Jakarta EE Compatible Explained

You have probably heard the term Compatible being used in the context of Jakarta EE What does it actually mean? And what is the difference between a Jakarta EE Compatible Product and a Jakarta EE Compatible Implementation? Before we dive into explaining those terms, let’s first look at the parts a specification is made up of.

The Specification Document describes the specification in textual form. Some specifications may not have a physical document but have everything described in the JavaDoc of the API component.

The API, or Application Programming Interface, is not considered a normative artifact. That means that an implementation can reproduce the API as long as the signature of the API is identical

The Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) defines how to test that an implementation fulfills all the requirements in order to implement the specification.

At least one Open Source(*) implementation that passes the TCK is required in order for a specification to be made final.

(*) The approved Open Source licenses for ratifying compatible implementations are EPL-2.0, BSD-3-Clause, and Apache-2.0

Compatible Implementation

An implementation of a Jakarta specification is considered to be a Compatible Implementation when it can demonstrate that it fulfills all the requirements of the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) for that particular specification. For example, Hibernate Validator 7.0 and Hibernate Validator 8.0 are both compatible implementations of Jakarta Bean Validation 3.0. Hibernate Validator 7.0 were used as ratifying compatible implementation when Jakarta Bean Validation 3.0 was released and is therefore listed on the Jakarta Bean Validation 3.0 specification page.

Compatible Product

A Compatible Product is a Compatible Implementation of the Jakarta EE Platform, Jakarta EE Web Profile, or Jakarta EE Core Profile. In addition to fulfilling the requirements of the Jakarta EE Platform, Jakarta EE Web Profile, or Jakarta EE Core Profile TCKs, the implementor must participate in the Jakarta EE Compatibility Program to be listed on the Jakarta EE Compatible Products page.

The Jakarta EE compatible logo can only be used by those that have implemented a Jakarta EE Compatible Product as well as fulfill the requirements of the Jakarta EE Compatibility Program.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #163

Welcome to issue number one hundred and sixty-three of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

Tuesday this week, we had the first Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call of 2023. Don’t worry if you missed it. You can check out the minutes or watch the recording on YouTube. The minutes from all Jakarta EE Platform calls are always captured on the Jakarta EE Platform Project’s website.

The conference season goes on. Last week, I was in Stockholm for Jfokus. You can read about my trip in my blog post from the trip. Next week, I will be in Oakland, California for DeveloperWeek where I will present a brand new talk about how to handle the javax.* to jakarta.* namespace switch in Spring applications.

Totally unrelated, but sort of ties into the Community Morning Runs I like to do at conferences… This weekend I ran Tjörnarparen Trail Ultra 50K and survived. Didn’t see any wild boars even if they’re known for roaming the woods in the area.

Back on topic…Remember to sign up for Devnexus. The conference will go on at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta from April 4 to April 6. This year’s conference will have a dedicated Jakarta EE track. Use the code SEEMESPEAK to get a nice discount. And of course, I will arrange a morning run there as well, so make sure you bring your running shoes.

Jfokus 2023

Jfokus is one of my absolute favorite conferences. This year’s edition was no exception. The organization is excellent, you can tell that they’ve done this before. This was the 17th edition of Jfokus since it started back in 2007.

On Wednesday morning, we continued the tradition that started last year with a Jfokus Morning Run. Which made this year the second annual morning run at Jfokus.

We were 17 runners that met at 07:15 on Wednesday morning for a 5K run, and as far as I know all 17 returned and were able to attend the conference. It is truly an excellent way to start a conference day.

I had a Quickie-talk about responsible Open Source at Jfokus this year. A Quickie talk at Jfokus is a 15-minute talk, so it is pretty fast-paced. A fun experience. And I hope the participants found it interesting as well. The room was almost full, so the topic seems interesting at least.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #162

Welcome to issue number one hundred and sixty-two of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

We have reached February, and are now a month into the first quarter of 2023. The Jakarta EE Platform Project is in the midst of putting together a release plan for Jakarta EE 11.

The goal is to propose a reliable plan for delivering Jakarta EE in Q1 2024 as formulated in the high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11 formulated by the Jakarta EE Working Group Steering Committee.

One of the release planning activities is gathering input from all Jakarta EE specification projects. There will be a short survey for these projects to provide input to the Jakarta EE Platform project that will be sent out early next week. One of the questions in this survey is about release plans for the individual component specifications.

With this in mind, it was extremely great to see the release plans for Jakarta Expression Language 6.0 and Jakarta Server Pages 4.0 communicated last week. Great work! Hope to see more of these shortly.

The Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call is coming up next week with an update on Project Loom in the context of Jakarta EE by Alan Bateman and Ron Pressler from the JDK Team at Oracle.

The call is scheduled for 11:00 AM ET on February 7, 2023. Check the public calendar for details on how to join.

Another thing that happened last week was that Jakarta EE 10 was awarded the 2023 DEVIES Award for best innovation in Programming Languages & Frameworks. Congratulations to everyone involved!

DEVIES Award to Jakarta EE 10

We are excited to announce that Jakarta EE 10 has won a 2023 DEVIES Award in the Programming Languages & Frameworks category.  The 11th annual DEVIES Awards are the definitive annual awards for the software industry recognizing outstanding design, engineering, and innovation in developer technology across 31 categories.

“Developer tools and technology product solutions are leading the way for software developers & engineers to build upon the foundation of the ever-expanding technology sector. Jakarta EE’s win is evidence of their leading role in the growth and innovation in the software industry,” said Jonathan Pasky, Executive Producer of DevNetwork, producer of DeveloperWeek and the 2023 DEVIES Awards.

Award winners were selected from a record-high 310 nominations by an expert-led panel of the DevNetwork Advisory Board, based on the following criteria: 1) attracting notable attention and awareness in the software industry; 2) general regard and use by the developer, engineering & IT community; and 3) being a technical leader in its sector for innovation.

Jakarta EE will be presented its DEVIES Award during DeveloperWeek 2023 (Feb 15-17, Oakland, CA & Feb 21-22, Virtual), the world’s largest developer and engineering conference & expo with 8,000+ participants from 150+ countries across the globe.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #161

Welcome to issue number one hundred and sixty-one of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

We are almost a month into 2023 and the Jakarta EE Platform Project is ramping up the release planning for Jakarta EE 11. A survey will shortly go out to all the individual component specification projects to gather input about their plans. The responses from this survey will feed into the release plan for Jakarta EE 11. A draft of this release plan is in the works and will be on the agenda for the Jakarta EE Platform call this week.

The agenda for the next Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call is ready. Following the update on Project Loom in the context of Jakarta EE by Alan Bateman and Ron Pressler from the JDK Team at Oracle, we want to have a broader discussion around the implication virtual threads and other features in Java 21 will have on Jakarta EE 11.

The call is scheduled for 11:00 AM ET on February 7, 2023. Check the public calendar for details on how to join.

Jakarta EE will have dedicated track at Devnexus this year. with two full days of Jakarta EE related talks. There will even be a celebration of the 5 hyear anniversary of Jakarta EE. Maybe there will even be cake? (Vincent, this is a hint for you 😋)

If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, please use the code SEEMESPEAK to get a nice discount. This is the largest Java conference in the USA with 12 concurrent tracks, great food and networking oportunities. Not to mention the mega raffle at the end where you can win really nice prices!

Jfokus 2023 is only a week away. In addition to a quickie talk on How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen, I will also host the second annual Jfokus Morning Run. Sign up for the run at the Jfokus Morning Run MeetUp Event and meet me outside the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Center at 07:15 AM CET on Wednesday, February 8, 2023!

jChampionsConf 2023

This was the third edition of jChampionsConf. As the name implies, all speakers of this conference are Java Champions. The 100% virtual four-day conference (January 19, 20, 23, and 24) is available on the JChampions Conference YouTube channel.

Don’t worry if you missed a talk when it was LIVE. You can always go back and check it out at any time on YouTube!

Since I didn’t have a talk at this year’s edition, I volunteered as moderator for Has the J2EE vs Spring Infinity War reached an End Game? A short history of Java for the enterprise by Antoine Sabot-Durand. It was a very good talk where Antoine took us through the major events from the 20-year history of Enterprise Java. I highly recommend it!

Hashtag Jakarta EE #160

Welcome to issue number one hundred and sixty of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

Last week, I was speaking at THAT Conference in Round Rock, Texas. It was my first travel in 2023, and it felt really good to be on the road again. I have a feeling that 2023 will be at least as busy as 2022. Judging by the activity on Sessionize last year, I have something to live up to.

In Hashtag Jakarta EE #159 last week, I predicted that the high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11 would be a major topic in the following Jakarta EE Platform calls. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the platform call due to a conflict with my talk at THAT Conference. Judging from the minutes, it was a very productive call, and the Platform Project is eager to get started with the work of defining a plan for the release.

One of the key tasks identified is to start the work with the TCKs to be able to run with Java 21 by removing the usage of Security Manager and start early with running on Java 18, 19, and 20 to identify all potential issues with moving to newer runtimes.

I also want to remind you about the next Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call, which is scheduled for 11:00 AM ET on February 7, 2023. For this call, we are honored to have  Alan Bateman and Ron Pressler from the JDK Team at Oracle give us an update on Project Loom in the context of Jakarta EE. Check the public calendar for details on how to join.

THAT Conference 2023

It was my first time attending and speaking at THAT Conference. It is a three-day conference at the Kalahari Resorts and Convention Center in Round Rock, Texas. The original conference in Wisconsin has been going on for years, and this was the second time it was organized in Texas. It is an intimate and very well-organized conference. The crew certainly know what they are doing. It doesn’t hurt that it is organized in a waterpark either…

One of the things they do is to organize daily 5K morning runs. Thanks to Josh Gretz for organizing!

My talk was titled How to Be a Responsible Open Source Citizen. This is a brand new talk on a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately. It is different from the talks I usually do in that it didn’t contain a demo. This may sound like a relief for a speaker, but I kind of feel otherwise. Speaking for an hour just being backed by slides is more challenging than being able to lean on a demo to make it engaging. Check out the slides from my talk.

I really enjoyed my visit to Round Rock and THAT Conference, Texas and will certainly put it on my calendar over potential conferences next year as well. Next year’s conference will be January 29 – February 1, 2024.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #159

Welcome to issue number one hundred and fifty-nine of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

As I mentioned in Hashtag Jakarta EE #157, the Steering Committee of the Jakarta EE Working Group has been working on defining high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11. The effort, led by Steve Millidge, concluded with the following resolution at the steering committee call this week:

“Resolved, the Steering Committee recommends that the Jakarta EE Working Group begin planning for the next Jakarta EE 11 release as proposed in the Jakarta EE 11 Narrative Presentation, with the following high-level guidelines: 

  • Target Java version 21 
  • Target GA date Q1 2024
  • Priorities 
    • Unified APIs improving Developer Experience
    • New Specifications
    • Build on the Latest Java
    • Enable Community Contribution

These guidelines are provided to encourage a common community direction for Jakarta EE 11.“

It is certainly great news that the Jakarta EE Steering Committee defines these high-level guidelines for Jakarta EE 11. Now, it is up to the Jakarta EE Platform Project to define a plan for how to act on the guidelines. This will certainly be the main topic of the upcoming weekly Jakarta EE Platform calls.

The next Monthly Jakarta EE Platform Architecture call is scheduled for 11:00 AM ET on February 7, 2023. For this call, we are honored to have  Alan Bateman and Ron Pressler from the JDK Team at Oracle give us an update on Project Loom in the context of Jakarta EE. Check the public calendar for details on how to join.

While you are reading this, I am on my way to THAT Conference in Round Rock, Texas. The conference brands itself as “A summer cam pin the Texas winter for software geeks passionate about learning all things mobile, web, cloud, and technology.”.

Those of you that know me, know that I like to go for a morning run before the conference days. At THAT Conference, they have a 5K run on the schedule each morning. All attendees that join me there will get a Jakarta EE running shirt and a surprise swag.

To round off this Hashtag, check out the video Why Choose Jakarta EE.