The current version of Oracle SQL Developer requires at least Java 6, e.g. the 1.6 JDK. I talk about Java, JDKs, JREs and what all that means in a previous post if you need to catch up on the lingo.
Many versions of Java out there – 5, 6, and 7 are the most common. The name is ’6′, but the version is ’1.6.’ We develop, test, and support SQL Developer for 1.6. You can run other versions, but may get less than awesome results.
We built SQL Developer v3.2.20.09 with Java 6, for a few reasons. One that you MIGHT care about is that SQL Developer is included in JDeveloper, and JDeveloper at the time was also being compiled with Java 6.
However, we did start testing with Java 7 to see what was up. And we found a couple of show-stopper type bugs. Those were in the product until v3.2.20.09. The biggest one was if you were browsing a data grid, you weren’t able to scroll down or ask for more data/fetches. Yup, pretty bad. Again, that’s fixed.
So, if you want to run with Java 7, you can with my blessing at least, if you’re on the latest and greatest version of the tool.
You’ll Still Be Warned Though
You can safely ignore this warning and select ‘Yes’ if you’re on version 3.2.20.09 or higher of SQL Developer
If you post on the forums or open a ticket with MOS, you might hear that you’re running an unsupported version of Java…but, that’s probably not going have an impact on your problem at hand. Probably.
The NEXT version of SQL Developer will require you upgrade your version of the JDK to 1.7.