Java 14 – Oracle trying to Revive Java with Astounding Features

Java has been one of the most popular programming languages in the world and has been consistently ranked in first position in the TIOBE index. However, Java always comes up with its special and exciting features with its new release.

Java has already been a very popular language, but the Oracle community never gives up on working on it to make it more popular and efficient, so that users may not encounter any performance bugs or issues. So to make it more efficient and powerful, Oracle has come up with Java 14 with more advanced features.

Java celebrated its 24th anniversary in 2020, and to date, there have been 13 versions launched. And, the latest version of Java 14 has been launched by Oracle Community on March 17, 2020. Therefore, Oracle now offers every Java developer and enterprise to download it from its official website.

Being a Java lover, you must be excited to know about the features of Java 14. Java 14 has been released with many significant Java Enhancement Proposals (JEPs). As a result, we have come up with an article to acquaint you with the latest features of Java 14.

Java 14 is supported by three main integrated development environments, including JetBrains IDEA, Apache NetBeans, and Eclipse IDE.

The 16 JEPs in JDK 14 include:

• Pattern Matching for instanceof (Preview)
• Packaging Tool (Incubator)
• NUMA-Aware Memory Allocation for G1
• JFR Event Streaming
• Non-Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers
• Helpful NullPointerExceptions
• Records (Preview)
• Switch Expressions (Standard)
• Deprecate the Solaris and SPARC Ports
• Remove the Concurrent Mark Sweep (CMS) Garbage Collector
• ZGC on macOS
• ZGC on Windows
• Deprecate the ParallelScavenge + SerialOld GC Combination
• Remove the Pack200 Tools and API
• Text Blocks (Second Preview)
• Foreign-Memory Access API (Incubator)

Features of Java 14

To ease the coding and working of Java tools, various features are provided by Java 14. Let’s discuss the features of Java 14 in detail:

1. Pattern Matching for instanceof

We already know the use of the instanceof operator, which is used to check whether the given object matches the reference type or not. Therefore, Pattern matching for the instanceof operator allows for its efficient use and decreases the necessity of type conversions in Java applications.

Enhance your knowledge by exploring Applications of Java in detail with Dataflair.

2. Helpful NullPointerExceptions

With the Java 14 release, there are some improvements in NullPointerExceptions in Java. However, the necessary information will be shown to the user by the JVM. For example, if an error occurs that generates a null value, the JVM should display the variable that results in a zero value. Thus, this helps in easily catching and recovering the error.

3. Switch Expressions

Java 14 provides an enhanced version of the switch statement. Therefore, it has modified the syntax of the switch statement by replacing colons with commas. Furthermore, use of the yield keyword in place of break to return values.

Therefore, if multiple cases result in the same output, then we write each case with a comma-separated list of values followed by an arrow to return a value.

Example of switch case in Java:

switch(month)

case January, February, -> System.out.println(“Winter”);

case March, April, May, June ->  System.out.println(“Summer”);

case June, July, August ->  System.out.println(“Rainy”);

4. Packaging Tools

The Packaging tool feature of Java 14 provides a way to ease the process of application installation. Moreover, the jpackage tool is used to bundle a Java application into a platform-specific package. Additionally, Java 14 supports the following platform-specific formats:

• For Linux: deb and rpm
• For MacOS: pkg and dmg
• For Windows: msi and exe

Do you know – How Packaging helps in Java?

5. Records

Java 14 release came up with the records as a preview feature. However, we can now compact the class declaration syntax with records. Users face a problem writing repetitive code; to remove this problem, Java 14 has introduced the feature of records. For example:

Without records:

class Rectangle

{
    public final int length;
    public final int breadth;
    public Rectangle(int length, int breadth)
    {
        this.length = length;
        this.breadth=breadth;


    }
}

With Records:

record Rectangle(int length, int breadth)

 6. NUMA-Aware Memory Allocation for G1

NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) is an architecture of sharing memory locally, which eventually increases the performance of the system. But in NUMA memory architecture, there is a small amount of memory stored in a processor. On the other hand, Java 14 proves to be a boon to us, providing an advanced feature to improve the performance of the G1 Garbage collector on large machines.

7. Non-Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers

We know that a Non-volatile memory is a memory area where there would not be any loss of data even after the power goes off. Thus, we also call such memory persistent memory.

With the release of Java 14, there is an enhancement in the MappedByteBuffer class that comes with an increased ability to gain access to non-volatile storage in computer memory.

8. JFR Event Streaming

Java 14 now provides an API through which the data in the JFR ( Java Flight Recorder ) can be continuously monitored for in-process and out-of-process applications. Hence, JFR is now available freely and has become a part of OpenJDK. is now part of the OpenJDK and therefore freely available.

However, the module jdk.jfr is present in the package jdk.jfr.consumer enhances the ability to asynchronously subscribe to the events.

9. ZGC on macOS

ZGC (Z Garbage Collector) gets introduced with the Java 14 release, which becomes an option for macOS users. Additionally,  Java 14 also provides the facility in which the Garbage collector releases the unused memory from the system.

10. ZGC on Windows

This feature is the same as the ZGC (Z Garbage Collector) for macOS; the only difference is that it provides the ZGC for Windows users. As a result, the goal is to use the feature of ZGC being platform-independent so that it can be used on any platform. But there are some restrictions to using it with the older versions of Windows.

11. Deprecate the Solaris and SPARC Ports

According to this update, the Oracle Community wishes to get rid of the ports of outdated Operating systems like Solaris, Sparc, etc. However, Java 14 has marked them as deprecated so that they can be completely removed in future updates of Java. Deprecating these ports, there will be a clear way to develop the new features to move the platform in the forward direction.

12. Remove the Concurrent Mark Sweep (CMS) Garbage Collector

As proposed by Thomas Schatzl, Java 14 aims to remove the CMS (Concurrent Mark Sweep) Garbage Collector from Java. This garbage collector was already marked as deprecated with Java 9. And, in Java 14, it has been completely removed. However, the update does not aim to remove the  CMS Garbage collector from the Java versions that completely rely on it.

13. Remove the Pack200 Tools and API

Java 14 officially proposes the Pack200 tools and API present in the java.util.jar package to be removed from Java. The Pack200 is a tool to compress the JAR (Java Archives) files. This API was already marked as obsolete from Java 11.

HOLD ON! It’s the right time to take a quick sneak peek at Java JAR Files with Dataflair.

14. Text Blocks (Second Preview)

Java 14 introduces the second preview for text blocks. Therefore, the first preview came with Java 13. However, Text blocks are introduced to allow programmers to easily create multi-line strings.

With the second preview of text blocks, there is an introduction to  2 new escape sequences, which are: \<line-terminator> and \s. These escape sequences allow a fine-grained control over the processing of whitespaces and newlines.

15. Deprecate the ParallelScavenge + SerialOld GC Combination

With Java 14, there is a proposal to deprecate the combination of two garbage collectors: ParallelScavenge GC and SerialOld GC. This proposal is because there are very few Java users who use this combination of Garbage Collectors. Moreover, this combination requires a considerable effort and cost to keep it updated, and it’s of no use if they are not used by the majority of users. Therefore, they have been marked as deprecated since Java 14.

16. Foreign-Memory Access API (Incubator)

There are many libraries and applications like Netty’s ByteBuf API, mamchaced, mapDB, Ignite, etc that access the foreign memory. In addition, there is no such API in Java to provide access to the foreign memory. Therefore, with Java 14, there is a proposal to implement a suitable Java API that can help Java applications to easily access foreign memory.

Summary

In this article, we got familiar with the release of Java 14. It was released on March 17, 2020, and came up with some updates and enhancements to ease the effort and performance of the Java applications, and also deprecated many outdated features and plans to remove them with further releases.

There is an introduction to many new things, while there are some interesting changes and enhancements in the existing features of Java. Thus, this article will surely help you to get familiar with the release and features of Java 14.

Thank you for reading our article.

Keep Learning 🙂