JDK1.8 in Production but JDK 1.7 in Testing Environment

Question

What will Happen If I have JDK 1.8 in my Production Environment but on Testing Environment JDK 1.7?

Answer 1

You shouldn't have any significant issues between Java 1.7 for testing and Java 1.8 for production. Problems exist beyond the 1.9 transition, but 1.7 and 1.8 are compatible.

What you might find is that combinations of start-up flags for the JVM itself (which GC you're using, any additional flags) are different between the two versions. So if you're using a start-up script to set JAVA_OPTIONS then there may be differences in the way that they are launched.

Finally, if you're doing any kind of performance testing then the tests won't be valid between the two JVMs. Even if you're using the same GC configuration, the performance differences in Java 1.7 are likely to be slightly different from Java 1.8.