News

Java Support - End of support for Oracle JDK

In Oracle's Java SE Support Roadmap updated on the 28th June 2018, the company states that it will continue to provide updates to Java 8 for Personal Users (such as JAS-mine developers and users) until at least December 2020.  (JAS-mine currently operates using Java 8 and both developers and users of JAS-mine in general are likely to be classified as 'personal users'.)  Oracle will stop making updates to Java 8 available sometime during or after 2021, and Oracle's latest long-term support, Java 11, will "primarily be for commercial and support customers", not for personal users.

As Oracle's version of Java (Oracle JDK) is the most commonly used version of Java on Windows machines, we will recommend a replacement when Oracle end their support.  Indeed, JAS-mine is already compatible with OpenJDK's version of Java 8, and given Oracle's commitment to make "Oracle JDK and OpenJDK builds from Oracle interchangeable", OpenJDK would seem an obvious replacement for JAS-mine users.

The biggest problem using OpenJDK is that it is currently not as easy to install updated versions of OpenJDK on Windows as it is on Linux operating systems.  The best way is to build the latest version of OpenJDK in Windows, as the standard out-of-the-box version of OpenJDK for Windows does not include the latest security / bug fixes (as described here).

However, given that there will be a large number of non-commercial Oracle JDK users facing the same situation, we expect a concensus to form on the best replacement to Oracle JDK, and in particular we imagine that steps will be taken to make OpenJDK as simple to install and update on Windows as Oracle’s JDK currently is.

In addition, there are other open source versions of Java available on Windows that may currently be more user friendly than OpenJDK to install, such as http://zulu.org/ (as suggested here).

We will therefore address the situation in 2020 and recommend to Windows users of JAS-mine a replacement for Oracle's JDK at that time.


New Features

Version 3.2.0 (released May 2017)

  • Agent Weighting interface (see microsim.agent.Weighting interface in the core package API) designed to allow an instantiation of an agent representing more (or fewer) individuals than just a single individual.
  • Alignment features including:
    • Logit Scaling alignment algorithms, providing multiple choice alignment (not just binary choice).
    • Weighted alignment feature (Logit Scaling, Logit Scaling Binary, and Resampling alignment versions) that works with an agent implementing the Weighting interface in order to align a population of agents with variable weightings (where the weighting defines the number of individuals that an agent represents).
  • Scatter plot charts available to use in the JAS-mine GUI.
  • Regression Utils features including:
    • User can provide probabilities that do not sum to 1, which are subsequently normalised within the methods, instead of just throwing an exception.

Version 3.2.1 (released May 2017)

  • New project template classes in the JAS-mine Plugin for Eclipse IDE, with some bug fixes, and a more detailed example of the graphical features and agent class.