Sun Java Enterprise System 7 Release Notes

What's New in Java ES 7

Overall, compared to Java ES 6, updates to the Java ES 7 Base components primarily comprise product version updates, bug fixes, and minor changes to subscription offerings. No new products have been added.

As with past Java ES releases, Java ES 7:

Uses a subscription-based pricing model that reduces cost of ownership and simplifies license-tracking and bookkeeping
Includes a wide range of tiered services to meet the needs of small businesses up through large enterprises
Provides a selection of software products to meet a broad spectrum of infrastructure needs
Offers a set of suites that provide features to meet specialized business needs
Supports multiple operating systems and a variety of system virtualization technologies

New Products

No new products have been added in the update from Java ES 6 to Java ES 7.

Product Version Updates

Java ES 7 includes the new versions of the following products:

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server (2.1 ⇒ 2.1.1)
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise (8.0 ⇒ 8.0U1P2)
Sun Java System Web Server (7.0U4 ⇒ 7.0U6)
Sun Java System Web Proxy Server (4.0.8 ⇒ 4.0.11)
Sun GlassFish Web Space Server (10.0 ⇒ 10.0U6)
NetBeans (6.5 ⇒ 6.7.1)

Refer to Table 1–1 for the latest versions of all component products.

New Installation Method

A new installation model for Java ES components was introduced in Java ES 6. It is still worth mentioning in these Release Notes however because some users may have bypassed version 6 and are upgrading directly from Java ES version 5 or earlier.

Java ES releases prior to version 6 provided a common installer for the core Java ES products. While this common installer had some advantages, especially when performing simple, single-system installations, it also had some disadvantages:

It required superuser access to run, and gave superuser ownership to installed software.
It permitted only a single product instance per system.
It supported only native-package software distributions.

Quite often, one or more of these disadvantages made the task of installing a robust, enterprise-strength deployment of Java ES more complicated or convoluted than necessary. The common installer was therefore retired in Java ES 6 in favor of the installers provided by the individual products in the Java ES base distribution. Because each product installer is tuned to the features and capabilities of the product it installs, the overall installation experience is smoother now than in past releases.

Accessibility Features

Most Java ES 7 components are designed to support a comprehensive range of United States and international accessibility standards and requirements. These requirements are designed to assure ease of use and full accessibility to all Java ES features for users with various visual and/or physical limitations.

The accessibility features built into and tested with Java ES 7 software include the following:

All graphical interface elements are fully navigable with the keyboard, including the Tab, arrow, and Enter keys.
All forms embedded in application pages are friendly to assistive technologies through various methods, such as attaching a label to each form field, or providing an appropriate title or other nonvisual text element to each element.
Alternative text strings are provided for all non-text elements, including icons, images, and logos.
All dynamic elements, including Javascript code and menus and pop-up menus with strings that are displayed when a mouse is hovered over them, have embedded text string identifiers that can be read by assistive technologies.
Product documentation, including PDF and HTML versions, have been written according to accessibility standards.
Most or all Java ES component products have been tested and are expected to work with a variety of assistive technologies for several operating environments, including:
- Mac OS X: Universal Access
- Solaris and OpenSolaris: Orca
- Linux: Orca
- Windows: JAWS, System Access