customers to engage with to do this properly. Please contact me privately if you have a project to discuss.

Thanks!

[Joas]

That is good to hear. I'll get in touch shortly.

[lwjwillemsen]

Free Java 8 updates are soon to end.
I think Servoy application server still needs Java so please a short term solution from Servoy (bundled openjdk11, wrapper.dll, etc. ?) or
a check list for starting Servoy Application Server through Windows service on a Windows server.

Regards,

[jcompagner]

here: https://adoptopenjdk.net/ you can download the java vm you want to use at your server.

The future is just having a tomcat (or any other servlet container) installed at your server and you deploy servoy on top of that. (the application server itself will go away, is not even supported at all for NGClient)
So the setup for a server will be:

Install a java from https://adoptopenjdk.net/
Install Tomcat (that includes also services for windows if needed)
Deploy Servoy generated WAR on top of that tomcat.

For a Developer installer we currently also need a Java 8+ 64 bit from: https://adoptopenjdk.net/
But we are looking into to make that a bit more easy so you just get a self (extracting) zip that you can just unzip in a dir to your liking that includes already a Java 11.x 64 bit.
(so this is the zip that is the result of a default installation so with the bundles postgresql and no shortcut creation.
So installation wise this is way quicker (just unzip) and easier to use (no problems with having to install java or having the right java (java 8+ 64 bit, so no java 7/8 32 bit).
The only thing that is missing in that install is shortcut creation and the ability to choose directly a different database install.