In the Jakarta EE Platform call this week, we decided to ask the specification projects for feedback on whether October 15, 2021 is an achievable date for having their specifications ready for release. So far, the feedback has been positive. It is great to see that the specifications are moving forward again. The Jakarta EE 9 release with the associated namespace change from javax.* to jakarta.* may very well prove to be the tap on the bottle that got the ketchup flowing.
The Eclipse Cargo Tracker is a fantastic example of an end-to-end Jakarta EE application that showcases core Jakarta EE technologies. Thanks to Scaleforce and Jelastic for providing resources to deploy the demo application to the cloud.
Let’s look at Jakarta EE 10! By filtering on the EE10 label in our GitHub issue tracker, you will find the list of topics currently under discussion. I would like to highlight a couple of the issues.
Jakarta EE 10 Direction Statement (#352) lists focus areas that we are working on in order to come up with a proper roadmap for the platform. The platform team has been tasked by the Jakarta EE Steering Committee to produce a statement of direction for the steering committee meeting on May 11, 2021. I think we are in pretty good shape, but it will most certainly be refined more in the platform call a couple of hours before the steering committee gathers.
Create a new core profile specification (#353) collects the discussion around creating a new Jakarta EE Core Profile. We have created the plan review record and expect the ballot for creation- and plan reviews to be started pretty soon. Check out the JESP Guide for information about what these review steps actually means.
Speaking about plan reviews, we have a lot of them going on right now. Just check out the list of pull requests for plans. The Jakarta EE 10 Plan Reviews project board shows the current status of the reviews as they flow through our process.
In addition to this, a project proposal for Jakarta Config is being drafted. I expect it to be made public for community review within short.
If you haven’t filled out the 2021 Jakarta EE Developer Survey yet, I hope you will take a couple of minutes required to provide us with valuable input in shaping the direction of Jakarta EE!
The Jakarta EE 9.1 release is coming up shortly. The release review ballot for ratification of the specification will start this week. A special detail regarding this release is that there will be at least three, possibly four, compatible implementations used for ratification. Eclipse GlassFish, OpenLiberty, and WildFly have submitted their Compatibility Certification Requests already. We hope that Apache TomeEE will make it as well!
The plan reviews for individual specifications are ongoing. You can follow their progress by checking out the pull requests labeled plan review. As they are approved, they will pop up on their respective page under Jakarta EE Specifications.
I want to remind you about the Jakarta EE Specifications Calendar, where the specification projects are encouraged to publish there calls in order to allow more people to join the discussions.
These CCRs will be used in the ratification of the final Jakarta EE 9.1 specification. This time, we are hoping for additional compatible implementations to be a part of the material reviewed by the Jakarta EE Specification Committee. Since we plan to initiate the release review ballot on April 30, it is time to start preparing the Compatibility Certification Requests by following these steps outlined by the Jakarta EE TCK project lead Scott Marlow.
The 2021 Jakarta EE Developer Survey is still running. If you haven’t answered it yet, I encourage you to take this opportunity to provide input to the direction of Jakarta EE. It only takes a couple of minutes to answer.
The CFP for EclipseCon 2021 is open. Don’t hesitate, submit your Jakarta EE talk today! If you are new to speaking, or unsure what to talk about, ask someone in the community to team up with you and do a joint talk!
Eclipse GlassFish 6.1.0.RC1 passes the Jakarta EE 9.1 TCK and is available for download. The TCK project is in the process of wrapping up everything for the release. We plan to initiate the review ballot for the Jakarta EE 9.1 specifications on April 30, which means that the artifacts will be released to Maven Central on May 14th. This is a soft launch as we have been doing the last couple of releases, so the official release date with all the marketing splash around it will be May 25th.
Worth noting for this release is that it looks like GlassFish won’t be alone as a compatible implementation when the specification is ratified. A number of vendors are working hard to have their implementations available along with Glassfish for the release review ballot.
I guess it is safe to say that we were blown away by the number of detailed plans and outlines submitted as pull requests to the Jakarta EE Specifications repository. Just take a look at the list below grouped by major and minor updates to the specifications.
Major updates Jakarta Authentication 4.0 Jakarta Authorization 3.0 Jakarta Concurrency 3.0 Jakarta Expression Language 5.0 Jakarta Faces 4.0 Jakarta JSON Binding 3.0 Jakarta RESTful Web Services 4.0 Jakarta Security 3.0 Jakarta Servlet 6.0 Jakarta SOAP with Attachments 3.0 Jakarta Standard Tag Library 3.0 Jakarta XML Binding 4.0 Jakarta XML Web Services 4.0
Minor updates Jakarta Activation 2.1 Jakarta Connectors 2.1 Jakarta JSON Processing 2.1 Jakarta Mail 2.1 Jakarta MVC 2.1 Jakarta Persistence 3.1 Jakarta Server Pages 3.1 Jakarta WebSocket 2.1
I can’t wait to dive into the details of these plans as they progress through the plan reviews stipulated by the Jakarta EE Specifiation Process. Take a look at the JESP Guide for a simple walk-through of the process.
In addition to the efforts around Jakarta EE 9.1 and Jakarta EE 10, there are ongoing discussions about the alignment between Jakarta EE and MicroProfile. These discussions take place in the CN4J Alliance. Read Jakarta EE/MicroProfile Alignment Survey Results! by Reza Rahman to see how the community responded to the alternatives being discussed.
One of the most exciting things that happened in the Jakarta EE space this week is that the Jakarta EE Platform project decided to start working on a new Jakarta EE Core Profile. The Pull Request to start the process of creation- and plan reviews from the Jakarta EE Specification Committee has been created. I will post more when work progresses.
If you are involved in a Jakarta EE specification project, do remember to submit a request for plan review by April 15. This will make it possible for the platform team to get an overview, and plan for the content of the next release. Refer to the JESP Guide for useful pointers and links to help you navigate the Jakarta EE Specification Process (JESP).
The 2021 Jakarta EE Developer Survey is now open. This has become an annual tradition and is your chance to influence the direction of the Jakarta EE working group. It takes less than 8 minutes to complete.
Jakarta EE 9.1 is on track for the mid-May release. GlassFish 6.1 now passes the TCK and a release candidate will be made available this week.
Meanwhile, the work with planning for the next Jakarta EE release goes on. We are getting very close to be proposing a new profile in addition to the current Full Platform and Web Profile. This profile will most likely be called Jakarta EE Core Profile and be specifically targeted at smaller runtimes for microservices and capable of producing minimal cloud-native images.
For the other component specifications, please do remember to submit a request for plan review by April 15. This will make it possible for the platform team to get an overview, and plan for the content of the next release. We will also shortly invite all specification projects to participate in a community meeting. Stay tuned and look out for the invite that will be socialized on all appropriate channels when we have nailed down the details.
I will encourage specification projects to open calls to help drive their work forward. Since we currently don’t meet in the hallways at events and conferences, these meetings are an important way of having discussions in realtime. Makes life on the mailing lists so much easier afterward…
We have created the Specifications Calendar specifically for this purpose. All the project leads of Jakarta EE specification projects have been given permissions to add events to the calendar.
It looks like Jakarta EE 9.1 may be delivered sometime in May. The Jakarta EE Platform project discussed the possibility for a release date in mid-May at this week’s platform call. There are still a couple of details to be sorted out before a final date can be announced. Stay tuned for updates.
The platform team has also started discussions regarding adding a profile to the next release of Jakarta EE. This discussion is currently going on the mailing list.
On Wednesday, March 31, I am giving a short keynote at JakartaOne LivesStream – Russian. What’s interesting about this one is that it will be in Russian. Since I, unfortunately, don’t speak Russian, the organizers have been very helpful in translating my talk and adding a Russian audio track. I hope you will enjoy it!
If you still can’t get enough of Jakarta EE, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to host us at your local JUG or Meetup. We still offer free use of Crowdcast for JUGs for streaming your events.
Tanja and I are always eager to visit you and talk about Jakarta EE. We have visited a lot of JUGs in the last 6 months. And we want to visit more. If you want your JUG on this list, you know what to do. Contact us!
At the end, I want to point you to the new Adoptium web site that was just recently launched. This is your one stop shop to download prebuilt OpenJDK binaries for free.
$ java -version
openjdk version "16" 2021-03-16
OpenJDK Runtime Environment AdoptOpenJDK (build 16+36)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM AdoptOpenJDK (build 16+36, mixed mode, sharing)
Java 16 contains a lot of goodies for us, so go ahead and download it to give it a try. or me, the most important feature in JDK 16 is Records (JEP 395). The reason for this is that it reduces the amount of boilerplate code needed. The possibility to write record Point(int x, int y) { } rather than the entire class listed below really appeals to me. The code never written is the best code, as it is guaranteed not to contain any bugs.
class Point {
private final int x;
private final int y;
Point(int x, int y) {
this.x = x;
this.y = y;
}
int x() { return x; }
int y() { return y; }
public boolean equals(Object o) {
if (!(o instanceof Point)) return false;
Point other = (Point) o;
return other.x == x && other.y = y;
}
public int hashCode() {
return Objects.hash(x, y);
}
public String toString() {
return String.format("Point[x=%d, y=%d]", x, y);
}
}
I participated in three sessions at JavaLand 2021. First out on Tuesday was Jakarta EE 9 and Beyond which was followed by a Jakarta EE Panel. On Wednesday, it was time for Mobile Java Web Applications with MVC and OpenDDR where I was presenting together with Werner Keil. Despite some technical difficulties with the streaming platform on Tuesday, the conference went smoothly. Let’s hope that we will be back in Phantasialand for next year’s edition!
Work with Jakarta EE 9.1 continues. An agenda item for the platform call this week is to set a release date for Jakarta EE 9.1. We have also started the work by looking ahead towards the next releases. Currently, there are some interesting discussions happening on the Jakarta EE Platform mailing list regarding the definition of new profile specifications.
Also, note that the platform team requests plan reviews from the specification projects to be ready for ballot by April 15 in order to be a candidate for the next release. If you are unsure what to do for a plan review, check out the JESP Guide.
We have tried to keep the overhead to a minimum with the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process (EFSP). Compared to other specification processes, it is pretty lightweight. Both the Jakarta EE Specification Process (JESP) and the MicroProfile Specification Process (MPSP) adopts the EFSP with a couple of additions that are so similar that they are barely distinguishable.
While knowing the process is good, every developer does not need to know the nitty-gritty details. That is why we have created a step-by-step guide to help developers on Jakarta EE specification projects with the steps of the JESP. Take a look at the JESP Guide to check it out!
JavaLand 2021 is happening this week! We have a lot of great content and community activities to look forward to. Here is a pointer to some of the talks on Wednesday, March 16 by Emily Jiang, Ondrej Mihalyi, and yours truly.
On Wednesday, March 17, I have a joint talk with Werner Keil where we use Jakarta MVC in one of the demos. Directly after, Emily Jiang and Ed Burns show how to port an application from Spring Boot to MicroProfile.
