Our enterprise code only compiles on Java 1.6, I tried 1.7, but it lead to horrible compilation problems that we can't resolve at this time. We use IBM RAD for our IDE and Websphere 8.5 server to deploy the EAR on our local machines. Would there be an issue to keep compiling with 1.6, while JAVA sends out new updates in the future?
We use DB2 with JCC4 for DB.
There will be no more updates to Java 6. As per official page you would have to pay Oracle to send you updates to Java 6 (and I'm not sure if this is even possible any more):
Oracle offers updates to Java 6 only for customers who have purchased Java support or have Oracle products that require Java 6.
Since Java 12 you can't even compile down to Java 6 (see JDK-8028563 : Remove javac support for 6/1.6 source and target values.
On the other hand Java 6 is very stable. There is certain stability in death...