An update on how Oracle plans to utilize / integrate Sun technologies. Incidentally Oracle got JRockit from its acquisition of BEA in 2008.

The concept of non-Java languages on the Java Virtual Machine is not new. The JVM has played host to several ported languages such as Ruby (JRuby), Python (Jython) and even Javascript (Rhino) along with languages designed primarily for the JVM like Scala and Groovy. Clojure (pronounced like closure) is a general purpose programming language, hosted primarily on the JVM.

ScalaTest is an open-source testing framework that aims to speed up tests by leveraging the Scala programming language.  ScalaTest 1.0, released today claims to reduce the amount of test code lines required in testing. This reduction in code lines is a product of Scala, an object-oriented language that compiles to Java bytecode and runs on the Java Virtual Machine.

Noop is a new language that attempts to blend the best lessons of languages old and new, while syntactically encouraging industry best-practices and discouraging the worst offenses. Noop is initially targeted to run on the Java Virtual Machine, is what the Noop site says.

Azul Systems has released Azul Systems Java Virtual Machine 2.5 (AVM 2.5), which claims to be the industry’s only virtualized JVM. The AVM 2.5 release includes several new features, including support for the Windows platform, improved diagnostics and profiling functionality, and enhanced performance capabilities.

Microsoft has removed 10 security patch downloads, all associated with Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM) technology. Microsoft originally licensed its JVM technology from Sun Microsystems. The support ended as of June 30, 2009, according to the security bulletins and a Microsoft support page. However this move isn’t much of a concern for users as most Java users use the Sun JVM and not the one licensed by Microsoft.