JSR-316: JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) Specification

Interview with Jason Greene, contributor

We asked Jason Greene about how Red Hat is a leading force for open standards, and about the role the JBoss Community and JBoss Enterprise Middleware play in promoting them.

Q: Please tell a little bit about yourself, your job title, and what projects you are currently involved in?

A: I work as a Principal Software Engineer at JBoss, a division of Red Hat and am currently the lead of the JBoss Application Server project. I am a member of the JCP, and represent Red Hat on the future Java EE specification. I also work with Gavin King on the JSR-299 (Web Beans) Expert Group. During my tenure at JBoss, I have worked in many areas including the application server, clustering, web services, AOP, and security. My interests include concurrency, distributed computing, hardware and programming language design.

You can read my blog here: http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Jason

Q: What is JSR-316?

A: JSR-316 defines the next major release of the Java EE platform, Java EE6. This specification essentially describes which JCP technologies are included, and how they interoperate. In addition it describes certain common aspects, such as classloading, deployment, and naming.

Q: How does this standard benefit users? What problems will it solve?

A: Java EE 6 will extend the capabilities of the Java EE platform to include many new technologies under development in the JCP. Notably this includes JSR-299 Contextual Dependency Injection (Web Beans), JSR-303 Bean Validation, and JSR-311 JAX-RS (REST for Java).

It also includes several improvements to technologies already in the EE platform. Some of the major updates include EJB 3.1, Servlet 3.0, JPA 2.0, and JSF 2.0.

Along with these improvements, this will be the first platform release to introduce EE profiles, which are specialized subsets of the full platform. The first such profile will be the Web Profile. The Web Profile will include only those specifications which are targeted towards the development of web applications. This allows for a smaller, and more specialized server runtime. An application which is developed against the Web Profile can later migrate to the full platform when its needs expand to other areas, like enterprise integration.

Another important change is that many of the technologies that make up the Java EE platform, such as EJB, will be usable outside of the container.

Q: How will JBoss developers and customers see these benefits? (project & product view)

A: We plan to fully leverage these and other improvements in JBoss AS6, which will form the basis of our EAP6 and EWP6 products. The enhanced APIs and technologies will simplify the development process, and improve the portability of EE applications. The introduction of a standardized rich dependency injection framework (Web Beans) will help customers modularize, and better test, their software. The ability to embed EJB will make unit testing business logic much easier since it can be done out of container.

Q: How did you come to participate in this effort? What have you done so far?

A: I was chosen by my colleagues at Red Hat to help improve the platform to better meet the growing needs of our community and our customers. I have mainly focused on ensuring that the Web Profile meets the needs of modern web application development, and on a smooth integration of Web Beans into the EE platform. We are already in the public draft phase, and should be releasing a proposed final draft soon.

A: Where can I learn more about JSR316?

Q: Check out this page: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=316