Oracle Java – Java SE and GraalVM

Java is a set of computer software and specifications developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems that provides a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. On November 13, 2006, Sun Microsystems made the bulk of its implementation of Java available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Oracle Corporation is the current owner of the official implementation of the Java SE platform. Java is an open source language represented by the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK). As well as implementing the Open JDK standard, Oracle also produces a high performance Java called GraalVM.

Customer Quotes

“Instead of wasting time and money, we have been able to reduce overall costs by managing our Java estate with Oracle Java SE Subscription. This gives us a huge cost saving opportunity that significantly reduces our IT OPEX bills.”
Fortune Nwaiwu, Business Analyst, Rothbadi & Co. IT Services

“This solution was provided very quickly, and we received kudos from the end user’s executives as to the speed and efficacy of the solution. We greatly appreciate the efforts of the Java Sustaining Engineering Team and Oracle Customer Support.”
Takashi Hashizume, Senior Manager, AI Platform Division, NEC Corporation

Oracle wasn’t able to provide someone to talk to us, but did provide plentiful references from its website. Oracle separates security patches from the closed OpenJDK vulnerability group (set up initially by Oracle) from more general patches and updates. What it calls critical patch updates, are usually 2-8, (at most around 30) security patches; whereas its patch set update, which includes everything else, as well as the security patches, could be hundreds of changes, quite often with stability issues. Obviously, just rolling out security patches is less of a management overhead, as it is easier to test a smaller set of changes, and the rest can be rolled out with more time for thorough regression testing etc.

Fig 1 – Java – write once run anywhere

Implementation of the ordinary OpenJDK is is not much of a differentiator but Oracle also has a Performance Java, GraalVM. GraalVM Enterprise is included with the Java SE Universal Subscription at no additional cost. It pre-compiles applications into native code before you start (unlike other approaches, which profile the resources being used by a running program for a quick “just-in-time” (JIT) start next time). This gives you extremely quick startup but is less responsive to changes in optimisation needed by a running program, which JIT deals with easily. GraalVM Enterprise does have profile-guided optimisation, which feeds back into the pre-compilation, but this can’t dynamically respond to a running application’s needs, as JIT compilation can. We think that there will be some applications where GraalVM Enterprise will perform better. For example, with very short-running (“ephemeral”) services, as associated with the rather badly-named “serverless” computing, start-up time is all that matters and GraalVM will work well; but for longer-running services alternative approaches could well deliver more performance over time.

Oracle is a large and respected company, and should provide first-class levels of global support, although it may not be as responsive to the needs of its smaller customers as a smaller company might be.

Oracle bases its universal subscription pricing (for new subscribers) on the number of employees in your company, regardless of whether they use Java or not. The example Oracle gives in its price list is:

Your company has a total employee count of 28,000 as detailed in the Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription definition below.

This includes 23,000 full-time, part-time and temporary employees plus 5,000 agents, contractors and consultants.

Therefore, the price would be 28,000 X $USD 6.75/month X 12 months= $USD 2,268,000/year.

You should care about Oracle Java’s absolute compatibility with OpenJDK because you don’t want to be locked in to one platform or one vendor; and you care about commercial support because you want a secure and effective platform for your applications to run on, so that you can sleep at night. You care about the availability of a performance Java because applications grow and if they are successful they attract more users and get implemented more widely, so that performance and latency issues that were not important initially may become so – and you want to be able to scale up with minimal impact on the business. The Oracle approach to performance Java differs from some others and you should care about this because its approach may suit certain (but not all) use cases particularly well. And, of course, you care about the Oracle pricing model although pricing models can change fairly easily.

The Bottom Line

Fig 2 – Oracle Market Share 2022

Oracle is a major player in Java, although its market share is declining a bit with the rise of Open Source alternatives and changes in its licensing model, see Figure 2.

Oracle separates essential security patches and more general patches/updates, so that they can be applied with different implementation urgencies and different testing regimes, which should result in a better managed Java environment, especially for mission-critical applications. Oracle also brings the stability and, possibly, the arrogance of an extremely large, low risk, stable company. It’s recent pricing of Java support by company size rather than the number of Java users was a shock to many of its customers, and although Oracle has now clarified that this will only be applied to new customers, it is possibly an indicator of Oracle’s marketing attitudes. Its performance Java is good, although its approach is different to, and arguably less in line with Java’s run time optimisation (with just in time compilation and byte codes) philosophy, than some alternative approaches, and customers will have to decide whether it better suits their needs.