Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1. What's New in Java EE 7
Because of their use, distributed applications require some non functional services
such as remote access, security, transaction management, concurrency, and robust-
ness, among others. Unless you have APIs that offer these types of services, you
need to implement them all from scratch and therefore, increase the number of bugs,
reduce software quality, and increase production costs and time. The Java EE plat-
form was set up to save the developer from these concerns. It is made up of a set of
APIs that facilitate the development and deployment of distributed, robust, scalable,
and interoperable applications.
Since its first release in 1999, the Java EE platform has evolved over time by offering
a newer, richer, and simpler version than the previous one. In order for you to have
an overview of the improvements in Java EE 7, this chapter addresses the following
topics:
• A brief history of Java EE
• The main goals of Java EE 7
• Novelties of Java EE 7
A brief history of Java EE
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.
