Oracle Growls Louder for Graal Cloud Native
Some (perhaps many) people abandoned all hope when Oracle bought Sun and acquired the Java language and platform back in 2009. However, an undercurrent (perhaps even a groundswell) of open source software application development enrichment has surfaced from the database giant.
As we know, we now live in a world where even “Microsoft loves Linux” and the wider move to embrace open source technologies, especially across cloud-native topographies, has been undertaken by previously proprietary purists in order to ensure that, if a pie exists, they have the potential for a finger to be placed in it.
Some of the latest moves from Oracle see extensions and additions being made to GraalVM, a high-performance Java Development Kit (JDK) designed to speed up the performance of Java and JVM-based applications. The open source distribution of GraalVM is based on OpenJDK (the open source implementation of Java Standard Edition, or Java SE) and the enterprise version is (no prizes for guessing) based upon Oracle JDK.
Java Cloud-Native
GraalVM is said to simplify the build-and-run processes needed to create Java cloud-native services. Its optimized compiler generates code quickly using fewer compute resources, which enables microservices to start instantly.
To extend this technology to hardcore developers, the company has introduced version 1.0.0 of the open source Graal Cloud Native (GCN) IntelliJ IDEA plugin for the Ultimate, Community and Aqua editions of IntelliJ IDEA.
IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) that is aligned with the Java and Kotlin programming languages. Of IntelliJ IDEA’s three above-mentioned editions, Aqua is claimed to be the first IDE created specifically for test automation with an all-in-one workspace that supports Selenium (browser automation technology), Cypress (a front-end test automation tool for regression testing of web applications) and Playwright (an automation library for browser testing and web scraping).
NOTE: Aqua is described as a “polyglot IDE” that understands Java, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Kotlin and SQL.
GCN: Cloud-Native and Cloud-Agnostic
GCN is a cloud-agnostic development framework based on the Micronaut full-stack framework. Micronaut is based on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is used for building modular cloud-based microservices and serverless software applications.
Many will be pleased to hear that this GraalVM IntelliJ IDEA plugin comes with a project wizard for IntelliJ, which helps software engineers create a project once and then execute it on a variety of cloud platforms in our multi-cloud world.
According to an Oracle technical blog released at the start of this year, “Graal Cloud Native (GCN) is an Oracle build of the open source Micronaut framework. GCN provides a curated set of Micronaut framework modules that simplify cloud application development, are designed to be compiled ahead-of-time with GraalVM Native Image and are fully supported by Oracle. GCN enables you to easily build portable cloud native Java microservices that start instantly and use fewer resources to reduce compute costs.”
Naysayers be quietened for now at least: Oracle’s cloud-native open source backbone appears to have strengthened.
