As most of you know the initial wave of Java EE 8 JSRs have been underway for a little while now, including the platform JSR itself, CDI 2, JSON-B, JMS 2.1, Servlet 4, JAX-RS 2.1, MVC and JSF 2.3. Three more Java EE 8 JSRs have been more recent additions - Java EE Security, JSON-P 1.1 and Java EE Management 2. The Java EE Management API 2 (JSR 373) had been the last of these to truly spin up and I am happy to report that it too has now gone fully into high gear under the leadership of specification lead Martin Mares. Though the initial expert group has already formed, you should still feel free to join as an expert if you want - just go to the JSR page linked above to nominate yourself.

Although it does not seem to get as much press thus far, this JSR is actually potentially one of the most interesting and useful parts of Java EE 8. For those familiar, it is essentially a modernization of the very dated "J2EE Management" (JSR 77) API. The intention of the old API was to allow for managing all kinds of resources on an application server - JMS resources, JDBC resources, JCA resources, JavaMail resources, drivers, deployment artifacts, EJBs, Servlets, servers, domains and so on. For various reasons the JSR saw limited success - some have argued that the API was overly complex, abstract and cumbersome. It certainly seems dated today as it is largely centered on EJB remote interfaces.

The new management API is a great chance to take a fresh look at the problem domain using an updated tool-set. Unlike JSR 77, the new API will make use of REST, SSE and potentially WebSocket. For those familiar with the popular GlassFish REST management interface, we can reasonably expect to see something similar. From an industry standpoint, this means being able to work with all Java EE 8 application servers using a uniform, predictable cross-platform API from all kinds of tools from simple HTTP command-line clients to Chef and Puppet, whether on the cloud or on premise. Though not strictly part of JSR 77, the new management API is also slated to handle deploying artifacts instead of simply managing/monitoring them, which is also extremely useful (for the curious, this was the domain of another very dated relatively obscure API - "J2EE Deployment" or JSR 88).

Note that you can always participate in a JSR without officially being part of the expert group by simply subscribing to the JSR user alias. In case of Java EE Management API 2.0 that alias is users at javaee-mgmt dot java dot net - go to the Java EE Management API 2.0 java.net project page to subscribe. Also remember that you can always contribute on an even more lightweight format through Adopt-a-JSR.