Java SE 7, a nearly 11-year-old version of the Java standard, is coming to the end of its life cycle and Oracle will officially discontinue extended support for it at the end of July 2022.
With official extension support is discontinued, Java 7 will enter a Sustaining Support model as defined by the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. Oracle will no longer provide patch updates, bug or security fixes, or feature implementations.
Java 7, released on 28 July 2011, had been the first major release of Java in five years (Java 6 was released in 2006, five years apart) and the first release from Oracle since the acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The end of extended support means that some older versions of Oracle Fusion Middleware products will no longer have a certified JDK available.
A research report on the Java ecosystem published by application monitor New Relic in April shows that 1.71% of applications are still using Java 7 in production.
The most current version of Java, Java 18, was officially released in March this year and will cease to be updated in September 2022. Longer term support versions that are still available include Java 8, Java 11 and Java 17, each with end of support dates of December 2030, September 2026 and September 2029 respectively, to which developers who require them can upgrade.
Oracle has stated in its latest support announcement also states that customers using Java SE 7 are advised to upgrade to a supported version of standard Java, such as Java SE 8 or 11.