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New Features in Java EE 6.0

Author	:	Sutha
Topic	:	java-ee-6-0
Pages	:	1 2 3

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1.Introduction

This article presents what is new in the Java EE 6.0 edition. There is lot of new activities in the JCP expert groups to add more valuable features in Java EE 6.0 version. Roberto Chinnici and Bill Shannon are Spec Leads for the JSR 316. For the past two releases of Java EE versions, sun is focusing on making the environment more easier for the developers instead of adding more new technologies. For example, EJB 2.x is more difficult for the developers particularly the Entity Beans part in the EJB, then it has simplified the EJB 3.0 programming model in Java EE 5.0 by extensive use of annotations and introduced JPA 1.0 to reduce the complexitiy on persistance layer. The same approach continues in the Java EE 6.0 version also, they define it in the two topics namingly Extensibility and Profiles. Writing about all the changes in one article would become lengthy, so we will see some of the notable changes in this article like Profiles, Modularity and focus on Web tier.

2.New Features in JEE 6.0

Before looking into the details of the features, lets list what are the new things to be added in the Java EE 6.0. This section will list only the outline of the features with few lines of explanations. As we have already stated, the main goal of this release is ease of development and provide support for the third party frameworks. The new things in 6.0 is, adding new capabilities like Profiles, improving the technology like uisng annotations instead of XML in most of the technologies(Servlets 3.0, JPA 2.0) and removing the features (EJB's CMP) which is not widely used by the developers. As rod Lets jump into the features list:

2.1.Servlets 3.0

One of the major release in the Java EE 6.0 is the new version on Servlet technology which is given more attention by the community. The new version uses annotations to declare the servlets and making the deployment descriptos optional. Apart from using the annotations, as a whole the specification more focued on simplifying the web tier technologies. From Servlets 3.0 it is not required to changed web.xml for adding the third party libraries like Struts, Spring, JSF, etc. Servlets 3.0 introdues Web Fragments descriptor to specify the details of each libraries which is used by the container. This is one of welcome feature to the web developers since most of them finding hard to integrate the frameworks. There is more detailed article on New Features in Servlets 3.0 written by Christy. This article will give you more insight on the features. Please read on.

2.2.Web Beans 1.0

The problem with the Java EE edition is, the presentation layers(Servlets, JSP and JSF) and persistance layers(EJB 3.0, JTA, JCA and JPA) are grown seperatly without much closer interactions. There is no common technology to integrate the both web tier and the persistance tier. Web Beans main goal is to address this issue by defining beans which can be interacted by multiple tiers. Web Beans will be compatiable with technologies in the both tiers. Web Beans is influenced by the popular frameworks Google Guice and JBoss Seam. There is more detailed article on Web Beans and its Features written by Sutha.

2.3.JPA 2.0

Java Persistance API (JPA 1.0) is released in with the Java EE 5.0 edition on May 2006. JPA is one of the crucial technology for the Java platform to develope more flexible and simplified database applications. In the earlier days EJB CMP considered as more complex to develope database applications. So, sun has introdued JPA 1.0 with EJB 3.0 technology.

An excerpt from the JSR 317 says "including additional object/relational mapping functionality and query language capabilities, a criteria-based query API, and standardization of features currently designated as optional, and to align it with related JSRs that are currently in-process and/on in-plan for the Java EE 6 timeframe.". The following are the features may be included in the JPA 2.0 version:

Expanded object/relational mapping functionality, including greater flexibility in combining existing mapping options, support for collections of embedded objects, multiple levels of embedded objects, ordered lists, combinations of access types, etc.
Additions to the Java Persistence query language
An API for "criteria" queries
Standardization of sets of "hints" for query configuration and for entity manager configuration
Standardization of additional metadata to support DDL generation and "Java2DB" mapping
Expanded pluggability contracts to support efficient passivation and replication of extended persistence contexts in Java EE environments
Standardization of additional contracts for entity detachment and merge, and persistence context management
Support for validation

2.4.JSF 2.0

JSF 2.0 promises to ring lot of new developements to the web application. They classify the changes in this release as Ease of Development, New Features and Fixes, Performance, Technology Adoption. There will be bunch of annotations to be used in the JSF 2.0 and try to avoid use of faces-config.xml and web.xml. Everything can be done through annotations how Servlets 3.0 has done.

The specification provides lots of new features like expand the request processing lifecycle to be aware of Ajax, allow for bookmarkable JSF pages, provide a mechanism to easily access persistent store.

2.5.Other Features in Java EE 6.0

The mentioned features are the major changes in the new release. Apart from these major changes, there is lot of small changes in the technology. Look into the list of new JSR's: