Azul Systems headquartered in Sunnyvale is exclusively focused on Java and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). They build fully supported, standards-compliant runtimes that help enable Java-based businesses. Azul Platform Core (formerly Zulu Enterprise) subscribers get quarterly access to security-only updates (ideal for rapid deployment) plus standard quarterly updates that include security patches, bug fixes, and new features.
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Oracle Java SE
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Oracle Java SE is a programming language and gives customers enterprise features that minimize the costs of deployment and maintenance of their Java-based IT environment.
I would go for Azul Platform Core where someone needs secure JRE and JDK at a cheaper price where they can afford some CPU memory spikes. If you are highly concerned about the high availability of systems, or CPU memory usage, then, in my opinion, Azul Platform Core should be avoided. Also, considering what I believe to be their poor support, you might want to reconsider buying this subscription.
Oracle Java SE is well suited to long-running applications (e.g. servers). Java Swing (UI toolkit) is now rather outdated, lacking support for modern UI features. JavaFX, the potential replacement for Swing, has now been separated out of Java core. Ideally, there would be a path to migrate a large application incrementally from Swing to JavaFX, but due to different threading models and other aspects, it is difficult. At this point, it is probably better to use an embedded web browser (e.g. JxBrowser) to provide a modern UI in HTML/Javascript and keep just the business logic in Java.
Commercial Licensing in 2019. Oracle will charge commercial organizations using Java SE for upgrading to the latest bug fixes and updates. Organizations will now need to either limit their implementation of Java SE or may need to drop it altogether.
Slow Performance. Due to the all of the abstraction of the JVM, Java SE programs take much more resources to compile and run compared to Python.
Poor UI appearance on all of the major GUI libraries (Swing, SWT, etc.). Through Android Studio, it is easy to get a native look/feel for Java apps, but when it comes to desktops, the UI is far from acceptable (does not mimic the native OS's look/feel at all).
The language is fluent and has good support from a number of open source and commercial IDEs. Language features are added every 6 months, although long-term service releases are only available every 3 years. It would be nice if some of the older APIs were depreciated with more pressure to move to the new replacement APIs (e.g. File vs. Path), but transitions to new features are generally well implemented.
We have had plenty of contact previously with the Azul Platform Core's support team. They provided us with ways of debugging our JVM crashes and upload data to a provided FTP server where their support employees could assist by reviewing our special cases. The help they provided has been invaluable in optimizing our JVM.
Java is such a mature product at this point that there is little support from the vendor that is needed. Various sources on the internet, and especially StackOverflow, provide a wealth of knowledge and advice. Areas that may benefit from support is when dealing with complex multithreading issues and security libraries.
Chose to go with Java instead of Python or C++ due to the expertise on the ground with the technology, for its ease of integration with our heterogeneous setup of production servers, and for the third party library support which we've found was able to address some challenging aspects of our business problem.
The different versions make it harder to work with other companies where some use newer versions while some use older versions, costing time to make them compatible.
Licenses are getting to be costly, forcing us to consider OpenJDK as an alternative.
New features take time to learn. When someone starts using them, everyone has to take time to learn.