The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 8.0.5 (beta). Apache Tomcat 8 is an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, Java Unified Expression Language and Java WebSocket technologies. Apache Tomcat 8 is aligned with Java EE 7. In addition to supporting updated versions of the Java EE specifications, Tomcat 8 includes a number of improvements compared to Tomcat 7. The notable changes include: - Support for Java Servlet 3.1, JavaServer Pages 2.3, Java Unified Expression Language 3.0 and Java WebSocket 1.0. - The default connector implementation is now the Java non-blocking implementation (NIO) for both HTTP and AJP. - A new resources implementation that replaces Aliases, VirtualLoader, VirtualDirContext, JAR resources and external repositories with a single, consistent approach for configuring additional web application resources. The new resources implementation can also be used to implement overlays (using a master WAR as the basis for multiple web applications that each have their own customizations). Apache Tomcat 8.0.5 includes numerous fixes for issues identified in 8.0.3 as well as a number of other enhancements and changes. The notable changes since 8.0.3 include: - Update the Eclipse JDT compiler to enable full Java 8 support in JSPs. - Update the default database connection pool implementation based on a repackaged Apache Commons DBCP to use the DBCP 2.0 release. - Add new, experimental HTTP and AJP connectors based on NIO2. Please refer to the change log for the complete list of changes: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/changelog.html The purpose of this beta release is to give users an opportunity to test Tomcat 8 and to provide feedback to the Tomcat community. Although it is a beta release, it is expected to run stably and is being used in production at the ASF for the ASF's Jira instance. The beta status is primarily because the Tomcat developers feel more feedback is required before a stable release because there may be a small amount of further refactoring. Note: This version has 4 zip binaries: a generic one and three bundled with Tomcat native binaries for Windows operating systems running on different CPU architectures. Downloads: http://tomcat.apache.org/download-80.cgi Migration guides from Apache Tomcat 5.5.x, 6.0.x and 7.0.x: http://tomcat.apache.org/migration.html Enjoy! - The Apache Tomcat team