Oracle has announced  today announced the availability of Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 which is the first release of the Java platform since it bought Sun. In a statement Oracle said that Java SE 7 release was the result of industry-wide development involving open review, weekly builds and extensive collaboration between Oracle engineers and members of the worldwide Java ecosystem via the OpenJDK Community and the Java Community Process (JCP).

Under the bonnet are language changes to help increase developer productivity and simplify common programming tasks by reducing the amount of code needed, clarifying syntax and making code easier to read. There is also improved support for dynamic languages including: Ruby, Python and JavaScript which Oracle claims brings ubstantial performance increases to the Java Virtual Machine. There is a multicore-ready API that enables developers to more easily decompose problems into tasks that can then be executed in parallel across arbitrary numbers of processor cores.

Also designed is an I/O interface for working with file systems that can access a wider array of file attributes and offer more information when errors occur and new networking and security features. Everything is backwards compatible and so Java software developers don't have to upgrade their software.