Friday, May 10, 2013

Java EE 7: Specification, Services, Key features

Java EE Standard Services
The Java EE standard services include the following. Some of these standard services are actually provided by Java SE.
  1. HTTP
  2. HTTPS
  3. Java Transaction API (JTA)
  4. RMI-IIOP
  5. Java IDL
  6. JDBC API
  7. Java Persistence API (JPA)
  8. Java Message Service (JMS)
  9. Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI)
  10. JavaMail
  11. JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF)
  12. XML Processing
  13. Java EE Connector Architecture
  14. Security Services
  15. Web Services
  16. Concurrency Utilities
  17. Batch
  18. Management
  19. Deployment
Interoperability 
Many of the APIs described above provide interoperability with components that are not a part of the Java EE platform, such as external web or CORBA services.
Following figure illustrates the interoperability facilities of the Java EE platform. (The directions of the arrows indicate the client/server relationships of the components.)
Java EE Interoperability
Key features:
Summary of the key features of different specifications in the Java EE 7 platform:
  1. Java EE 7 (JSR 342):
    • The main theme is to easily run applications on private or public clouds
    • The platform will define application metadata descriptor to describe PaaS execution environment such as multi-tenancy, resources sharing, quality-of-service, and dependencies between applications
    • Embrace latest standards like HTML5, WebSocket, JSON and have a standards-based API for each one of them
    • Remove inconsistencies between Managed Beans, EJB, Servlets, JSF, CDI, and JAX-RS
    • Possible inclusion of JAX-RS 2.0 in the Web Profile, revised JMS 2.0 API
    • Technology Refresh for several existing technologies (more on this below) and possible inclusion of Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236) and JCache (JSR 107)
    • Status
  2. JPA 2.1 (JSR 338):
    • Support for multi-tenancy
    • Support for stored procedures and vendor function
    • Update and Delete Critieria queries
    • Support for schema generation
    • Persistence Context synchronization
    • CDI injection into listeners
    • Status
  3. JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR 339):
    • Client API - low level using builder pattern and possibly a higher level on top of that
    • Hypermedia - easily create and process links associated with resources
    • Form or Query parameter validation using Bean Validation
    • Closer integration with @Inject, etc
    • Server-side asynchronous request processing
    • Server-side content negotiation using "qs"
    • Status
  4. Servlets 3.1 (JSR 340):
    • Optimize the PaaS model for Web applications
    • Multi tenancy for security, session, resources, etc.
    • Asynchronous IO based on NIO2
    • Simplfiied asynchronous Servlets
    • Utilize Java EE concurrency utilities
    • Enable support for WebSockets
    • Status:
  5. Expression Language 3.0 (JSR 341):
    • Separate ELContext into parsing and evaluation contexts
    • Customizable EL coercion rules
    • Reference static methods and members directly in EL expressions
    • Adding operators like equality, string concatenation, and sizeof etc.
    • Integration with CDI such as generating events before/during/after the expressions are evaluated
    • Status
  6. Java Message Server 2.0 (JSR 343):
    • Ease of development - changes to the JMS programming model to make the application development simpler and easier
    • Remove/Clarify ambiguities in the existing specification
    • Integration with CDI
    • Clarification of the relationship between JMS and other Java EE specs
    • A new mandatory API to allow any JMS provider to be integrated with any Java EE container
    • Multi-tenancy and other cloud-related features from the platform
    • Status
  7. Java Server Faces 2.2 (JSR 344):
    • Ease of Development - making configuration options dynamic, make cc:interface in composite components optional, shorthand URLs for Facelet tag libraries, integration with CDI, OSGi support for JSF artifacts
    • Support implementation of Portlet Bridge 2.0 (JSR 329)
    • Support for HTML5 features like HTML5 Forms, Metadata, Heading and Section content model
    • Flow management, Listener for page navigation events, and new components like FileUpload and BackButton
    • Status
  8. EJB 3.2 (JSR 345):
    • Enhancements to the EJB architecture to enable PaaS, such as multi-tenancy
    • Factorization of container-managed transactions to use outside EJB
    • Further use of annotations
    • Alilgnment and integration with other specifications in the platform
    • Status
  9. CDI 1.1 (JSR 346, more details):
    • Global ordering of interceptors and decorators
    • API for managing built-in contexts
    • Embedded mode to allow startup outside Java EE container
    • Declarative control over which packages/beans are scanned in an archive
    • Injection for static members such as loggers
    • Send Servlet events as CDI event
    • Status
  10. Bean Validation 1.1 (JSR 349):
    • Integration with other Java EE specs
      • JAX-RS: Validate parameters and return values on HTTP calls
      • JAXB: Convert constraints into XML schema descriptor
    • Method level validation
    • Apply constraints on group collection
    • Extend the model to support AND and OR style composition
    • Status
  11. JCache (JSR 107)
    • API and semantics for temporary, in-memory caching of Java objects, including object creation, shared access, spooling, invalidation, and consistency across JVMs
    • Package: javax.cache
    • Status
      • Approved by the JCP
      • Spec lead: Yannis Cosmadopoulos, Cameron Purdy (Oracle) and Gregory Luck (Software AG)
      • Project page: jsr107spec
      • Mailing List Archive: jsr107@googlegroups.com
  12. State Management (JSR 350):
    • API that can be used by applications and Java EE containers to offload the responsibility of statement management into third party providers with different QoS characteristics
    • Java SE-based callers can access the state data by querying the state providers
    • Providers with different QoS can be added and API callers can query to meet their criteria
    • Package: javax.state and javax.state.provider
    • Status
  13. Batch Application for the Java Platform (JSR 352):
    • Programming model for batch applications and a runtime for scheduling and executing jobs
    • Defines Batch Job, Batch Job Step, Batch Application, Batch Executor, and Batch Job Manager for the standard programming model
    • Package: javax.batch
    • Status
  14. Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236):
    • Provides a clean, simple, independent API by building on JSR 166, making it appropriate for use within any Java EE contianer.
    • Package: javax.util.concurrent
    • Status
      • Approved by the JCP
      • Spec lead: Anthony Lai, Naresh Revanuru (Oracle)
      • Project page:
      • Mailing List Archive:
  15. Java API for JSON Processing (JSR 353):
Reference: