Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter1.Getting Started with WildFly
Java Enterprise Edition provides a standard to develop enterprise software, but allows the
developers to choose its specific implementation. For every technology that is included in
the Java EE (Enterprise Edition) specification, there is a reference implementation; an open
source library or component that fulfills all of the requirements. Companies and organiza-
tions can create their own versions of the components, which means that there is no central
Java EE platform that everybody uses. In place of that, we get multiple approaches on the
implemented specification, with improvements and optimizations for specific cases. At the
time of writing this, there are about 20 certified (full) implementations of Java EE 6 and
three implementations of Java EE 7.
An application server is a runtime environment that provides applications with all the Java
EE components. Glassfish is the reference implementation sponsored by Oracle, but begin-
ning from Version 4 (created for Java EE 7), there is no longer commercial support for it.
In this topic, you will learn how to develop applications on the WildFly Application Server,
previously known as the JBoss Application Server.
JBoss is a division of Red Hat, which seeks to provide a developer-friendly open source
ecosystem for enterprise development. Currently, the company supports multiple projects
(around 100), and some of them are implementations of Java EE specifications. The enter-
prise elements are combined in JBoss's own application server, WildFly.
It is worth noting that the name change from JBoss AS to WildFly was made to separate
the application server from the company and other subprojects. The name was chosen in a
public vote (more information on this is available at
http://jbossas.jboss.org/rename/vote
).
The new release features a scalable and high performing web server called Undertow,
which supports the HTTP upgrade mechanism and WebSocket protocol. What's more, the
new version of the container is even faster than JBoss Application Server 7, and offers a
unified configuration mechanism. However, the main essence of the latest release is the
Java EE 7 compliance, which allows developers to use technologies from the newest ver-
sion of the Java EE specification.
The focus of this topic is on application development; therefore, we will first need to gather
all resources required to deliver our applications. In this chapter, we will cover the follow-
ing topics in detail:
• An overview of Java EE and WildFly
