Java EE 7 First Look: Discover the new features of Java EE 7 and learn to put them together to build a large-scale application

Formerly called J2EE, the first version of Java EE platform was officially released in December 1999 with 10 specifications. Among these specifications, there were Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) for data presentation, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) for the management of persistent data, remote access to business services through RMI-IIOP (Remote Method Invocation over Internet Inter-ORB Protocol), and the JMS (Java Message Service) specification, which was used to send messages.

Despite efforts and many contributions, early versions of Java EE were too complex and difficult to implement. This led to much criticism and caused the rise of competing frameworks such as Spring Framework.

Having drawn lessons from its previous failures, the platform has considerably evolved over time until the production of Java EE 5, which permitted the platform to regain its lost esteem. From this version, Java EE continues to provide easier, richer, and more powerful versions of the platform.

The preceding diagram gives an overview of the important changes made to Java EE platform since the release of the first version in December 1999. This diagram highlights the release dates, updates, and major improvements in each version. It also allows us to have an idea about the central theme behind each version.

Since May 2006, the Java EE platform has known remarkable evolution in terms of implementation. First, with Java EE 5, it greatly simplified the development of applications by allowing the transformation of a simple Java class (POJO class) into a business object through annotations or XML descriptions. Still in the line of simplification, Java EE 6 helps enrich annotations and introduces new concepts such as pruning, RESTful Web Services, CDI, EJB Lite, and configuration by exception and web profiles. This allows the platform to provide many easy-to-deploy and consume services. After the success of Java EE 6, the JCP (Java Community Process) envisaged turning the platform into a service by providing an infrastructure for cloud support. But, due to lack of significant progress in the concerned specifications, it revised its objectives. It is from the perspective of preparing the migration of the Java EE platform to the cloud that Java EE 7 focuses on productivity and HTML5 support. Having missed the big goal (that is, the migration to the cloud), it will reach its new goals through completion of Java EE 6 features and addition of some new specifications.

The Java EE 7 was developed as a Java Specification Request (JSR 342). It has a total of 31 specifications including 4 new specifications, 10 major releases, and 9 MRs (Maintenance Releases). All these specifications are taken into account by the GlassFish Server 4.0 (accessible via the address https://glassfish.java.net/download.html), which is the reference implementation of Java EE 7.

The new specifications introduced in Java EE are as follows:

APIs inherited from the Java EE 6 platform that have undergone major changes are the following:

Only the following APIs are affected by maintenance releases:

After briefly introducing the evolution of Java EE and analyzing the objectives of the latest platform, we listed all the specifications that were improved upon or added in Java EE 7. In the next chapter, we will focus on new specifications to highlight their usefulness and show how they can be implemented.