Java EE (Enterprise Edition) 8 is not due until 2017, but given the multitude of proposals Oracle is considering for inclusion, the company will need all that time to sort out the revision. For now, HTTP/2, Model-View Controller, and security capabilities will likely make the cut.
Speaking at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco on Monday, Oracle’s Linda DeMichiel, Java EE spec lead, cited the list of proposals that must be addressed for Java EE 8. “This is definitely a work in progress.” The enterprise version of Java is geared to scalable, transactional applications and is featured in Java application servers such as WebLogic Server.
Developers maintain the goal of providing backward compatibility with previous releases, DeMichiel said. This release of Java EE has pretty much the same themes as Java EE 7, including ease of development through CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection) and improvement in infrastructure for cloud-based applications.
She listed multiple Java Specification Requests (JSR) under consideration for the planned upgrade. Proposals in the JSON and security realms include:
- Java API for JSON Binding (JSON-B), for converting Java objects to and from Java messages.
- Java API for JSON Processing 1.1, an update supporting JSON Pointer, for defining a string syntax for identifying a value within a JSON document, and JSON Patch, offering a format to describe changes to a document. DiMichiel said JSON processing was introduced as part of Java EE 7. “The goal here is to keep it up to date.”
- Java EE Security API, improving Java EE by ensuring the security aspect is useful in the cloud/PaaS application paradigm.
Other proposals, covering messaging, HTTP, REST, and MVC, include:
- Java Message Service 2.1, for accessing enterprise message systems from Java programs. Version 2.1 completes ease-of-use improvements started in version 2.0; an extended API is featured.
- Java Servlet Specification 4.0, exposing the latest advances of HTTP to Java, particularly HTTP/2. Goals for HTTP/2 include reducing latency; parallelism is supported as well.
- JAX-RS 2.1, or Java API for RESTful Web services, which improves integration with CDI and evaluates support for declarative security.
- MVC 1.0, backing the common MVC pattern in Web frameworks. The Model would leverage CDI and Bean validation, and the View would leverage JSP (Java Server Pages) and Facelets.
- Java EE Management API 2.0, updating the specification by adding REST interfaces. “This is certainly more suitable for use in cloud environments," said DeMichiel.
Developers also looked into cutting back capabilities and moving them to “proposed optional” status, where they would remain for the time being. For Java EE 8, the candidates include Corba and Enterprise JavaBeans 2, which could become optional in Java EE 9.