The Java EE is a fantastic project, but it was created in 1999 with J2EE name and it is 20 years old and its processes to evolve is not appropriated to new enterprise scenario. Then, Java EE needed change too.
Java EE has a new home and new brand and is being released today September 10th. The Java EE was migrated from Oracle to Eclipse Foundation and now is Jakarta EE, that is under Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) project. Today the Eclipse Foundation is releasing the Jakarta EE 8 and we’ll see what it means in this post.
The Java EE was a very stronger project and was highly used in many kind of enterprise Java application and many big framework like Spring and Struts. Some developers has questioned its features and evolving processes, But looking at its high usage and time in the market, its success is unquestionable. But the enterprise world doesn’t stop and new challenges are emerging all the time. The speed of change has grown more and more in the enterprise world because the companies should be prepared more and more to answer to the market challenges. Thus, the technologies should follow these changes in the enterprise world and adapt itself to provide the better solutions in these cases.
With that in mind, the IT world promoted many changes and solutions too, to be able to provide a better answer to enterprise world. One of these solutions was the Cloud Computing computing. Resuming Cloud Computing concept in a few words, Cloud Computing is solution to provide computer resource as a service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). This allows you to use only the resources you need resource and scale up and down when needed.
The Java EE is a fantastic project, but it was created in 1999 with J2EE name and it is 20 years old and its processes to evolve is not appropriated to new enterprise scenario. Then, Java EE needed change too.
Jakarta EE Goals
The Jakarta EE 8 has the same set of specification from Java EE 8 without changes in its features. The only change done was the new process to evolve these specifications.
The Java ecosystem has a new focus that is putting your power in the service of the cloud computing and Jakarta EE is a key to that.
Jakarta EE has a goal to accelerate business application development for Cloud Computing (cloud native application), working based on specifications worked by many vendors. This project is starting based on Java EE 8, where its specifications, TCKs and Reference Implementations (RI) was migrated from Oracle to Eclipse Foundation. But to evolve these specification to attend to Cloud Computing we can not work with the same process worked on Java EE project, because it is too slow to current enterprise challenges. Thus, the first action of Eclipse Foundation is changing the process to evolve Jakarta EE.
The Jakarta EE 8 has the same set of specification from Java EE 8 without changes in its features. The only change done was the new process to evolve these specifications. With this Jakarta EE 8 is a mark at Java enterprise history, because inserts these specification in a new process to boost these specification to cloud native application approach.
Jakarta EE Specification Process
The Jakarta EE Specification Process (JESP) is the new process will be used by Jakarta EE Working Group to evolve the Jakarta EE. The JESP is replacing the JCP process used previously for java EE.
The JESP is based on Eclipse Foundation Specification Process (EFSP) with some changes These changes are informed in https://jakarta.ee/about/jesp/. Follows the changes:
- Any modification to or revision of this Jakarta EE Specification Process, including the adoption of a new version of the EFSP, must be approved by a Super-majority of the Specification Committee, including a Super-majority of the Strategic Members of the Jakarta EE Working Group, in addition to any other ballot requirements set forth in the EFSP.
- All specification committee approval ballot periods will have the minimum duration as outlined below (notwithstanding the exception process defined by the EFSP, these periods may not be shortened)
- Creation Review: 7 calendar days;
- Plan Review: 7 calendar days;
- Progress Review: 14 calendar days;
- Release Review: 14 calendar days;
- Service Release Review: 14 calendar days; and
- JESP Update: 7 calendar days.
- A ballot will be declared invalid and concluded immediately in the event that the Specification Team withdraws from the corresponding review.
- Specification Projects must engage in at least one Progress or Release Review per year while in active development.
The goals of JESP is being a process as lightweight as possible, with a design closer to open source development and with code-first development in mind. With this, this process promotes a new culture that focus on experimentation to evolve these specification based on experiences gained with experimentation.
Jakarta EE 9
The Jakarta EE 8 is focusing in update its process to evolve and the first updates in feature will come in Jakarta EE 9. The main update expected in Jakarta EE 9 is the birth of Jakarta NoSQL specification.
Jakarta NoSQL is a specification to promote a ease integration between Java applications and NoSQL database, promoting a standard solution to connect Java application to NoSQL databases with a high level abstraction. It is fantastic and is a big step to close Java platform to Cloud Native approach, because NoSQL database is widely used on Cloud environments and its improvement is expected. The Jakarta NoSQL is based on JNoSQL that will be its reference implementation.
Another update expected on Jakarta EE is about namespace. Basically the Oracle gave the Java EE project to Eclipse Foundation, but the trademark is still from Oracle. It means the Eclipse Foundation can not use java or javax to project’s name or namespace in new features that come in Jakarta EE. Thus, the community is discussing about the transition of old name to jakarta.* name. You can see this thread here.
Conclusion
Jakarta EE is opening a new era in the Java ecosystem getting the Java EE that was and is a very important project to working under a very good open source process, to improvements. Although this Jakarta EE version come without features updates it is opening the gate to new features that is coming on Jakarta EE in the future. So we’ll see many solutions based on specifications to working on cloud soon, in the next versions of Jakarta EE.
Rhuan Rocha Blog 
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