Introduction

The asadmin Command Line Interface (CLI) is a mean of controlling Payara Server from the command line (or terminal, if you prefer). It allows you to start, stop or edit the server in a number of ways. While to some the administration console is the go-to for any administration that needs to be done, the CLI can be a potentially quicker and easier way of performing any administration tasks, particularly when dealing with headless servers, i.e. a server without a GUI.  

Introduction

Payara Micro, a lightweight and flexible microservices runtime platform, offers a seamless development experience through its Maven plugin. In this guide, we'll explore the Dev Mode of Payara Micro Maven plugin, focusing on the dev goal. This goal is tailored to streamline development by enabling various features for an efficient workflow.

Join us for our next free virtual event to take the first step towards building AI-powered Jakarta EE applications:

AI on Jakarta EE: A Hands-On Exploration of Toolkits and Libraries

Tuesday, the 30th of April, 2pm BST

Register: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/wfynmcu0b5cm 

Development productivity is crucial in Enterprise Java and Jakarta EE application development, supporting the delivery of high-quality software solutions quickly and efficiently. As a result, it is necessary to focus on streamlining development processes, optimizing resource utilization and empowering developers to work more effectively. Payara Micro Maven Plugin, Version 1, introduces a powerful tool – Dev Mode – designed to supercharge your development experience with Payara Micro. 

In our latest User Guide - available to download here - we look at this plugin, exploring its features, configurations and usage to help developers unlock stratospheric levels of productivity.

When dealing with complex distributed systems, decoupled, asynchronous communications may be more suited to support the exchange of information between different parts of a system, or even completely different systems. In effect, this decoupling makes it possible for different parts of a system to interact without being directly connected, enhancing scalability and fault tolerance. It is possible to set up such communications through a messaging platform like Apache Kafka and design highly scalable applications.

Our new eBook - available to download here - discusses how to use Apache Kafka for Jakarta EE Platforms that use Payara Server. 

Asynchronous communications are an essential elements of flexible and scalable Jakarta EE applications, as they can support the independent processing of multiple tasks, leading to improved performance and responsiveness. This webinar with Petr Aubrecht  & Luqman Saeed - watch here - delves into the world of Java Message Service (JMS) and its integration within Jakarta EE applications to help developers harness the power of asynchronous communications and messaging for enhanced architectures.

Introduction

Java 21 introduced a number of new features that are designed to help developers craft enterprise-level applications. These enhancements can improve how quickly and smoothly applications run while making coding simpler for developers. Highlights include:

We're excited to announce the April 2024 release of Payara Platform!  This update includes a mix of critical bug fixes, component upgrades, and exciting new tools in the Payara Tooling Ecosystem.  Our enterprise customers will particularly benefit from the new Diagnostics Tool and Dependabot scanner, designed to streamline operations and security.  Also, everyone gets a glimpse into the future with the Payara 7 Alpha 1 preview!

In our latest podcast episode, you can listen to our insightful conversation with David Heffelfinger, CTO of Ensode Technology, on his latest venture: the release of his book, 'Jakarta EE Application Development.'  With nearly three decades of professional software development experience under his belt, David is a true veteran in the field. Java enthusiasts will recognize him as a Java Champion and the prolific author behind numerous publications on Java, Java EE, Jakarta EE, GlassFish, NetBeans and more.

Head over toSpotifyorYouTube to listen to the conversation and subscribe to be the first to know when the next episode is out! 

Introduction

The effective management of production deployment runtimes is essential to ensuring the success, competitiveness and sustainability of your Jakarta EE  applications as well as your business. However, it's important to leverage the right tools, as managing production deployment runtimes can drain your small business's resources in several ways:

Dive into the dynamic world of NoSQL databases with Java Champion Otavio Santana and discover how they can revolutionize your Java applications in our interactive workshop - REGISTER HERE. Designed for senior engineers, architects, and Java developers with a keen interest in NoSQL databases, this workshop brings to life the cutting-edge concepts and techniques from the acclaimed book “Java Persistence with NoSQL: Unleashing the Power of NoSQL: Integrating MongoDB, Cassandra, Neo4J, Redis, and more in Enterprise Java Architecture.

There are now a lot of advanced productivity tools that can help software developers streamlining their coding activity, e.g. automating repetitive but necessary tasks or supporting troubleshooting. This webinar - watch here - with Trisha Gee, Java Champion and Developer Evangelist at Gradle, and Luqman Saeed, Jakarta EE Expert at Payara, covers some of the most effective strategies and latest solutions that can help engineers with their Java application developments. 

Ahoy, Payara Community! Here's an overview of our fresh catch for March, where we've reeled in our favorite bits from the depths for you to enjoy and power up your Jakarta EE applications!

To effectively express a query, it's important to utilize a typesafe way that help you enhance readability and reduce runtime errors.

Our latest User Guide - available to download here - discusses how to use the Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) Criteria API to build dynamic entity queries programmatically. 

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) activities are designed to convey your Jakarta EE applications to end users. Thanks to the unique flexibility of Jakarta EE, multiple CI/CD options are available to software developers. In effect, these are independent from your specific Jakarta EE. 

Watch the video below to learn more about some of the CI/CD alternatives available, what they can offer as well as guide you through how you can implement them. You will be able to follow a demonstration on configuring GitHub Actions for CI/CD and deploying a Jakarta EE applications from the IDE, through GitHub, and onto Payara Cloud. You will also be able to learn how to deploy and manage your applications on Payara Cloud.

Slow SQL queries can silently undermine your application's efficiency and the overall user experience. These sluggish queries not only frustrate users with long load times, but they can also have significant costs:

This article provides a brief introduction to using Instaclustr’s managed PostgreSQL Database and Apache Kafka from Payara Cloud. It was created to assist entrants in the upcomingPayara Hackathon (you can still sign up!) spin-up and configure some potentially useful Instaclustr technologies forJakarta EEapplications.

We're happy to announce the March 2024 release of Payara Platform Enterprise 6.12.0 and Community 6.2024.3. This release brings a number of improvements, bug fixes, and component upgrades, delivering greater reliability for your Jakarta EE workloads.

Ready to level up your Jakarta EE applications with asynchronous communication? Join our webinar next week - REGISTER HERE -  to unlock the power of Java Message Service (JMS) and learn how to integrate messaging for flexible architectures.

Deploying a web application often means connecting to a database. In this guide, I'll show you how to connect a Jakarta EE application on Payara Cloud to a PostgreSQL database hosted on Neon.

Jakarta EE offers a reliable foundation for enterprise-scale Java applications. Sometimes, however, the traditional deployment model can add a layer of complexity. Payara Micro addresses this challenge by providing a streamlined approach for managing your Jakarta EE deployments.

This webinar with Edwin Derks  & Luqman Saeed - watch here - is specifically tailored to reveal the productivity advantages that Jakarta EE brings to developers like you in the enterprise Java domain. Whether you're a developer, architect, or tech enthusiast aiming to enhance efficiency in Java enterprise application development, this recording is crafted with you in mind!

Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE) is a set of community developed, abstract specifications that together form a platform for developing end-to-end, multi-tier enterprise applications. Jakarta EE is built on the Java Standard Edition, and aims to provide a stable, reliable and vendor neutral platform on which to develop cloud native applications.

Our new eBook - available to download here - discusses the general theory surrounding the Java Enterprise Development platform. 

Payara Cloud, introduced in November 2022, is the next generation of fully-managed cloud native application runtime that offers a flexible and powerful way to easily run Jakarta EE applications in the cloud. This webinar - REGISTER HERE - presented by the Java Champion Michael Redlich, will provide an introduction to the Payara Platform and Payara Cloud. There will then be a review of a Jakarta EE application and demonstrate how to deploy and execute it locally to Payara Server and Payara Micro, then in the cloud with Payara Cloud.

Payara Micro is a microservices optimised, cloud-first Jakarta EE runtime capable of executing WAR files directly from the command line, eliminating the need for a conventional application server setup. This efficient method, coupled with its versatility and extensive functionality, makes Payara Micro an ideal choice for simplifying your Jakarta EE development process. Its wide array of command-line options is designed to simplify configuration and management, further enhancing its appeal.

We're excited to announce that the 2nd edition of Payara Hackathon is now open for sign ups! Find out more and sign up here!

The Payara Cloud Hackathon will be running from the 11th until the 31st of March and this time, we are looking for applications that tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. With a focus on deploying to our Payara as a Service platform Payara Cloud, this is your chance to showcase the power and versatility of Jakarta EE technologies.

We are happy to announce the February 2024 release of Payara Platform Enterprise 6.11.0 (request free trial here) and Payara Platform Community 6.2024.2 (download here) are available!

This month's release comes with a number of enhancements, bug fixes, component upgrades, and new capabilities aimed at improving the stability and developer experience of the Payara Platform for you. See below for the details. 

Watch the below recording of our recent webinar which will guide you through the process of setting up a seamless deployment pipeline for your Jakarta EE applications, leveraging the robustness of GitHub Actions and the simplicity of Payara Cloud CLI.

The upcoming JDK 22 release is set to introduce a promising new feature, JEP 461: Stream Gatherers (Preview), aimed at enriching the Java Stream API with capabilities for custom intermediate operations. This addition will enable you to manipulate data streams in ways that were previously complex or not directly supported by the existing API. 

Greetings Payara Community! Enjoy our favourite bits we gathered in our monthly catch for January.

Payara Micro is a lightweight Jakarta EE and MicroProfile runtime optimized for containerization and microservices. Given the rise of cloud native and containerized application deployments, Payara Micro is a great choice for when you need consistent performance from a smaller runtime. In this blog post, we take a look at five Payara Micro features that you may not know about.  

Payara Cloud is our robust platform designed to simplify and streamline the deployment, management, and monitoring of your Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications. By eliminating the need for much of the usual server configuration and maintenance, it allows you to focus more on your core business logic, delivering value much faster to your customers.

Splashing into the new year with vigor, the Payara Engineering kitchen announces the first release of Payara Platform for 2024.

This release brings enhancements, security fixes, and bug fixes, ensuring a more robust and efficient environment for your mission critical workload.  Payara Enterprise 6.10.0 (request free trial) comes with 2 improvements, 4 bug fixes, 10 component upgrades and 2 security fixes. Payara Community 6.2024.1 (download here) also comes with 2 improvements, 4 bug fixes, 10 component upgrades and 2 security fixes.

In the digital age, where data breaches are common and privacy is paramount, ensuring users use strong passwords is the first step to securing applications from never-ending threats. Passay, a Java password generation and policy management library helps enhance the security layer of any Java application. Let's dive into the core components of Passay in this blog post to see how you can employ it in your own applications. 

Kubernetes is a topic that is frequently discussed in the development community, especially as the IT landscape increasingly shifts towards cloud and microservices. However, it’s crucial to evaluate whether it is genuinely indispensable for your environment or just another case of the next 'new and shiny' object capturing attention without substantial benefits. In this blog, we’ll delve into the reasons why Kubernetes might sometimes fall victim to the hype and explore whether it is the right fit for all scenarios. 

The Java Platform, over the years, has shown how resilient and reliable a development platform it is. Of course, as developers, we always want to see how fast we can execute our code. Well, now you have the chance to find out, or actually prove how fast Java is. Gunnar Morling, Software Engineer at Decodable has a very exciting Java warmup game for us all. He calls it the One Billion Row Challenge. Huh? Yup. Let's hear it from him.

Now that New Year is here, we reflect on 2023 and look ahead to what you can expect from our entire suite of Payara products in 2024. What is the future for Payara Community, Enterprise and Payara Cloud? Read below to find out more about Payara Rodmap in the coming months -  Java 21 compatibility, the upcoming Jakarta EE 11 and our plan for support, and more!

You can also watch the Payara Roadmap 2024 presentedat the Virtual Payara Conference last month.

Unleash the power of concurrency in your Jakarta EE applications on the Payara Platform by diving into the world of multi-threaded programming. This hands-on webinar - WATCH HERE - explores the different approaches to writing multi-threaded applications on the Jakarta EE Platform, with a special spotlight on the groundbreaking virtual threads introduced in Java 21.

As applications grow in complexity, ensuring smooth and efficient execution becomes paramount. Multi-threading is a great tool in your developer arsenal, facilitating concurrent task execution, significantly improving application performance and responsiveness. The introduction of virtual threads in Java 21 has further broadened the horizon, offering a simplified, high-throughput concurrency model.

The Payara Platform is a comprehensive ecosystem designed to meet the diverse needs of today's enterprise Java developers like you, offering robust solutions for Jakarta EE applications. The Platform is split into two main products, namely Payara Server and Payara Micro.

In this podcast episode, we would like to invite you to listen to the conversation we had with Otavio Santana. Otavio is a passionate architect and software engineer and a very prominent persona in the Java EE and Jakarta Community. He is a Java Champion, recognized for his vast contributions to the Java and open source ecosystem. He is a committer and leader in several open source products and specifications.

Head over toSpotifyorYouTube to listen to the conversation and subscribe for more episodes! 

The latest release of MicroProfile - 6.1 - was delivered in October and it comes with some changes and new fuctionalities - we will take you through those in this article, so carry on reading if you want to find out more on what's new in MicroProfile!

Happy New Year!

As we step into 2024, let's take a look back at the innovations, events and news that shaped December 2023, and gear up for an exciting year ahead!
Read below for a summary of the most newsworthy, useful and interesting Java industry news, conferences & events, new guides and tutorials.

New to Payara Platform? Check out these two quick videos where we show you how to download and install Payara Server 6 & Payara Micro 6.

Securing applications is a critical aspect of modern software development, ensuring that only authorised users can access sensitive functionalities and data. In the realm of Java enterprise development, one of the robust solutions for securing applications is the use of MicroProfile JWT (JSON Web Tokens). This approach combines the strengths of Jakarta EE, with the agility and portability of MicroProfile standards, particularly for microservices architectures.

Download the Guide - 
Securing Jakarta EE Applications with MicroProfile JWT

Diving into the digital depths with a surge of enhancements, the December 2023 release of Payara Platform has arrived. This release comes with significant improvements, bug fixes, and component upgrades, further enhancing the robustness and capabilities of the Payara Platform for Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications.

Payara Enterprise 6.9.0 (request your free trial here) comes with 3 improvements, 4 bug fixes and 7 component upgrades. Payara Community 6.2023.12 (download here) also comes with 2 improvements, 3 bug fixes and 7 component upgrades.

Java has been a staple in the software development world for decades, renowned for its robustness and vast ecosystem. However, some seasoned Java developers have encountered limitations within its collections framework, particularly when dealing with ordered elements. Enter JEP 431. JEP 431, part of the Java Enhancement Proposal system, represents a significant advancement in Java's ongoing evolution. The Java Enhancement Proposal system is a process for proposing, reviewing, and implementing new features in the Java programming language. JEP 431, in particular, introduces necessary enhancements to the Java Collections Framework, addressing longstanding limitations and expanding its capabilities for us Java developers.

In the journey through our Jakarta Batch blog series (see Part 1 here and Part 2 here) , we've taken a deep dive into the architecture of batch jobs, the inner workings of chunks, and the best practices for optimising their processing. Now, it's time to shed light on the less-discussed but equally vital aspect of batch processing: the task-oriented approach, specifically the role of batchlets in Jakarta Batch jobs. We'll also explore how to effectively monitor and manage batch job lifecycles to maintain efficiency and reliability.

In this podcast episode, we’d like to invite you to listen to the conversation we recently had with Ken Fogel. Ken is a well known expert in Java and Jakarta EE industry, he’s been working with Java for over 20 years.  Unsurprisingly, he is also a Java Champion, and a Java Community Process Executive Committee member. He is an active conference organizer, very prominent and active in the Java, Java EE and Jakarta EE community.

So there’s no wonder why we had to invite him to our podcast!

Head over toSpotifyorYouTube to listen to the conversation and subscribe for more episodes! 

Java’s Ahead-of-Time (AOT) native compilation, as seen in frameworks like GraalVM, boasts rapid startup times and lower memory usage. However, for Jakarta EE application developers, the practical benefits of these advantages often don’t translate into substantial economic or technical gains. This leads to questioning the viability of investing resources into adapting existing Jakarta EE applications for GraalVM compatibility.

Download the Guide - Reassessing Native Compilation for Jakarta EE Applications: A Pragmatic Perspective

It's time for the November Payara Monthly Catch! Our monthly news roundup ensures you get the best news of Java, Jakarta EE, MicroProfile, and open source. 

Let's have a look at the most interesting and important news from last month.

Cloud deployment refers to the process of hosting applications on a remote server infrastructure, accessible over the internet. This paradigm has revolutionised software development, offering immense scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. Traditional deployment methods have evolved to embrace modern cloud environments, ranging from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), where you manage servers but not physical hardware, to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a Service (SaaS) solutions, which abstract much of the server management and maintenance tasks.

Download the Guide - Automated Jakarta EE Cloud Deployments With GitHub Actions And Payara Cloud

Continuing from where thelast blog post left off, let's delve deeper into the intricacies of configuring the chunk in Jakarta Batch. As we've seen, a chunk represents a set of items to be processed as a batch. Now we will explore how to control this process, manage potential errors, and ensure efficient execution.

In a world where technology never sleeps, staying ahead is not just an advantage; it's a necessity.  This is especially true for organisations running enterprise-level applications on Java EE 8 through  Payara Enterprise 5. While this platform has undoubtedly served you well, the release of Jakarta  EE 10 and Payara Enterprise 6 marks the beginning of a new era in Enterprise Java development. 

In the dynamic world of software development, efficiency and speed are key. This is where Payara Starter, our new code scaffolding tool, comes in. Designed to streamline and simplify the initial setup process, Payara Starter helps developers like you kickstart your Jakarta EE projects with ease, whether you prefer Maven or Gradle build systems.

Splashing onto the scene with a tidal wave of updates, the November 2023 release of Payara Platform is here. This release brings enhancements, security fixes, and bug fixes, ensuring a more robust and efficient environment for your mission critical workload. Payara Enterprise 6.8.0 comes with 4 improvements, 3 bug fixes, 1 security fix and 1 component upgrade. Payara Community 6.2023.11 also comes with 4 improvements, 3 bug fixes, 1 security fix and 1 component upgrade.

Our pioneering virtual business and technology conference will take place on December 14th.  Gain unique insight into Jakarta EE from the best in the business!

We have designed the programme to cater to all levels of Jakarta EE knowledge - learn as a leader! The day-long program has a focus on educating Java professionals and business leaders about the power and potential of Jakarta EE. 

The conference is totally virtual, so you can join from anywhere in the world. You can also pick and choose which sessions to join, and all those who registered will be able to access recordings to watch at their leisure.

Read on for the full schedule...

Garbage collection is a cornerstone feature in the Java Language. It automates memory management by reclaiming memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use, freeing you the developer up from manual memory allocation and deallocation tasks. This feature is vital for preventing memory leaks and ensuring that applications run efficiently over time.

Deploying Jakarta EE applications to the cloud can be a complex task if you are using traditional deployment options like containers, Kubernetes or other such options, but not with Payara Cloud. Uploading a Jakarta EE binary artefact (.war file) and deploying it to the cloud can be achieved in four straightforward steps. They are:

Java's journey towards fostering more expressive and efficient code has taken a remarkable leap with the advent of Record Patterns, encapsulated in JEP 440. This feature, previewed in both Java 19 and Java 20, is now a part of the language from Java 21, marking a significant stride towards reducing the verbosity traditionally associated with Java language. In this post, we will delve into the essence of Record Patterns, take a look at its benefits, and explore how it fits in with the existing pattern matching capabilities of Java.

In the world of programming, stepping stones are crucial for novices to transition into proficient developers. This journey often begins with understanding the syntax and semantics of a given programming language. Java, being one of the popular programming languages, has always aimed to be an effective medium for both novices and experienced developers. The recent release of Java 21 introduced a core feature, known as Unnamed Classes and Instance Main Methods through JEP 445, aimed at simplifying the learning curve for new programmers, making it easier for them to write their first program without much fanfare and verbosity.

For this second episode of the Payara Podcast,Rachel Stephens,Senior Analyst at RedMonk (the developer-focused industry analyst company) and Steve Millidge,Payara Founder and CEO, discussed the case of Hashicorp.

Hashicorp, the vendor of Vagrant, Terraform and other deployment-automation tools, made a controversial change from Free and open source (FOSS) status to a Business Source License, in August 2023. 

As the leaves take on a golden hue and the cool breeze of October sets in, we're thrilled to bring to the table the latest iteration of the Payara Platform. The October 2023 release features 3 bug fixes, 9 component upgrades, 1 security fix and 1 improvement for Payara Enterprise 6.7.0. Payara Community 6.2023.10 also features 4 bug fixes, 9 component upgrades, 1 security fix and 1 improvement.

Devoxx Belgium 2023, the premier Java developer conference, held in Antwerp, Belgium is an event we eagerly anticipate. As representatives of Payara, a sponsor of the conference, we had the privilege of attending this year's gathering, which took place at the iconic Kinepolis Antwerpen Cinema.

Pattern Matching for switch, introduced in Java 21 via JEP 441, marks a significant enhancement to the Java programming language, offering a more expressive and compact way to handle complex decision blocks. This feature extends the existing switch construct by allowing patterns in case labels, thus facilitating more concise, readable, and safe code when dealing with multi-way comparisons​​.

Java 21 introduces the Foreign Function and Memory (FFM) API, which allows Java programs to interoperate with code and data outside the Java runtime. Java operates within a managed environment known as the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JVM serves as an abstraction layer between the executing Java code and the underlying hardware and OS. One of the core design principles behind the JVM is to provide a secure and isolated environment for Java applications to run. This isolation is beneficial for several reasons, including security and stability; it mitigates risks such as unauthorized access to system resources or memory corruption, which could lead to vulnerabilities like buffer overflows.

In the ever-evolving landscape of enterprise applications, staying updated with the latest technologies is not just an option—it's a necessity for competitive advantage. The release of Jakarta EE 10 brought forth a myriad of enhancements that can significantly improve the scalability, security, and performance of your enterprise applications. But how do you make the transition smoothly? What are the best practices and strategies for upgrading?

In this recorded webinar tutorial - watch here -  we guide you through the essential steps and considerations for a successful upgrade. We will delve into the new features and improvements introduced in Jakarta EE 10 and why they make a compelling case for the upgrade.

Developers use MySQL databases in every corner of the world to create cloud-based applications. As they continually look for tools that offer better scalability, performance, and flexibility, many are pairing MySQL with the JSON data format.

Combined, these provide a wealth of benefits for developers. We’re going to briefly examine the ins and outs of MySQL and JSON to get you up to speed, then take a look at some of the things you can achieve using them together.

With Java 21 released today and Jakarta EE 11 slated for release in Q1 of 2024, the landscape for Java development is evolving rapidly, particularly in the cloud-native space. Although these two are not being developed together, they are intrinsically linked: Jakarta EE 11 will have Java 21 as its base Java SE version. This blog post will explore what these two significant releases bring to the table individually and how they can collectively enhance cloud native Java development.

We are excited to announce the latest releases of the Payara Platform: Enterprise 6.6.0 and Community 6.2023.9. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.6.0 comes with 2 security fixes, 2 bug fixes, 5 component upgrades and 3 improvements. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.9 also comes with 2 security fixes, 2 bug fixes, 5 component upgrades, and 3 improvements. 

For Payara Enterprise users, Payara Platform 5 is still updated! Payara Platform Enterprise 5.55.0 is out this month. 

Are you a Jakarta EE Developer? Are you looking to level up your cloud deployment? You have options! 

In this technical webinar, our expert Luqman Saeed talks you through 3 key options for your cloud deployment with Jakarta EE:

☁️Docker Containers to Azure Web Apps
☁️Jakarta Runtime installation on a virtual machine and app deployment
☁️Fully managed Jakarta EE cloud deployment runtimes

This is also a great webinar if you are curious about Payara Cloud as we are also discussing many different cloud deployment options- if you have heard about our new fully managed cloud native application runtime for Jakarta EE, this your chance to see exactly how it works. 

One of the most daunting tasks organizations face is keeping pace with fast evolving technological landscapes, while ensuring existing applications remain robust and functional. If you're still running applications on Java EE 7/8,  the release of Jakarta EE 10 sets the upgrade clock ticking. Of course you can keep running such applications with a Payara Enterprise 5 plan. However, if you need to upgrade to take advantage of the many new features in Jakarta EE 10, then read on!

So, you're a Java developer, or maybe you're aspiring to be one. Either way, you've probably faced the challenge of managing multiple versions of Java on your machine. One project requires Java 8, but another needs Java 11, yet another requires Java 17. The open-source library you're keen on contributing to needs yet another version. What do you do? You start juggling environment variables, and before you know it, your system is a tangled mess of configurations. Not fun, right?

And let's not even get started on the difference between JRE and JDK. It's easy for beginners to get confused about the distinction between the two. The JRE (Java Runtime Environment) is sufficient if you just want to run Java applications, but if you're going to be developing them, you'll need the JDK (Java Development Kit). The JDK includes everything the JRE has, plus additional tools and utilities for developers like the Java compiler, or javac.

Tired of all this complexity? Let me introduce you to SDKMan!, a version manager that streamlines the process, making it a breeze to manage multiple Java versions on your machine. Not just Java, SDKMan! can be used to manage a lot more kits and tools such as Maven. In this blog post however, we see how to use SDKMan! to effortlessly manage different versions of Java on the same machine. 

For this first ever episode of Payara Podcast, we had a chat with Rachel Stephens, Senior Analyst at RedMonk (the developer-focused industry analyst company) and Steve Millidge - Payara Founder and CEO. 

We talked about open source, focusing  on using it in the context of enterprise. We talked about public perception of open source, common myths surrounding the use of open source technologies for enterprise businesses, security aspects of using open source and much more. 

Head over to Spotify or YouTube to listen to the conversation and subscribe for more episodes! 

Enjoy!

In the realm of Jakarta EE development, orchestrating a smooth interaction between your application and the server is paramount. The Payara IntelliJ Plugin is one such tool that facilitates seamless integration between the Payara Server and the IntelliJ IDEA. This plugin empowers developers to efficiently manage and deploy Jakarta EE applications, and troubleshoot issues right from their development environment. In this blog post, we will explore the various features of the Payara IntelliJ Plugin and provide a step-by-step guide on how to make the most of its capabilities.

Coming fresh and energised from summer vacation, the Payara engineering kitchen presents to you the August 2023 release, with bug fixes and component upgrades. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.5.0 comes with 10 bug fixes and a component upgrade. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.8 also comes with 10 bug fixes and 1 improvement. 

Sealed classes are a powerful feature introduced in Java 15 that allows developers to control the inheritance hierarchy of a class. In this blog, we will explore the concept of sealed classes in the context of Jakarta EE, a set of specifications for building enterprise applications in Java.

Upcoming Java 21 brings a bunch of new features, including very interesting progress in concurrency. There are two main improvements – virtual threads and structured concurrency.

In this article, we discuss incoming usage of these enhancements inJakarta EE (formerly Java EE, now an open source project maintained by the Eclipse Foundation), a set of specifications that enables the worldwide community of Java developers to work on cloud native Java enterprise applications. Jakarta Concurrency is the concrete specification describing the expected behaviour.

The support in Jakarta EE is currently under development, details may change in the final implementation.

Apache NetBeans is a popular IDE for Java development, offering a wide range of features for streamlining the development process. Payara Server, a robust and scalable option for deploying Jakarta EE applications, seamlessly integrates with Apache NetBeans. In this blog, we explore the seamless usage of Payara Platform 6 within Apache NetBeans, highlighting the benefits and demonstrating how it enhances your development workflow. Whether you're starting a new project or working with an existing app, this guide helps you leverage the power of Payara Server in your development process. Follow the steps in this blog to set up Apache NetBeans to use Payara Server for running your web apps.

Coming out of the Payara pond to help cool down your summer, the Payara July 2023 release is out with enhancements and bug fixes. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.4.0 comes with 5 bug fixes, 1 improvement, and 3 component upgrades. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.7 also comes with 5 bug fixes, 3 component upgrades, and 2 improvements. 

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) has become the de facto standard for data interchange in modern web applications. Its simplicity, readability, and compatibility have made it a popular choice for representing structured data. The JSON-P (JSON Processing) API provides a powerful and convenient way to parse, generate, transform, and query JSON data on the Jakarta EE Platform.  In this blog post, we will explore the fundamentals of the JSON-P API, its core functionalities, and how it empowers you to work with JSON effortlessly in your Jakarta EE applications. 

Apache Camel is an open source enterprise integration framework that helps you connect different systems and applications together with as little effort as possible. It provides a simple and powerful way to define and implement message-based routing and mediation rules. It is an implementation of the patterns described in the book Enterprise Integration Patterns by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf.

In simple terms, Apache Camel acts as a "translator" or "bridge" between different systems. It allows you to easily route, transform, and process messages as they move from one system to another. It supports a wide range of communication protocols and data formats (JSON, XML, YAML, etc.), making it easier to integrate different technologies and applications.

Do any of these situations sound familiar to you and your business? 

Need stable Payara 5. I am using latest community version.

I am using Payara 5 Community Edition and I plan to upgrade to Payara 5 Enterprise Edition.
What would be the costs?

We are using Payara Version 5.2022.5 and for some of our customers we want to move to Payara Enterprise to be up-to-date with current security patches.

We are currently using the Community edition of Payara and would like to stay with Payara 5. How much do the enterprise licenses cost to continue to do this?

I currently use Payara 5 Community and have done for many years. Payara 6 Community uses Java 11 but my product doesn't currently work with Java 11 so I would like to understand the cost of Payara 5 Enterprise. 

Our inbox is full of messages like these! Sounds familiar? It might be time to move to Payara 5 Enterprise. 

Coming at the dawn of summer, the June release of the Payara Platform is out with enhancements and bug fixes. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.3.0 comes with 2 bug fixes, 1 improvement, and 1 component upgrade. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.6 also comes with 2 bug fixes, 1 component upgrade, and 1 improvement. 

Payara 5 Enterprise will also receive a new release: Payara Platform Enterprise 5.52.0, available only to those using Payara Enterprise. If you are still with Payara 5 Community, remember it is discontinued,contact usto find out how you can still receive a supported platform.  

Oracle, together with the Java Community over the last few years, have changed the release cadence of the Platform. With biannual releases, the Java of today is a remarkable departure from Java 8. With all the rapid advancement of the language comes the problem of keeping up as a developer.

Thankfully, Java Champions Marc R. Hoffmann and Cay S. Horstmann came up with the Java Almanac website. JA is a great resource that gives you both a summary and detailed overview of changes on the Java Platform from Java 1.0 to Java 22.

The changes are organised in a tabular format with details, links to the respective API and a helpful comparison page. It also has a download page with options to download from any of the JDK distros. All in all, Java Almanac is a great resource to keep abreast of the new release cadence of the Java Platform. 

Payara, a leading provider of Jakarta EE and MicroProfile runtimes, has been authorized by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA).

Java Records, one of the major highlights of the Java 16 release, provides a concise and immutable way to define classes for modelling data. This conciseness lends itself useful in a typical Jakarta EE application that can have a number of layers that need to share data. For example the data layer might want to return a subset of a given data set to a calling client through a data projection object. The REST layer might want to have separate entities for server and client side among others. This blog post explores the adoption of Java Records in a Jakarta EE application as a data transfer and projection object.

Welcome to our May selection of the best blogs, videos, podcasts and tutorials from the world of  Java, Jakarta EE, cloud computing and open source. 

With the team freshly rejuvenated from the annualPayara Retreat,the May release of the Payara Platform is out with enhancements and bug fixes to rejuvenate your deployments. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.2.0 comes with 4 bug fixes, 3 improvements, a security fix and 6 component upgrades. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.5 also comes with 4 bug fixes, 5 component upgrades, 1 security fix and 1 improvement. 

The Lombok project is a Java library that aims at “spicing up your java.” Started back in 2009, it consists mostly of annotations that can be used on Java classes to generate helpful constructs like getters and setters. It aims at freeing you from writing quite a number of the ceremonial boilerplate code that you sometimes need to write as part of your everyday use of Java. 

YAML is a simple, human-friendly data serialization language for all programming languages. It is the main format for working with Docker. As a language agnostic format, there are many bindings for all the major programming languages. You can easily consume and return data in the YAML format in your Jakarta REST application using message body readers and writers.

In this customer testimonial, we interviewed Kenneth Kee, CEO of Origin Integrated Studios, currently managing one of the most rapidly growing digital health transformation solution provider companies in Malaysia.

Watch the video testimonial below!

MongoDB is one of the most popular NoSQL databases in the market, with its flexible data model, scalability, and rich query capabilities. When combined with Morphia, a powerful Java library for MongoDB, Jakarta EE developers can achieve even greater flexibility in creating modern applications that deliver exceptional user experiences. Watch this webinar recording to learn how to use MongoDB with Jakarta EE and the Morphia library!

Oftentimes in a Jakarta REST application, you may need to access some metadata about a given resource method matched by the Jakarta REST runtime, outside of a resource class. This could be so as to dynamically alter the client's request based on some custom business requirement, or for informative purposes. For example, in a Jakarta REST component like an exception mapper, you might want to get the currently matched resource method and get its HTTP method. 

Are you an Enterprise Java Developer? Or even a Java developer? If yes, then here is your chance to make your voice heard in the2023 Jakarta EE Developer Surveythat is currently on-going. The survey is organized by the Jakarta EE Working Group, the body responsible for steering the development and advancement of cloud native Java development at the Eclipse Foundation.

From the Payara Engineering hutch comes a number of quality of life improvements in the April 2023 Payara Platform Releases.  Payara Platform Community 6.2023.4 comes with a bug fix, 4 component upgrades and 1 improvement. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.1.0 comes with 2 improvements, 1 bug fix and 4 component upgrades. Payara Platform Enterprise 5.50.0 also comes with 1 improvement, 1 bugfix, 1 security fix and 1 component upgrade.

As an independent online Jakarta EE instructor, I often get questions like...

Jakarta EE 10, the first major release of the platform since it was transferred to the Eclipse Foundation, did come with a slew of changes and updates to many of its constituent specifications. One such specification that received updates is the Jakarta Contexts and Dependency Injection specification. The specification release version for Jakarta EE 10 is Jakarta CDI 4.0, which came with major changes.

Two of such major changes are the split of the specification into a Lite and Full profiles and the change in default behaviour for an empty beans.xml file. In this blog post, we take a quick look at getting started with Jakarta CDI, in my view, the single most influential specification on the Jakarta EE Platform.

Welcome to our March selection of the best blogs, videos, podcasts and tutorials from the world of  Java, Jakarta EE, cloud computing and open source. 

A lot. Hot out of the Payara engineering furnace, we bring you the latest Payara Platform Community and Enterprise releases for the month of March 2023. Payara Platform Enterprise 6.0 gives you a production optimized and commercially supported runtime for your mission-critical projects, combining our top-rated support and 10 year software lifecycle with the very latest version of Jakarta EE.

Payara Platform Community 6.2023.3 is out with 4 improvements, 6 bug fixes and 3 component upgrades. Payara Platform Enterprise 5.49.0 also comes with 4 bug fixes, 3 component upgrades and 1 improvement.

What Is Payara Platform Enterprise? 

In prior versions of Jakarta EE, the use of UUID as entity ID or database primary key type was a vendor specific feature. So even though you could use it, you had to rely on vendor specific constructs to get the mapping right. With the release of Jakarta EE 10 however, the Jakarta Persistence specification now provides native support for using UUID as entity ID type.

The jakarta.persistence.GenerationType now has a UUID option that indicates to the persistence provider to generate and assign RFC 4122 UUID to the annotated field. The HelloEntity below shows how to use this new feature.

Jakarta EE 10 was released in September of 2022 as the first major release of the venerable Enterprise Java development platform since it was moved to the Eclipse Foundation. As a major release, it did come with a slew of updates to almost all the major specifications, including Jakarta REST. In this blog post, we take a look at how to get started developing RESTful web services on the Jakarta EE Platform using the Jakarta REST API.

Oftentimes in web applications, there is the need to intercept a request from the client to resource methods. Sometimes this interception must take place even before the request is matched to a resource method. For such needs, Jakarta REST provides the jakarta.ws.rs.container.ContainerRequestFilter interface. This interface is a Jakarta REST extension that can be used to intercept requests to resource methods. 

An implementation of this interface can decide if requests should be intercepted before they’re matched to resource methods through the @PreMatching annotation. A pre-matched request filter will be invoked by the container before the request is matched to its intended resource method. 

For this blog post, let us look at two use cases for request filters. One is a situation where for security reasons, certain HTTP methods are not allowed. For example an organisation can have a security rule in its firewall that disallows HTTP PUT methods. In this case, either all methods have to be POST or request filters can be used to workaround the restriction. 

The second situation is for the custom implementation of authentication. Of course you absolutely should NOT hand-roll your own security setup unless you know in detail exactly what you are doing. You are better off using tried and tested security frameworks and services out there. But for this blog post, assuming we need to implement custom security, we can use a pre matching request filter. The following code snippet below shows a ContainerRequestFilter implementation that implements the two scenarios above.

Java generics is a great feature that allows you to have compile time checks for generics. However, due to historical reasons of backward compatibility, type information for generics is erased at runtime. A lot of the time this shouldn’t be of much concern. But there are a few cases where type information is needed at runtime for some kind of decision. 

One such situation is in Jakarta REST when the jakarta.ws.rs.core.Response object is used to return a generic collection of a specific type. For example the code below shows the creation and return of a Response object that has a list of HelloEntity as the return payload to the client. 

All non-trivial enterprise applications have some sort of constraints on the data the application processes. These constraints could range from the simplest to the most complex custom built types. The default validation API on theJakarta EEPlatform, Jakarta Bean Validation has excellent out of the box support for constraining bean fields. Then with its @Valid annotation, you can trigger automatic validation of constrained objects in certain points of an application. 

We are here with a carefully curated reading list! We put together the best content from the world of Java, Jakarta EE, cloud computing and open source. 

TL:DR - if you work with enterprise Java software, you'll find something here for you. 

We are excited to announce that registrations are now open forPayara Hackathon, running 2-6 March 2023. 

Build an app with Jakarta EE 10 and Payara Platform for a chance to win £3,000 in prize money for the winner, with £2,000 and £1,000 prizes for runners up. 

Get your work reviewed by our judging panel of Java and Jakarta EE experts including Java Champions Ivar Grimstad and Otavio Santana.

It's a new month, and this February the Payara Fish Pond is bristling with new releases for both Payara Platform Community and Enterprise editions. Payara Platform Community 6.2023.2 is out with 3 improvements and 5 bug fixes. Payara Platform Enterprise 5.48.1 contains 2 improvements and 5 bug fixes.

The Jakarta EE Platform has come a long way since its debut as J2EE back the days of Sun Microsystems. Over the years, it has had its fair share of challenges. A natural consequence of this is that some notions about the platform arising from some of the past challenges that may have been true about past iterations have stuck. This blog post aims to dispel some of these deeply rooted misconceptions about the Jakarta EE Platform, especially after the last major release.

Payara is part of the MicroProfile Working Group! 

MicroProfile is a set of Enterprise Java APIs and technologies, designed to help with the challenge of building microservices architectures in Java. 

The MicroProfile Working Group develops these APIs in a collaborative process, and is comprised of passionate individuals, and representatives from different vendors and Java User Groups. 

Starting the New Year right with our pick of the most useful and informative Java, Jakarta EE, DevOps, cloud computing, open source and enterprise software content from the month of January.

Wondering which cloud deployment option to use for your Jakarta EE application? 

Look no further than our latest guide, published today! 

Traditionally, enterprises stored their SQL data in relational database management systems (RDBMS). However, the strict and rigid SQL data format is not always fit for purpose...

This has led to the rise of schemaless databases and NoSQL. The distributed, non-relational model of NoSQL database technology made it the almost perfect choice for companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook that had amassed massive datasets from their web applications. 

But is it right for your enterprise? And will it work with Jakarta EE?

Jakarta EE 10 shipped with the fourth major release of its component based web framework Jakarta Faces. Hitherto known as Jakarta Server Faces, and Java Server Faces before that, Jakarta Faces, or just Faces,version 4.0is the first major version with API change since version 2.3 in Java EE 8. Among the major changes in this version are:

This post is inspired by Gunnar Morling'sposton a similar theme for the Java SE Platform. It is an opinionated guide to getting started developing applications on the Jakarta EE Platform. As an opinionated post, there may be some recommendations that you disagree with. That is natural. The post is directed at people just getting started and feel overwhelmed by all the options out there for getting started with enterprise Java. The post is broken down into the following sections;

It's January, and the Payara engineering bakery has been busy with the first release of the year. The Payara Platform Community 6.2023.1 release is hot out of the oven with 8 component upgrades, 1 improvement and 1 security fix. Payara Platform Enterprise 5.47.0 also comes with 14 component upgrades, 2 improvements, 3 bug fixes and 1 security fix. 

Jakarta EE has action and component based frameworks for building web applications using the model view controller architecture pattern. The much older Jakarta Faces is a component based framework while the much newer Jakarta MVC is an action based one. This blog starts by defining the two types, then takes a look at Jakarta MVC, what it is and how to get started.

In September 2022, the Jakarta EE community achieved a huge milestone with Jakarta EE 10 being released (read more here). The key goals of the Jakarta EE 10 release are simplicity, modernization and ensuring it is lightweight. It's been a few months since this major release, so we thought it's a good time now to do a bit of a recap. We invite you to join our series of fast-paced, no slides webinars that will bring you up to speed with Jakarta EE 10!

Using Payara Platform? You might be interested in what tools, OpenJDK versions and Jakarta EE releases our global community choose! 

We regularly conduct surveys to learn what technologies are most commonly used with Payara Platform, so we can work on our integrations and plug-ins.

This survey was promoted in October/November 2022 via social media, emails, blogs and our Payara Forum.

Batch processing is an integral part of enterprise applications. Reading, processing and storing vast amounts of data is mostly suited to batch processing runtimes that are optimized for such workloads. Inventory processing, payroll, report generation, invoice/statement generation, data migration, data conversion among others are all tasks that are suitable to batch processing.

Batch processing typically involves breaking data loads to be processed into smaller "chunks," which are also broken down into even smaller units for processing. The batch processing is then carried out on a single unit of the data, one at a time, without any human intervention. This makes the processing of a significantly large amount of data very efficient and fast. Batch processing can also be parallelized to take advantage of the hardware capabilities of the underlying computer. 

This blog series will show you how to create batch processing tasks on the Jakarta EE Platform. The blog is broken down into a series of posts, each blog covering a specific part of the batch specification. This blog introduces you to the Jakarta Batch specification and gives a high level overview of what constitutes a batch task.

The Jakarta Contexts and Dependency Injection API is the standard dependency injection framework on the Jakarta EE Platform. The latest version of the CDI specification that shipped withJakarta EE 10 is CDI 4.0. This release features a split of the core CDI API into Lite and Full. CDI Lite is designed to run in more restricted environments, and features a subset of the original features. CDI Full contains the Lite and all other features that were in core CDI in previous Jakarta EE releases.

Therelease of Jakarta EE 10marked the dawn of a new era for the platform. This release is the first major, community driven release of the platform since it was transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. As a community driven project, the platform is open for everyone to contribute to. One of the advantages of using Jakarta EE for your projects is that you can directly have a say in the direction and future of the platform. With Jakarta EE 10 out of the way, the focus will soon shift to the next release, Jakarta EE 11.

The defacto way of accessing relational data in a Jakarta EE application is through the use of the Jakarta Persistence API. For NoSQL data access, one can now use the much newerJakarta NoSQL API. Jakarta Persistence especially has worked quite well and been serving its purpose with both its support for native queries, JPQL and Criteria queries. However, modern data access paradigms have meant having to pull in third party libraries to enjoy some more abstractions. 

The Eclipse MicroProfile project is a Jakarta EE based project that augments the platform with cloud-native APIs for developing applications for the cloud. MicroProfile has had five previous version releases, with the latest being 6.0. Versions prior to 6.0 were built on the Jakarta Contexts and Dependency Injection, Jakarta RESTful Web Services and Jakarta JSON APIs. 

It's the final release of the year and the final release of Payara 5 Community!

Payara Platform Community 6.2022.2 brings 20 component upgrades, 8 bug fixes, 2 security fixes and 4 improvements. Payara Platform Enterprise 5.46.0 brings 45 component upgrades, 13 bug fixes, and 2 security fixes.

Payara Platform Community 5.2022.5 is the final release of the Payara 5 Community stream.

All releases contain a key fix for a vulnerability in web applications deployed as the default module of an instance's virtual server configuration. Read more details below!

Payara in the Press! Steve Millidge, our CEO and Founder, was interviewed by Hosting Advice about our new product, Payara Cloud.   

Introduction to Jakarta EE Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE)  is a software development platform built on top of the Java Standard Edition, for creating modern applications of all types and sizes for the cloud or in-house. It has gone through a number of evolutions to its present Jakarta EE incarnation. The goal of this blog post is to answer commonly and frequently asked questions about Jakarta EE and enterprise Java software development in general. There are a number of old preconceived notions out there about the platform. This blog post seeks to shed light on a number of these notions within the context of the current platform. 

Welcome to our monthly roundup of the best content in the Java, Jakarta EE, DevOps, cloud computing, open source and enterprise software space!

During deployment of Jakarta EE applications to the Payara Server, all the xml files (e.g. web.xml, persinstence.xml) are verified against its schema.

Payara Platform includes all standard Jakarta EE schema, so there is typically no reason to download external schema to check against xml files. However, if the application uses external schema, in very rare cases, there may be an error during deployment. In this blog, I describe a quick fix to avoid this. 

The Representational State Transfer or RESTful architecture is a stateless, HTTP based communication standard for modern applications. It was originally proposed by Dr. Roy Fielding in hisPhD thesis. It has, over the years, become the default, programming language-agnostic means of enabling machine-to-machine communication. An application written in the Django framework in Python can have REST resources that are consumed by another application written in Java with Jakarta EE. Similarly, a Jakarta EE application can create resources that can be consumed by a C# application.  

Low on time and want to know what an 'application server' really is?

We offer our explanation. This video covers the difference between application servers and web servers, what an application server can do to make your life as a developer easier, and more, all in less time than your average pop song!

This is a high-level view that might be helpful to pass on to managers and procurement teams who aren't sure what an application server is.

JavaPro has created a training course on how to develop modern cloud-native microservices with Payara Micro and MicroProfile.

We have free tickets available, usually worth €1,690 each! 

You may have heard about our brand-new Payara Cloud product. 

Payara Cloud automates the infrastructural tasks required when moving a Jakarta EE application to a cloud deployment model, and is therefore a 'serverless' option. 

Why is software testing so important? Firstly, because we are all susceptible to making mistakes.
Secondly, because the sooner we find bugs and fix them, the cheaper the fix!

The November 2022 Payara Platform release is here and ALL versions are getting a new release!

Payara Platform Community 6.2022.1 is the first stable release of the Payara 6 Community stream. This is certified against the Jakarta EE 10 Platform, Web Profile, and Core Profile. Payara 6 will now be the updated, current version of Payara Platform Community. 

Payara Platform Enterprise 5.45.0 is also out, containing 5 bug fixes, 1 security fix and 2 improvements.

Payara Platform Community 5.2022.4 has been released today as the penultimate Payara 5 Community release, and there is also a release of Payara Platform 4 for Enterprise customers.

All releases contain an important fix for a 0-day vulnerability. 

Read more details below!

Welcome to our monthly roundup of the best content in the Java, Jakarta EE, DevOps, cloud computing, open source and enterprise software space!

Payara Platform Community 6.2022.1 will be released very soon (scheduled for next week!)

It is the first stable release of the Payara 6 Community stream and will be the updated, current version of Payara Platform Community. 

Jakarta EE is at the forefront of innovation in enterprise Java. This means staying close to the community and working on new specifications to meet developer needs.

In my previous blog post,here,I examined the JSR-375 specifications and their implementation by Jakarta EE and, more specifically, by the Payara Platform (Server and Micro).

I presented a brief overview of the JSR-375 specifications and their new features, focusing on the notion of Identity Store and illustrating, with a simple example, one of the most common use cases: the LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) based authentication and authorization process.

September was a BIG month in Java. 

Jakarta EE 10 came out - alongside the first compatible products certified against the Jakarta EE 10 platform. Payara 6 Community was one of them!

Also this month = one of the biggest Java conferences in the community, JConfDev, took place in Chicago; and we hosted our webinar with Azul, where we examined AOT vs JIT compilation (video to come). 

We also saw the GA of Java 19! Phew...

Jakarta EE is the most popular Java server-side framework, way ahead its alleged competitors such as Spring, Quarkus, Micronaut or Dropwizard. With the industry-wide adoption of microservices based architectures, its popularity is skyrocketing and, during these last years, it has become the preferred framework for professional software enterprise applications and services development in Java.

In this blog, I'll explain more about Jakarta EE from my perspective as a Senior Java software architect/developer and why Jakarta EE and its runtimes beat the competition, in my opinion!

These days the world-wide open-source community celebrates the advent of Jakarta EE 10. It is then a good time to look at one of its most relevant and, at the same time, unknown parts: security!

In this blog, I'll give an introduction to Jakarta EE Security, and then explain how Payara Platform builds on Jakarta EE Security with built-in identity stores for RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

Jakarta EE 10 launches today! At Payara, we are celebrating this major next step for enterprise Java, and support Jakarta EE 10 with Payara 6 Community.

Payara Engineering have recently released Payara Server Community 6 Alpha 3 and Payara Server Community 6 Alpha 4 as major milestones on the road to full Jakarta EE 10 support.

In this blog, we will explore what these releases can do and how you can use them to help in your migration to Payara 6 and Jakarta EE 10.

Payara 6 Community Alpha 4, out today, is suitable for trying out Jakarta EE 10, and marks a key step on the road to full Jakarta EE 10 compatibility for Payara Community.

Also out this month is Payara Enterprise Version 5.43.0, and a release of Payara Platform Version 4.x in its extended support phase.

Jakarta EE 10 will be released on September 22! It's almost here...

While the previous releases of Jakarta EE have been focussed on the much-feared namespace change and updating everything with support for Java 11, this is the first major release of Jakarta EE to start introducing new features for developers to use. I’ll cover some of them here.

Jakarta EE 10 will be released very soon. Don't risk being left out...

We explain in no-nonsense language what Jakarta EE 10 means and why it is important. This is perfect as an introduction or to pass to Procurement or Ops Managers.

Payara Cloud provides an easy-to-use user interface to allow your application to run in a managed cloud environment. While this is very convenient for configuration and troubleshooting work, integration in continuous deployment pipelines calls for something else. Our answer is deploying to Payara Cloud using a GitHub Action Workflow and Payara Cloud Command Line (PCL). 

August is typically a quiet month, and whilst this is the case in terms of industry announcements, there have been incredible learning resources and general Java articles created. Here, we have rounded up some of the best of them, covering DevOps, cloud computing, Java, Jakarta EE, MicroProfile and open source.

Payara Community Version 5.2022.3 is out today, bringing concurrency enhancements previously seen in Enterprise and a key security fix, solving the recently discovered CVE-2022-37422. You must update your environments to the latest version to be safe.

Payara Platform Enterprise 5.42.0 brings 5 bug fixes, 1 improvement, 1 component upgrade and 1 key security fix - of a 0-day vulnerability in all distributions of the Payara Platform that affects web applications that are deployed in the default context root(/).  

A release of Payara 6 Community (Alpha 4) and Payara Community Version 5.2022.3 will follow next week. This will bring the fix to Community users, providing they update to these versions.

As Jakarta EE 10 approaches, we are taking a look at key Jakarta EE specifications in detail: what they do and how they have changed for Jakarta EE 10!

Today, Jakarta Context Dependency Injection or CDI, a very important specification that interacts with several others.

Every month, in our Payara Monthly Catch, we curate the best content for our audience. 

As our new image illustrates, we find you the 'treasure' from the world of DevOps, Jakarta EE, open source, cloud and MicroProfile. 

Payara Enterprise is an alternative to WildFly, JBoss EAP, WebSphere and more. 

With Payara Enterprise, you have everything offered by Payara Community - regular releases, a global community of 80,000 active users, cutting edge Jakarta EE technology - with the added benefits of support from our engineers, special features like a tool for upgrading and a 10-year software lifecycle. 

Java EE, now Jakarta EE, makes it possible for developers to focus purely on the development of a Java enterprise application, solving the business logic without needing to think about infrastructure and operations when writing code. Payara Cloud extends this philosophy by also eliminating the need to worry about infrastructure and operations when preparing your application to run in the cloud. Together, Jakarta EE and Payara Cloud let you focus on writing code and delivering solutions to business challenges from the moment you write your first piece of code to the day people are using your application successfully on the cloud.

We are currently offering limited free previews of Payara Cloud to businesses - follow the link below:

Java programming language can be enhanced with specifications. An specification is a baseline platform definition - a framework - to guide concrete implementations. 

One of these specifications is called MicroProfile. But what is MicroProfile specification, what is it used for and why might you need it? 

This blog explains all. 

The Enterprise-only 2022 July Payara Platform release is here!

Payara Platform Enterprise 5.41.0 brings 2 bug fixes, 2 component upgrades, and 2 improvements.

This month, this includes improving the functionality of the Upgrade Tool, which is available to Payara Enterprise customers only. Also only for Enterprise users is Azul's supported OpenJDK build for enterprises, Azul Platform Core. In this release, we've updated our Docker images to support new versions of Azul Platform Core. We've also updated our Docker images of previous releases with these new versions of Azul Platform Core.

An Enterprise subscription means you can access special benefits like the Upgrade Tool and bundled Azul Platform Core support, as well as being able to continue using earlier Jakarta EE versions after Jakarta EE 10 is released this month (see below).  All these benefits mean an Enterprise subscription can be more cost-effective in the long-run! 

Payara is proud to announce that we are now sponsors of the London Java Community! 

Payara Platform is an open source project. We actively encourage users across the world to use, and contribute to, our Jakarta EE application server. We already have a community of 85,000 global users, and growing.

An uber-JAR, also known as a fat JAR or JAR with dependencies, is a JAR file that contains not only a Java program but embeds its dependencies as well, and might also contain the web application that needs to be executed.

In this blog, we'll describe the different variants of the artifact, and the advantages and drawbacks it has.

All the best of Java, Jakarta EE, open source, DevOps and cloud from the month of June!  Tutorials, videos, podcasts, blogs and news ... carefully curated for our audience. 

The June 2022 Payara Platform release is here! This is an Enterprise-only release, with Payara Platform Enterprise 5.40.0 bringing 3 bug fixes, 1 component upgrade, and 2 improvements.

 We have also made significant improvements to our product documentation on GitHub, for both Enterprise and Community, aiming to create the best developer experience possible for those using the Payara Platform! Read more below.

The Payara Platform promises aggressive compatibility. Because we focus on providing an excellent application server, we do not seek to lock you in to a product suite or any particular tools. As you see in this blog, this is also true in the case of which implementation of the Jakarta Persistence API specification you choose to use. We explain why we run automatically with EclipseLink, but also why and how you may switch to Hibernate. 

Choose the tool that is right for your specific use case. 

We provide our selection of the best Java and Jakarta EE tutorials, videos, podcasts, blogs and news from the month of May! We also pick the best content we've found from the worlds of DevOps, cloud computing and open source. This is a carefully curated reading list, specially selected for our specific Enterprise Java niche. 

The May 2022 Payara Platform release is here! This is an Enterprise-only release, with 5.39.0 bringing 4 bug fixes, 2 component upgrades, and 5 improvements. 

JDK 17 is now supported in Enterprise! It has been tested in Community and can be relied on for mission-critical systems. Enterprise users also enjoy an improved Upgrade Tool, with more troubleshooting available when moving between Payara versions.

Every month, we collate the very best content for our specific enterprise Java - Java EE, Jakarta EE and MicroProfile - community. We also look further afield, and where it applies, include interesting blogs, videos and articles on subjects such as DevOps, cloud computing, microservices, software architecture and more. 

TL;DR: We know our audience and if we think you will find something very useful when developing enterprise Java applications - it makes the cut! 

The release of Payara 6 Community in a few weeks will be a turning point for many of our users. It's important you review all possibilities in advance. Consider migration to be supported, secure and maintain peace of mind!   

We recommend moving to Payara Enterprise,  which we consider the most cost-effective and business-savvy choice. In this blog we explain 5 different scenarios.

Google Remote Procedure Call, or gRPC, is an open source Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework focused on high performance and portable to any environment. It is an alternative to REST, deemed by many as more efficient.

After one of our customers requested it, the extension became available in our April 2022 Payara Community and Enterprise releases: 5.2022.2 and 5.38.0. 

The April 2022 Payara Platform release is here! Payara Platform Community 5.2022.2 brings 13 bug fixes, 2 component upgrades, 3 improvements and 3 security fixes, whilst Payara Platform Enterprise 5.38.0 includes 2 bug fixes, 1 improvement and 4 security fixes. 

It includes the fix for "Spring4Shell", and improved support for Jakarta EE 9, as you can now run Jakarta EE 9 applications using PrimeFaces.

This release also gives Payara users the ability to use gRPC, the Google Remote Procedure Call Framework.

Please note: This is the penultimate Payara 5 Community release. Payara 6 Community will soon take its place, to be used with Jakarta EE 10. If you want to keep using earlier Java EE/Jakarta EE versions - we encourage you to move to Payara 5 Enterprise.

The Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability detected in the Spring Java Framework in March 2022 (tagged as CVE-2022-22965) is unlikely to impact those using Payara Platform.

We are always looking for the best of Java, Jakarta EE, MicroProfile, cloud programming, DevOps and open source content for our audience. This often means articles, blogs and videos on enterprise applications and the most secure, stable way to use Java and Jakarta EE.

One major issue when developing modern enterprise applications is the "works on my machine" problem: when an application works well on your machine but is not functional in production or even on a colleague's machine. An even more prevalent problem is to maintain the quality of ever-changing applications during development and maintenance. 

This is especially prevalent when Jakarta EE applications are developed and not properly tested in an isolated and cohesive manner. Proper integration testing helps to avoid both the "works on my machine" problem, and ensures developers can change the application effectively without breaking it. However often teams struggle with it, due to a lack of standardized testing solutions and the unpredictability of real-world conditions. 

Here, I present an effective method for Jakarta EE integration testing, using Payara Platform and Testcontainers in my example.

The March 2022 Payara Platform release is here!  Payara Platform Enterprise 5.37.0 includes 8 bug fixes, 2 improvements and 1 component upgrade. 

Read more below to learn about the highlights of this Enterprise-only release. 

We've got a new guide for you - and it's a bit of a departure from our more technical content. 

Instead, we spell out what the term 'microservices' encompasses, for those who might not be familiar with the technology.