The Eclipse Foundation announced Tuesday the official release of Jakarta EE 8 expected for two years. The open source implementation of Java EE is now available and developers can already enjoy it.

Jakarta EE 8, as its name suggests, is functionally identical to Java EE 8, published by Oracle two years ago. The only change is the new process to change these specifications.

Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) is an extension of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) standard platform. The Java EE platform is built on the Java language and the Java SE platform. It adds a large number of libraries filling a lot of features that the standard platform does not fill with origin. The major goal of Java EE is to facilitate the development of robust and distributed web applications that are deployed and run on an application server. Java EE now changes its name to Jakarta EE.

According to the Eclipse Foundation, Jakarta EE 8, released yesterday, is fully compatible with Java EE 8 specifications and includes the same APIs. It also includes an instance of Javadoc (the industry standard for Java class documentation) and uses the same javax namespace. Its TCKs (Technology Compatibility Kits) are compatible with all Java EE 8 TCKs on which they are also based. Jakarta EE 8 will not require any changes to the Java EE 8 applications or their use of the javax APIs.

In addition, Jakarta EE has been optimized for cloud computing. According to the Eclipse Foundation, one of the main goals of Jakarta EE is to accelerate the development of enterprise applications for cloud computing (native cloud applications). Specifically, Jakarta EE 8 is an open source platform that provides a foundation for creating native cloud applications using a familiar Java build. Jakarta EE 8 represents the work of a whole community and marks the beginning of a new era for Java EE developers.

The Eclipse Foundation did not do it in isolation. Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, Payara, Red Hat, Tomitribe and other members of what was once the Java community also worked on Jakarta EE. At the same time, the Eclipse Foundation also announced the certification of Eclipse GlassFish 5.1, an implementation compatible with the new Jakarta EE 8 platform. The foundation announced that Eclipse GlassFish 5.1 is fully tested under open source licenses Jakarta EE 8 TCK for the complete platform and web profiles.

Source : Jakarta EE