Java EE 6 Platform Draft Published

synodinos writes "The public draft of the Java EE 6 Platform specification has been published and will remain open for public review and feedback until the 23rd of Feb, 2009. Perhaps the most notable part of this delayed draft is the Web Profile, which is first profile in the history of the Java EE platform. The draft is available for download and contains both the Java EE 6 Spec and the Web Profile Spec. There is a poll running at java.net regarding what the community thinks about the new spec. Although participation is yet rather small the results tend to show that the released draft did not cause any excitement."

Comments

Java.net

[goombah99]

that's got to be sacrilege?

JEE 6?

[SirLurksAlot]

I'll settle for 5 at this point. My shop is still using 1.4.2; it feels like I should be writing code on stone tablets! I suspect this is the case in any number of Java shops and it just reinforces the idea that Java is going to become the new COBOL. There is so much "legacy" code out there right now, and because of the inconsistencies between versions I can't see it going away any time soon.

Re:JEE 6?

[Dogtanian]

Java 6 has been out for a long time.

This is about Java EE. The spec that application servers implement (EJB, etc). Not the JVM version.

Yeah, well here's an insightful and funny comment on (I assume) J2EE:-

My hatred of Java has nothing to do with speed. The platform has become a giant morass of 'enterprisey' 'solutions' that create more need for more 'solutions'. And all Java 'solutions' must somehow involve XML, because it's standard, and enterprisey.

Re:JEE 6?

[wawannem]

The answer is "no," but for a different reason than what you may be thinking. Certain language features have been introduced recently that are used in these draft specs. For instance, for Servlet 3.0, one can configure a servlet with annotations (rather than configuring in the web.xml). Annotations weren't introduced until JDK 1.5. So, the JEE spec isn't tied to a specific JDK, but the JDK you choose at least needs to be able to support all the constructs referred to.

Re:JEE 6?

[canistel]

I feel the same way about c / c++ software... if it doesn't come in the standard package for my system (i.e. in the repository) you can forget about getting it working on your system. The sheer mess of libraries and versions needed for this and that, never mind the build systems etc., make it impossible to get anything to compile and run.

Pick your poison... I'm a java developer, and the first applications I grab (when there are more then one available for the "problem") is one built in Java.

Re:JEE 6?

[visualight]

There's one glibc.

Re:JEE 6?

[rve]

My current employer has outsourced nearly all of their IT and software development to IBM.

IBM itself estimated the cost of migrating and regression testing all server side software from Websphere 5.x to 6.0 (which will support J2EE 1.4, not Java EE 5) was deemed so prohibitively high, that they instead offered to extend support for the officially discontinued Websphere 5.x.

Supporting multiple versions at the same time, during a long transition period would increase operating cost significantly. I will be surprised if the customer moves to a websphere version that supports java EE 5 or higher within the next 5 years.

At another customer, in the same sector and of similar size, the situation was not much different.

Replacing something old fashioned but still functioning just fine can be very painful if this will mean a nine figure cost and a project of several years.

Re:JEE 6?

[Ilgaz]

Interestingly, IBM is also the company who provides a working Java 6 on PPC/Linux for years, years before Apple supported J2SE 6 on Intel (64bit Intel only).

Currently, if your need to run Java 6 on PPC, your only chance is installing a PPC Linux (not sure about BSD) and run IBM Java on it. I also keep wondering how the heck Apple doesn't call their old friends at IBM and borrow some code to fix the scandal of no Java 6 on PPC OS X.

Some wings of IBM are very old fashion but some aren't. Perhaps the enterprise division carries "don't fix a working thing" motto?

Not surpisingly, uninteresting

[DiegoBravo]

From TFA:

There is a poll running at java.net regarding what the community thinks about the new spec...

I like it 12.1%
I think the main spec is missing important JSRs 3%
I think the web profile spec is missing important JSRs 6%
I don't like it for some other reason 6%
I haven't read it, but plan to 9%
I haven't read it, and don't plan to 63.6%

Well, most people never read the specs (that are normally boring and with a lawyer-like style) but most Sun specs appear to being ignored because of bad timing for appearance (usually too late.) The "hot thing" are mostly the open source frameworks, from which Sun ends copying at the end.

The same is happening, albeit radically, in the Mobile editions with Android, despite the Sun auto-acclaimed ubiquity of Jave ME.

Re:Not surpisingly, uninteresting

[Serpent Mage]

Or if you look at the current poll numbers and not what it was when the article was first written

I like it 28.2% (26 Votes)
I think the main spec is missing important JSRs 6.5% (6 Votes)
I think the web profile spec is missing important JSRs 4.3% (4 Votes)
I don't like it for some other reason 4.3% (4 Votes)
I haven't read it, but plan to 14.1% (13 Votes)
I haven't read it, and don't plan to 42.3% (39 Votes)
Something else (please comment) (0 Votes)
Total Votes: 92

See some things take time. There might be many who don't plan to read it but there are also those who are actually reading it before putting in a vote. Those numbers come in a bit slower then the ones who don't plan to do anything at all.

Look at my face - is it bothered?

[sgodden]

I've been leading the development of Java applications for around 8 years. On that journey, I have used fewer and fewer features of it with each succesive project.

Nowadays, it seems that specs are a kind of summary of what has been learned from the frameworks which were created in the trenches by people that actually needed to deliver.

My latest project, which has been in development for around 1 year, delivers as a plain web application, and uses Hibernate, Google Guice, AspectJ and Echo3.

It's wonderful.

Sun don't have the capability, and I'm not sure that anyone has, to provide a full and relevant specification that will allow code to be developed that will run on any application server from any vendor.

Instead, choose your implementations and go back to good old OO basics to design interfaces behind which to hide those implementation choices. You don't need Sun to do that for you.

Re:Look at my face - is it bothered?

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I've never seen a serious commercial product shipped independently of an application server. I've always though of an application server to be more of a framework. As a product author/vendor, I make choices about which application server best serves my product. Then I build around it. When I sell to end users, I either enter into some kind of licensing/support agreement with the application vendor, or I require the end user to purchase licenses and support themselves.

The spec exists so that developers can write components that can interoperate with various application servers. For example, I can write a data connector for a proprietary mainframe application and use JCA to include that in distributed XA transactions. That resource adaptor can be used on virtually any application server, but the way it is deployed and configured will differ.

Or I might write a custom JAAS LoginModule to support some kind of proprietary authentication requirements. Again, the ability to integrate into an application server is undisputed, thanks to the specifications, but the mechanisms by which it is integrated is left to the implementor.

To support full drop-in interoperability, Sun would have to control all of the details of deployment and configuration, and then there goes competition. Everyone would just grab a copy Glassfish and rebrand it, because how then would you innovate?

As a developer I'm glad that there are differences in application servers. The various classloading strategies, configuration interfaces, and monitoring tools ensure healthy competition and innovation. And if something becomes ubiquitous (or problematic enough) then it gets added to the standard. (EJB3 is largely Spring+Hibernate, standardized, and Seam+Facelets is on its way to standardization through JSF 2 and WebObjects.)

One last thing. I've worked in shops that ran Tomcat plus a few third party libs (i.e. Struts and Hibernate), and I've worked in shops that have used the full JEE stack. In the former, we had infrequent but persistent problems with transactions (lost updates, etc.) that required implementing a lot of proprietary transaction management code. Using the full JEE stack you have things like JTA and JPA that manage locking for you, which can be painful if you don't know what you're doing. But it forces you to deal with real issues rather than pretending they don't exist, which is a must for true enterprise applications. The same can be said for resource pooling, security, managing web sessions and conversations, and many other issues.

Kudos to the JCP

[thammoud]

It might be slow but it has been very successful. Sure many specs never saw the light of day. That is to be expected from every committee.

Like it or not, Java is king on the enterprise server-side. J2EE sucked at the beginning but successive versions addressed many issues required by the enterprise. Persistence (Hibernate, Toplink), transactions and messaging (JMS) and the many available and free implementations. Thank you Sun for sticking with the JCP. Standards are wonderful.

We have an ASP platform built on J2EE 5.0 handling hundreds of millions of transactions a day all on a free stack thanks for the JCP and Linux.

I will duck now since this is /. home of the anti-Java.

Re:Kudos to the JCP

[Ilgaz]

Most of people doesn't get the "EE" (enterprise edition) in the article and comments on story like hitting a poor java applet/application on desktop while they have never seen/worked on enterprise environment. It happens to any Enterprise/non general thing mentioned on slashdot.

As far as I know, J2EE is the actual thing which saved the mainframes and near all finance industry runs on it.

I bet if some article posted regarding (true or not) .NET enterprise features, it would get comments like "but .net is 990 MB install" and stuff like that which aren't really cared in that focus.

For a genuine, truly reasonless beating you should check Real Networks stories. They went open source, shipped a full working media player for Linux, solved the mp3 patent issue, offer their million dollar patents free to GPL projects and numerous things. Some guy will still popup and say "spyware". It never fails to happen.

I disagree with your assessment of Java

[HardWoodWorker]

Ignoring your grammar difficulty, the majority of useful applications out there require a non-embedded database solution...therefore, some configuration is mandatory, for pretty much any application on any platform. To all of you complainers, I work on an application which deploys successfully to Jetty, Tomcat, JBoss 4.2, and Glassfish (as just the ones I've tested). In fact, I test it on all 4 platforms on a regular basis. Sorry, but it works perfectly for me.

Java is a great platform that gives excellent performance and scales well. Outside of initial JNDI datasource configuration (which is technically optional, but very much a best practice), I've had relatively few issues deploying from container to container. I think you folks are exaggerating the effort needed to successfully deploy Java applications.

I'm sorry, learning Java requires a bit of effort. It is a serious language designed to do serious work and optimized for larger, mission-critical projects. It's my first choice of a tool for writing a server side project and the one of the very few I'd choose for a project with more than 3 coders (.NET is the only other serious contender in the arena of large projects). I'm sorry you're having so much difficulty and all I can suggest is that you spend a little more time reading the tutorial and documentation and less time spreading baseless FUD.

I really wonder how many of these critical statements in these comments are being made by experienced, proficient Java developers, and how many are simply being made by a bunch of second rate self-proclaimed coders who are bitter that Java requires a bit greater understanding of OOP and the language to write a useful application than PHP or Ruby.

Java EE Irrelevant?

[ssfsx17]

The only times when I've had to look up the EE APIs these days are when I need a refresher on the guts of a HTTPServletRequest/Response or a SQL Connection. Otherwise, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, derivatives of the previously mentioned items and the like are the de-facto standards.

There are server-independeds apps

[abies]

I've never seen a serious commercial product shipped independently of an application server.

It depends on definition of 'serious' of course, but I was working for a company producing software for airline operations (briefing/loading, no booking nor avionics/realtime). We had number of clients, including some really big names in Europe. Software was written in J2EE and it was used on 2 different application servers, on 2 different databases (3 combinations in total) - only because companies we were supporting were mostly standarized on Websphere, so there was no need to test it on more. There is NO way any of the big names out there would start supporting new application server just to install our ear, which was probably managing less than 10% of their web activities.

Yes, it was a pain to port it from Websphere to Orion, but it was done by one guy in period of few months and after that I'm quite sure that next port would be already a brief (as most of WAS-specific stuff was cut off/replaced). My proposal to cut it properly and port it to Tomcat, getting rid of EJB was unfortunately ignored...