We're excited to announce the latest releases across the Payara Platform family, marking significant strides in our Jakarta EE and MicroProfile runtime offerings. This release brings the introduction of Payara Platform Community 7 Alpha2, updates to Payara Platform Community 6.2024.11 and new versions of Payara Platform Enterprise (5.69.0 and 6.20.0).

Modernizing legacy applications in the cloud era has become an imperative for business success. With customer expectations constantly rising and digital transformation becoming critical for business survival, understanding how to approach legacy application modernization has never been more important.

When building enterprise Java applications on the Jakarta EE platform, database connection management is critical for both performance and stability. One common issue that can severely impact application performance is connection and statement leaks. In this Nugget Friday, we'll explore how Payara Server helps detect and prevent these leaks, ensuring your applications run smoothly and efficiently.

Virtual Payara Conference is coming next month and on Day 2 - Developer Insight - we will help you unlock the future of Jakarta EE development! 

AI Tools for Jakarta EE - 12 December 2024, 3:40pm GMT - Register Here!

Join Gaurav Gupta, Senior Software Engineer at Payara, to witness how AI-powered tools are transforming enterprise application development through real-world, cutting-edge demonstrations. Discover how AI-powered tools enhance productivity and streamline workflows in Apache NetBeans IDE and beyond, from creating a simple hello-world program to developing full-stack applications.

Discover how AI-powered tools are reshaping Jakarta EE development by optimizing the entire development lifecycle. Can't make the date? Register now and watch on-demand later!

The latest version of Jakarta REST (formerly Java API for RESTful Web Services, aka JAX-RS), Jakarta REST 4.0, will bring some notable improvements and changes as part of Jakarta EE 11. This release focuses on modernizing the specification by removing legacy dependencies, enhancing developer convenience, and improving test coverage. Before exploring the key changes, let's first take 37K feet intro to JAX-RS for the new comers to the platform. 

If you’re still managing Java applications on GlassFish middleware, you might be hitting some roadblocks, such as difficulties with automation, lack of integrated monitoring and official support and limited abilities with modern tools. However, there are ways to modernize your current applications. Let's have a look how. 

While we all want maximum uptime for our software systems, failures and downtimes are inevitable. However, these can be minimized and quickly resolved through comprehensive, robust and well-designed fault tolerance mechanisms. This Nugget Friday looks at how to leverage MicroProfile Fault Tolerance. We look at how it operates and explore how its features can help developers address common failure scenarios. Let's dig in!

Have you ever been asked “What is an application server?” by a member of your senior management team, and struggled to explain the application server model? We know how you feel. It’s tough to explain complex software concepts to those who can be easily overwhelmed by even the jargon we’d otherwise use to explain them. 

In this blog post, we explore what an application server is, how it’s different from other kinds of servers, its advantages and disadvantages, and which application server is best for your application infrastructure. And, you won’t need to have an Engineering degree and 6 years’ experience on a software development team to understand it. 

Ensuring consistent performance and early detection of potential system issues in Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE) production deployments are critical in every production deployment. The Payara HealthCheck Service is a built-in tool designed specifically to help you monitor the health of your Payara Server deployments. While often overlooked, this service is an essential asset for operations teams who seek to minimise downtime and maximise system reliability. Let's dive into what the HealthCheck Service does, how it can be configured, and why it's valuable for monitoring your app server's critical components.

Building on the foundational insights from our previous Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) sessions earlier in the summer, this free webinar will update you on the next phase of cyber resilience by moving beyond mere compliance with the Cyber Resilience Act.

From Compliance to Competitive Advantage: Strengthening Cyber Resilience
 10am GMT, 13th of November 2024

Join Julia Apostle (Orrick) and Steve Millidge (Payara) to learn actionable steps for aligning your cyber resilience initiatives with future regulations and innovations, ensuring your organization is prepared to not only meet legal requirements but also drive sustainable, long-term security.

Ahoy ghoulish crew! The October edition of Payara’s Monthly Catch is truly spooktacular! Check out this month's highlights – this month’s edition is packed with must-read guides, bewitching tutorials and technical tricks (and treats!) to keep your enterprise Java/Jakarta EE skills sharp as ever.

The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) 2024 lays down a “legal framework for essential cybersecurity requirements for placing products with digital elements on the Union market” (CRA, 1). These requirements cover “products with digital elements”. The goal is to establish conditions for developing secure software. Software venders must take security seriously thought the entire SDLC. Consequently, the intention is that “hardware and software products are placed on the market with fewer vulnerabilities and that manufacturers take security seriously throughout a product’s lifecycle” (CRA, 2). 

This blog post will answer some basic questions, based on our understanding of the Act. What is the new Cyber Resilience Act in the EU? What is the key focus of the Cyber Resilience Act and who does it affect? When will the EU Cyber Resilience Act come into force? How do software venders comply with its requirements? Are there obligations for other parties too? And does Payara help its customers to comply with their requirements under the Act? 

We're super excited to announce the third edition of the Virtual Payara Conference! This December we will be focusing on Powering High-Performance Enterprise Java Applications.

• Strategic Insight - Wednesday 11th December 2024, 1-6:30pm GMT - REGISTER HERE

• Developer Insight - Thursday 12th December 2024, 1-7:00pm GMT - REGISTER HERE

Creating scalable and flexible APIs is essential for today's web applications. When it comes to RESTful APIs in enterprise Java/Jakarta EE software development, one concept that plays a crucial role in driving adaptability, discoverability and evolvability is Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS). In effect, the HATEOAS principle can help developers to significantly enhance their API designs, making them more powerful and futureproof.

Our latest guide on HATEOAS is specifically designed for developers familiar with RESTful API development using Jakarta REST (formerly known as JAX-RS). In this blog post, we’ll explore the key takeaways from the guide and show you how mastering HATEOAS can transform the way you build and evolve your APIs.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE®) Program is celebrating its 25th anniversary today! This marks a major milestone in global cybersecurity. Since 1999, the CVE Program has been critical in helping organizations identify, manage and mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities through worldwide collaboration. Today, with over 240,000 CVE Records and more than 400 CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs) across 40 countries, CVE remains a vital resource for vulnerability management and a key component of cybersecurity defense.

Diagnosing issues in production environments can be a daunting task without the right tools. When problems arise, having access to comprehensive diagnostic information is critical for quick resolution. This is where Payara Server's little known diagnostic tool comes into play, offering a powerful solution for collecting important server data on demand.

There’s no shortage of bright minds in software development. Exceptional individuals in the field are solving real-world problems with innovative approaches. As the deadline to submit your entries for our next Hackathon approaches, we look at the winning solutions of our past event, focused on sustainability.

In this interview with the 2nd prize winner, Ricardo Nicolás Canul Ibarra, we talk about his experience, Privee - the application he submitted at the hackathon and how this achievement will shape his future career.  

The Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge was established by Payara to help showcasing the innovation, creativity and collaboration within the Jakarta EE community. This technical writing challenge encouraged developers, enthusiasts and tech writers to inspire others and advance the community's knowledge on Jakarta EE. Participants from around the globe submitted their entries to share key insights and help drive the community forward.

Following the publication of the 4th place entry "Quantum Sadis", we are delighted to share with you the entry from Mads Opheim titled "Jakarta EE based serverless backend-for-frontend", which has won 3rd place in the Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge!

When it comes to mission-critical applications for production environments, there is a clear shift in software development towards containerization, microservices or the mid-ground between monoliths and microservices: moduliths. These architectural patterns tend to offer better scalability, flexibility and efficiency in cloud native environments. As a result, application runtimes that have traditionally been well suited to monolithic paradigms, such as the GlassFish community project, can struggle to keep pace with modern development practices.  

Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices have become the bedrock of today’s successful DevOps practices. These however require exceptional speed, consistency and reliability in order for software professionals to deliver high-quality applications at scale. Automation offers a powerful aid to DevOps engineers involved in CI/CD activities, freeing them from repetitive and menial tasks. By leveraging automated solutions, it is therefore possible to streamline workflows, eliminate bottlenecks and speed up project progress. 

In this article, we discuss with Abdul Rahim, Release Automation Engineer at Payara, key DevOps automation tools as well as how they can support software application development and management.

In today's Nugget Friday, we're tackling a common pain point that nearly every Java developer has faced before: the tedious task of converting Java objects to JSON and back. If you are tired of writing glue code to convert your Java objects to and from JSON, then stick around for this nugget.

The Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge was designed to be all about showcasing the innovation, creativity and collaboration within the Jakarta EE community. This challenge encouraged developers, enthusiasts and tech writers to inspire others and advance the community's knowledge on Jakarta EE. Participants from around the globe submitted their entries to help drive the community forward.

We are thrilled to share with you Jan Nilsson's entry titled "Quantum Satis", which has won 4th place in the Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge!

We're happy to announce the latest release of the Payara Platform, bringing significant improvements and updates across our Community and Enterprise editions (download Payara Enterprise trial here). This release focuses on enhancing security, improving performance, and upgrading key components to ensure our users have access to the most up-to-date and secure application server environment.

For our next Nugget Friday, we're diving into a question that was posed in last week’s blog post: "How can I load different MicroProfile config values based on the active Maven profile?"

If you've been working with MicroProfile and Maven, you know how crucial it is to manage configurations across different environments. This week, we'll walk you through how to easily switch between configuration values by leveraging Maven profiles, ensuring your applications run seamlessly across various environments.

We're excited to announce that the 3rd edition of Payara Hackathon is now open for sign ups! Find out more !

The Payara Hackathon - Generative AI on Jakarta EE - will be running from the 2nd of October until the 6th of November and this time, we are challenging you to push the boundaries of enterprise Java development to create futureproof applications. This hackathon gives you the chance to create and showcase ground-breaking applications that harness the power of Generative AI within the Jakarta EE platform.

Whether you’re passionate about AI or a driven Java developer, this is your chance to innovate and help us showcase how Jakarta EE is a valuable solution for developing tomorrow’s apps. Winners will be spotlighted across our platforms, earn money prizes, and present their solutions to a worldwide audience.

Pushing the boundaries of innovation in application development is a must for Insurtech providers whose goal is to deliver competitive advantage for customers, positioning them at the cutting edge of customer experience, operational efficiency and resilience. Succeeding in this goal often requires a full migration to a new application server to create advanced tech capabilities.

When one of the UK's leading technology service providers, CDL, aimed to re-engineer its flagship platform, it opted to migrate to Payara Server Enterprise as the most effective solution to support its goals.

The Eclipse Foundation is launching a new Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group on 24 September 2024. Payara Services is delighted to be a Participant member and the organization is keen to ensure as many development and security teams, small to medium-sized enterprises, and corporations as possible are aware of its work. And, of course, the more organizations that join the Open Regulatory Compliance Group, the stronger our impact can be. When we work together, we can better represent open-source software-related industries while the EU develops standards under the Cyber Resilience Act 2024 and subsequent data security compliance legislation.

In this blog post, we look at the history and development of the Eclipse Foundation as well as its new focus on cybersecurity compliance regulations through the new working group since July 2024.

Ahoy crew! Welcome aboard the September edition of Payara’s Monthly Catch! As we chart our course toward the final quarter of the year, we’ve got a boatload of exciting updates, news and highlights from the Payara community and beyond. Here's our brief overview of must-read guides, in-depth tutorials, technical insights, and expert advice from September that will help you elevate your software development and deployment for enterprise Java applications!

Managing configurations in enterprise Java application can often feel like a daunting task. As applications scale, configuration values become scattered across multiple files, formats, and environments—creating complexity and increasing the risk of errors. From juggling different settings for development, testing and production environments to dealing with the frustration of restarting applications for minor config changes, these challenges slow down development and impact productivity.

But what if there was a better way to manage configurations that are flexible, dynamic and type-safe?  This Nugget Friday, we discuss MicroProfile Config—a powerful, standards-based solution designed to simplify configuration management for Java EE and Jakarta EE applications.

The Java Platform is an essential technology platform for modern applications. The Jakarta EE collection of specifications, crafted on Java SE, is arguably the most widely used (directly and indirectly) development platform for enterprise applications on the Java Platform. Over the last couple of years, Jakarta EE has started evolving much faster to meet the rapidly changing needs of enterprises. However, this evolution could be improved to better address the future needs of the industry. This is why the Eclipse Foundation, the home of the Jakarta EE Platform, has introduced the Jakarta EE Future Directions Interest Group.

Payara Platform 4 is reaching its End of Life, and the end of Extended Support is scheduled for the first quarter of 2025. 

However, we understand there are critical business reasons for which some of our customerscannot immediately transition some workloads to newer versions of the platform. To meet your legitimate business requirements, we are introducing the Lifetime Support model. This new offer replaces the Extended Support offeringfor this version and is designed to give you confidence that your business-critical applications will have enterprise level support to remain stable and secure during this transition period. 

This is your advance notice so that you can begin making plans to secure support for your existing infrastructure or to upgrade to Payara Platform 5 or 6. 

It's almost time for one of the most anticipated tech events of the year: Devoxx Belgium 2024! From October 7th to 11th, the Java developer community will gather at Kinepolis, in Antwerp, Belgium, for a week of networking, learning and exploring the latest in software development. With over 3,500 attendees expected, this conference promises to be a major highlight for developers, software engineers, tech enthusiasts as well as Payarans!

Working with multiline strings in Java has historically been a challenge, often resulting in messy code that is hard to read and maintain. Whether you're dealing with SQL queries, JSON or HTML templates, managing escape characters and manual line breaks is a cumbersome process. In today's Nugget Friday, we'll look at how Text Blocks can redefine how developers handle multiline strings, making code cleaner, more readable and easier to maintain.

Speed and responsiveness are very important in the development and use of modern RESTful APIs in Java applications, as they help ensure efficiency and scalability, especially as businesses move towards cloud-native applications. The primary means of achieving high speed, responsiveness, efficiency and scalability is through asynchronous processing. It allows applications to handle requests efficiently and perform tasks without getting stuck, making things run smoother and faster for the user while supporting scalability.

In this post, we'll look at how asynchronous processing works in Jakarta RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS or Jakarta REST) and how to implement async patterns in JAX-RS to enhance your Java web services, so you can build powerful and scalable RESTful APIs in Java.

Jakarta EE 11: What’s Next for Enterprise Java

Monday, 30th of September, 2pm BST

Register: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/jakarta-ee-11-whats-next

Ensuring Long-Term Stability with Payara Platform 4 Lifetime Support

Tuesday, 24th of September, 2pm BST

Register: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/payara-platform-4-lifetime-support

Migration Hesitation: Why Fear and Stagnation May Be Costing Your Business More Than You Think

There is no doubt that moving mission-critical applications to a new runtime environment is no small task. The fear of disruption, cost overruns and unknown risks often leads businesses to avoid necessary changes, even when the current system is far from optimal.

In the blog series ‘What’s Stopping Businesses from Application Server Migrations – Insights from Industry Players’ we explore one the reasons behind this hesitation and the real costs associated with migration fears. In the first blog post, we covered the fear of the unknown and business disruptions. In this second episode, we look at the fear of migration costs. In effect, as many business leaders reveal, the perceived financial risks often can overshadow the potential long-term benefits of moving to a different application server.

Welcome to this week’s Friday Nugget and congratulations, you've made it through the week! What better way to kick off the weekend than by talking about simplifying something that is essential to ensure that data flows smoothly between clients and servers, meeting all necessary formats, types and rules. Correct, we are talking about validation.

We're happy to announce the latest releases of Payara Platform Community 6.2024.9, Payara Platform Enterprise 6.18.0 and Payara Platform Enterprise 5.67.0. These updates bring important security enhancements, bug fixes and component upgrades to improve your Jakarta EE and MicroProfile development experience on the Payara Platform.

Jakarta EE, formerly known as Java EE (J2EE), and Spring Boot are the two de facto standards when it comes to enterprise Java applications, and the competition between these two alternatives to secure more market share has been going on for a while. Currently, many enterprise applications rely on Jakarta EE. However, most junior developers are familiar solely with Spring Boot. If you are a Spring Boot developer that needs to use or migrate to the Jakarta EE framework, we have created a guide to help you bridge your existing Spring Boot expertise with core Jakarta EE concepts.

As the international trade volume and the e-commerce sector continue to surge, the global logistics industry is experiencing unprecedented growth. To address the needs of a rapidly expanding and demanding user base, logistics companies are investing in software applications that can support faster and more transparent delivery services. For enterprise logistics apps to function seamlessly, the use of a robust and reliable application server is a must to remain competitive.

Learn what Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder and CEO of MIRA Safety, Sergey Taver, Marketing Manager of Precision Watches have to say about application runtimes for e-commerce and logistics and why Hermes and DPD choose Payara Platform. 

Open source technologies have become invaluable tools for software developers and software engineers focusing on innovation and experimentation. In particular, open source application servers can greatly help to accelerate project development, reduce costs and foster collaborative approaches within teams and across organizations.

However, when it comes to deploying mission-critical applications in production environments, open source runtimes that are unsupported can present significant risks, exposing businesses to unnecessary vulnerabilities.

The upcoming release of Jakarta EE 11 is expected to feature a number of updated specifications. One of the key updates expected in this release is to Jakarta Concurrency, which will be advancing to version 3.1. This update is set to bring a host of new features and improvements aimed at making concurrent programming in Jakarta EE even more powerful and flexible.

Summer didn't stop our experts at Payara from producing meaningful content to help software developers and DevOps specialists power up their Jakarta EE applications. As August ends, we curated the top highlights from the month for you to check as you get back to your desk.

Focusing on Jakarta EE 11, cloud computing, microservices, application server migrations and more, this monthly catch is treasure trove of valuable content, brimming with must-read guides, in-depth tutorials, technical insights, and expert advice that will help you elevate your software development and deployment projects. Don’t miss out on these essential resources—dive in and discover the knowledge you need to succeed!

Cloud computing is becoming the norm for enterprise-level applications, offering forward-looking businesses a wealth of benefits – reduced operational costs being one of them. However, cloud infrastructure expenditure can quickly spiral out of control, if managed incorrectly. By following a few, simple guidelines, companies can maximize the advantages of the cloud, including revenue, with limited, value-adding investments.

Join us for an insightful webinar with Lenny Primak & Luqman Saeed, where we'll demystify security for your Jakarta EE applications using Apache Shiro.

Simplifying Security for Your Jakarta EE Applications with Apache Shiro

Wednesday, the the 4th of September, 4pm BST

Register: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/security-with-jakarta-and-apache-shiro

Welcome to this week’s Friday Nugget! In today’s post, we’re focusing on a new feature coming in Java 23 that’s set to make your coding life a little easier, especially if you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by the clutter of import statements: module import declarations. By leveraging such tool, you can streamline your Java code, reduce verbosity and enhance readability, making your development process more efficient.

Ensuring Business Continuity When Changing Application Runtime

In today’s digital age, the only constant is change. Yet, one area where change often induces hesitation is in the modernization and migration of application servers for software. Moving mission-critical applications to a different runtime environment can indeed be a daunting prospect, entailing significant investments of time, money and resources. However, when unsatisfied by their current solution, why is the fear of migration operations not giving way to the fear of missing out?

In this blog series 'What’s Stopping Businesses from Application Server Migrations – Insights from Industry Players', we will look at what industry experts say and debunk server migration myths.

Payara Cloud, our increasingly popular Payara as a Service (PaaS) offering, automates the cloud deployment of your Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications, making it easy to connect to essential services that your application relies on. This post shows you how to connect your applications to the services they need. This quick tutorial applies whether those services are inside or outside your cloud environment, as long as they are reachable across the internet.

Now that we're eight months into 2024 (already!?), and in the middle of summer, it seems like a good time to catch up and update you on the Payara Roadmap for 2024 - let's see what we've done and what we are still planning to do for the rest of the year and beyond.

You can also watch the Payara Roadmap Update presented at the Virtual Payara Conference last month.

We're pleased to announce the latest releases of Payara Platform, addressing key bug fixes and delivering component upgrades for improved performance and security. Thanks to these updates, users of Payara Platform Enterprise and/or Payara Platform Community, can benefit from a more reliable and optimized runtime environment.

Robust and efficient application servers are crucial for companies relying on software applications, whether supporting e-commerce platforms, financial services portals, or internal operations. To ensure smooth operations and deliver seamless services to users, it's essential to partner with vendors who can provide a system runtime that offers maximum uptime. This reduces costs and optimizes performance, profitability, and user satisfaction. Effective service level agreements (SLAs) with these vendors play a key role in minimizing disruptions and ensuring that your applications run efficiently and reliably. 

In this blog post, we share insights from industry players on what to look for in application runtime SLAs to minimize disruptions.

Welcome to another episode of Nugget Friday, where we bring you bite-sized insights to make your development journey smoother and more efficient! This week, we're tackling a common challenge: how to dynamically configure your Payara Micro application after it’s already deployed in a production environment. 

Are you currently using GlassFish 7 and considering a migration to Payara Server? This webinar will provide a comprehensive high-level roadmap for your transition, ensuring a smooth migration process and taking full advantage of the full potential of your Jakarta EE applications running on Payara Server.

GlassFish to Payara Platform Migration Roadmap

Wednesday, the 14th of August 2pm BST

Register: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/glassfish-to-payara-migration-aug-2024 

The 11th release of Jakarta EE, the open-source successor to Java EE whose advancement is led by the Eclipse Foundation, is still undergoing development. Scheduled for release later in 2024, Jakarta EE 11 will introduce a range of enhancements and new functionalities aimed at improving Java enterprise application development. Let’s take a quick look at what to expect. 

In the latest episode of the Payara Podcast, we talk to Lenny Primak. Lenny is an experienced software architect and developer - he’s been contributing to various open source projects for many years, including Apache, Jakarta EE and Payara.

Last month, in June 2024 we held the Virtual Payara Conference, and that’s where Lenny joined us for the Open Source contributors roundtable. We had a really interesting conversation then, but had limited time to discuss various aspects of his work on open source, so we thought it’d be best to give Lenny some more time to share his journey and his experience during the Payara Podcast so here we are - we hope you will enjoy listening to this episode !

Welcome to another Nugget Friday! Today, we’re excited to share some insights into a recent development in the Java ecosystem that promises to enhance the way we process data with streams, exploring how it can make your stream processing more flexible, efficient and expressive. 

As August is about to unfold, we take some time to dive into the depths of Payara's resource base to gather for you the best pearls from July on Java, Jakarta EE, cloud computing, application development and devops. Our talented team has compiled an array of invaluable contributions designed to enhance your projects, meaning this month's roundup is packed with insightful guides, tutorials, technical insights and expert advice that you won't want to miss. 

With business running around the clock, customers and staff expect uninterrupted access to key software applications, making uptime essential to deliver optimum user experience. By implementing strategies aimed at keeping applications online, operational and responsive, companies can enhance their profitability, profile and overall competitiveness in the marketplace.

We interviewed our experts Luqman Saeed, Fabio Turizo and Patrik Duditš to help you with a few key tips on how to develop applications with high availability, consistency and reliability.

As Java developers, we’ve long grappled with the constraints of constructor logic and initialization.  In the past, if you needed to perform any operations before invoking the superclass constructor (via super()) in any class, you were often forced to rely on helper methods or extra constructors. This mostly ended up with cluttered, hard to read code as you needed to duplicate constructors or find workarounds. Let's look at how to address this in today's Nugget Friday!

Want to explore the potential of ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) architecture for your Jakarta EE workload? Our latest webinar 'Jakarta EE with ARM: Enhance Performance and Efficiency in the Cloud' is now available to watch on-demand on https://www.crowdcast.io/c/jakarta-ee-with-arm-july-2024

One of the biggest challenges when developing applications for the web is understanding how they need to be fine-tuned when releasing them into a production environment. This is no exception for Jakarta EE applications deployed on a Payara Server installation.  

In an increasingly interconnected and digital world, it is no surprise that there has been a steady rise in the number and cost of security breaches over the last few years. To maximize the robustness and resilience of your applications and prevent any vulnerability from being exploited, it's important for companies to keep everything around their software up to date.

When it comes to application servers, it means using a modern, fully supported solution or upgrading to one quickly. With Java EE-based server runtime environments being outdated legacy software and lacking support, it is essential to migrate applications relying on these to favor an alternative, such as Jakarta EE, to safeguard your applications and data.

“Which version of the Payara Platform is right for me?” We get asked this question all the time, so we wanted to provide you with a more in-depth discussion that outlines the similarities and differences between the two editions of the Payara Platform, Enterprise and Community, to help you choose the one that best fits your needs.

Welcome to another episode of Nugget Friday! Today, we'll be looking at asynchronous operations, which have always been a crucial component for creating efficient and responsive applications. 

Robust and efficient application servers are essential for companies relying on software applications, whether these support e-commerce platforms, financial services portals or internal operations.  To help ensure smooth operations, deliver seamless services to users and generate revenue, it’s important that the runtime in place can offer maximum uptime to reduce cost while optimizing performance, profitability and user satisfaction. 

In this blog post, we share insights from industry players on the impact of unexpected application server issues and downtime as well as how to reduce them.   

We're pleased to announce the latest releases of Payara Platform, bringing a range of updates across our Enterprise 5 and 6 editions as well as Community. These updates include bug fixes, performance optimizations, security enhancements and component upgrades to help you ensure your Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications continue to run smoothly and effectively.

Payara Micro is designed from the ground-up to be nimble for lightweight, fast deployments. As such, it is ideal for microservices and cloud environments. However, there may be instances where you may want to squeeze every bit of performance out of it. In such cases, the minimalist configuration of Payara Micro comes in handy.

Thanks to this, you can cut Payara Micro's footprint and speed up startup times, improving the efficiency of your app even more. In effect, depending on your application, you may be able to slash the startup time by up to a third! Here's how.

It's Nugget Friday again, and we're excited to bring you another valuable titbit to our beloved coders! In this instalment of our Friday Nugget series, we're diving into a common yet essential task for developers, especially when handling data read from a file, network or database: converting an InputStream to a String in Java. Knowing how to do this is crucial for efficiently managing IO and data processing tasks.

When it comes to choosing an application server for your enterprise environment, it looks like there's plenty of fish in the sea. However, what each type of fish can offer can vary considerably. Hence, selecting the right one is key to improving your business's efficiency, security, scalability and overall success.

If you're currently using GlassFish, it's time to consider casting your net wider and migrating to a more powerful fish, such as Payara Platform Enterprise. Let's explore the key benefits of making this transition and why Payara could be the perfect catch for your application and enterprise needs.

Innovation is at the core of some of the most exciting software applications currently available and in development. It's important to recognize these solutions, as the stories behind them can inspire developers as well demonstrate the real-world impact of a reliable and future-oriented application server in pushing boundaries in software development. In line with this commitment, we're delighted to shine a spotlight on Payara Community member, TechnoLynx, by interviewing its CEO and Founder, Balázs Keszthelyi. In this blog post, he discusses what the organization does, its applications and how it uses Payara to power key applications.

It’s Friday and we kick off the maiden edition of Nugget Friday. So, what is it? Nugget Friday is going to be a series of short blog posts that focus on hidden nuggets in the various JDK releases since Java 9. In this maiden edition, we look at a very obscure static method on the HashMap class introduced in Java 19.

In the latest episode of the Payara Podcast, we dive deep into a very trending topic, Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a top expert who is committed to ensuring a sustainable and responsible use of this technology: Dr. Mansoor Ahmed-Rengers, CEO and Founder of OpenOriginsas well as a Scientific Researcher at the University of Cambridge. We discuss what AI is, the transformative potential of Gen AI, the challenges it presents and the importance of regulation to harness its benefits while mitigating risks.

To remain competitive in a marketplace where competition is fierce, businesses relying on software applications as part of their offering need robust, flexible and efficient application servers. These are key to maximizing the capabilities of their applications, addressing customer needs and maintaining a competitive edge.

As a Java developer, you've probably experienced the challenges of deploying Jakarta EE or MicroProfile applications to the cloud. Setting up infrastructure, configuring servers and dealing with the gamut of cloud environments can be a major deviation from your core development tasks, ultimately influencing your productivity. However, there are tools that you can leverage to simplify and streamline cloud deployments. One is Payara Cloud Maven plugin - let's look at what it offers and how to use it in this blog post.

As summer sails in, we’re navigating towards exciting new adventures. But before we start exploring what lies ahead, let's cast our nets and haul in the bounty of brilliant contributions and resources from the past month. Crafted by our talented crew to boost your Java and Jakarta EE projects, our latest roundup is brimming with pearls and gems that you won't want to miss, from sparkling tutorials to invaluable insights.

Due to high demand and many entrants' requests, we are pleased to extend the deadline for submissions for the Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge. The contest is now open until July 25th.

We know it’s a busy period for everyone, with conferences, trade shows and other events, as well as the upcoming holiday season! We hope this extended deadline will give participants more time to get their submissions in. We’ve already had some incredible entries, and look forward to reading more!

Java's steady and predictable release cadence brings new features and improvements with each version. Java 21 (and the recently released 22) introduced major language innovations and performance optimizations. But what does this mean for the vast ecosystem of enterprise Java platforms? Let’s explore these issues in this blog post, starting with a look on the benefits of newer Java versions. 

Join us for the Virtual Payara Conference – a two-day, free online event dedicated to fortifying the security and resilience of your Java applications.

Thursday 27 June 2024, 1-5:30pm BST – Security & Cyber Resilience in the Java World - REGISTER HERE

Strategic Insights track is geared towards IT leaders, decision-makers, and strategists focusing on the broader aspects of security and cyber resilience in the Java ecosystem. This day aims to provide strategic insights and actionable guidance to help you navigate the complex cybersecurity landscape and build a robust, resilient Java environment.

Freshly rejuvenated from the annual Payara Retreat, we're pleased to announce the latest releases of Payara Platform, bringing a range of updates across our Community and Enterprise editions. These updates include bug fixes, performance optimizations, security enhancements and component upgrades to ensure your Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications continue to run smoothly.

Start-ups are hotbeds of innovation, where speed, agility and resourcefulness are key to success. But in the world of enterprise Java applications, managing complex cloud deployment infrastructure can quickly become a bottleneck and take up considerable time from your developers. To address these issues and streamline cloud deployments, we created Payara Cloud.

Join us for the Virtual Payara Conference – a two-day, free online event dedicated to fortifying the security and resilience of your Java applications.

Wed 26 June 2024, 1-7pm BST – Developer Insights – Designing Secure and Resilient Solutions for Jakarta EE Applications – REGISTER HERE

Developer Insight track is tailored for developers and technical professionals who are involved in the design and development of Java applications. This day features an array of sessions aimed at providing practical insights and hands-on knowledge to enhance the security and resilience of your solutions. See below for the agenda details.

'Java' can be considered an umbrella term encompassing different technologies rather than a single element or solution. This webinar with Simon Ritter from Azul  & Luqman Saeed from Payara - watch here - shed a light on what different Java aspects and components,  illustrating how software developers can leverage these technologies, including runtime options, to deliver highly effective applications.

In a previous blog post, we explored the benefits of using Request Tracing in Payara Server. Payara Micro streamlines the configuration process, allowing you to tailor request tracing directly through command-line options. Let's have a look at how you can customize this tool for your Payara Micro applications.

Introduction

Security is a paramount concern for modern web applications. Protecting sensitive data and user access necessitates a standardized approach. The OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocol, in conjunction with Identity Providers (IdPs) like Keycloak, and the Jakarta Security API integrated into Jakarta EE, offer a reliable solution. Together, they help streamline authentication and authorization in your Jakarta EE applications.

Introduction

In today's complex, distributed applications, pinpointing performance issues and understanding the flow of requests can be a hard task. Payara Server's Request Tracing Service provides a reliable toolset for tracing requests across various protocols and components. This blog post looks at request tracing in Payara Server, offering a quick guide to its features, configuration and best practices.

Introduction

In today's business world, competition is fierce and relentless. As a result, maximizing uptime while reducing downtime and its expenses is a top priority. In particular, users now expect applications to deliver consistent performance, regardless of unexpected challenges. Payara Server offers a high availability (HA) architecture that is designed to keep your business operational at all times. This blog post explores the components and configurations needed to create a highly available Payara Server environment, ensuring your applications remain accessible and responsive.

Deploying applications on Payara Cloud offers numerous advantages, including ease of use and scalability. However, like any platform, you might encounter some common issues. The good news is that these problems are typically easy to resolve. Below, we’ll explore common issues, compiled based on the expertise of our service team. For detailed steps and additional support, refer to our comprehensive troubleshooting guide.

Incorporating chatbots into your Jakarta EE application can offer a number of benefits to you and users, helping automate a number of tasks while maximizing support availability. If you are looking at creating and programming bots, Telegram offers a highly suitable solution, as its Bot API includes multiple features and functionalities. Let's have a closer look at the advantages and how to leverage this tool from our latest User Guide "Power Up Your Jakarta EE Applications with Telegram Chatbots"!

Avast ye, Payara Community! We are ready to chart our course for new horizons in June, but before we do, let's take a moment to look at all the treasures our old salts developed to power up your Java and Jakarta EE applications. We've collected the best pearls and gems in our latest roundup - check them out now!

We have exciting news to share: As part of our Power Up Your Jakarta EE campaign, we are launching Payara's first-ever Jakarta EE Media and Community Challenge!

We’re calling on Java experts, tech writers and content creators from around the world to showcase their talent by developing insightful content focused on Jakarta EE and the Payara Platform application server. This initiative is designed to inspire innovation and foster knowledge-sharing within the Java community. 

Choosing the right cloud platform for your Java applications can significantly improve development speed, scalability and overall costs. While popular options such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offer valuable solutions, a more niche, highly specialized provider like Payara can deliver effective platforms that bring unique Java-centric advantages: Payara Cloud. Let's take a look at Payara Cloud and how it compares to other common alternatives.

Today May 23rd marks the 29th birthday of the Java Platform. First debuting in in 1995, the platform has grown to become one of the most used technologies in the world. On this 29th occasion of its birthday, I got an AI chatbot to compose an ode for the Java Platform. So dear Java, here's an ode to you on your birthday from myself and everyone at Payara!

Join us for the Virtual Payara Conference – a two-day, free online event dedicated to fortifying the security and resilience of your Java applications.

This conference is designed for developers, IT professionals, and decision-makers who are keen to enhance their knowledge and skills in creating secure Java environments. The event is divided into two focused days, each packed with insightful sessions from industry experts, including EU Cyber Resilience Act Specialists, Java Leaders, Industry Analysts & more.

Wed 26 June 2024, 1-6pm BST – Developer Insights – Designing Secure and Resilient Solutions for Jakarta EE Applications – REGISTER HERE

Thurs 27 June 2024, 1-6pm BST – Strategic Insights: Security & Cyber Resilience in the Java World – REGISTER HERE

Are you planning to work with Payara Cloud and look forward to harness its power but don't know where to start? Our platform is extremely intuitive, but to make sure you can get the most out of it, we compiled a Quick Start Guide, written with you in mind. It is your roadmap to navigating this cutting-edge platform and it walks you through the essentials of getting started with Payara Cloud to simplify your journey from signup to deployment.

Payara Server offers integrated tools that streamline your development experience when working with Jakarta CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection) in your applications. In this post, we'll take a look at the CDI Development Mode available in Payara Server and the CDI Probe it offers.

With nearly every activity currently relying on applications, companies are continuously seeking to rapidly innovate, advance and scale their solutions. As these applications grow considerably, traditional on-premises infrastructure may not always be able to meet key operational requirements. In such instances, Cloud-native solutions are ideal, as they can offer scalability, agility and cost-effectiveness.

Let's dig deeper into how Payara Cloud can help you futureproof your Jakarta EE applications and, in turn, enhance your profitability and competitiveness in a fat-moving and demanding marketplace. 

We're happy to announce the May 2024 release of Payara Platform! These updates bring a smoother user experience, security fixes, and essential component upgrades to keep your Jakarta EE applications running at their best.

REST, or Representational State Transfer, is the web standard for building APIs and applications. It offers a lightweight architecture for exchanging data between applications over the web. Jakarta REST (formerly JAX-RS) is the standard API for building RESTful web services on the Jakarta EE Platform. 

This blog post looks at caching within Jakarta REST. We'll explore how to use the built-in features and functionalities to enhance the performance and user experience of your RESTful APIs through resource caching. By using these techniques, you can significantly reduce server load, improve responsiveness, and enhance the overall efficiency of your web resources.

Maven is arguably the most used build automation tool in the Java ecosystem. With that great power and popularity, comes great...configuration options! One such option that can leave you scratching your head is dependency scopes. This blog post takes a quick look at maven scopes, what they are and when to choose which scope.

Introduction

Lately, microservices have become extremely popular in software design. They offer the ability to scale, deploy updates independently and use different technologies. However, it's easy to forget how complex microservices can be to manage. Inspired in part by the introduction of Spring Modulith, a top-level Spring project aimed at helping developers create evolvable applications, this blog post takes a fresh look at the concept of modularity. 

More than a quarter of a century after its birth, Java still remains a cornerstone in modern enterprise computing. However, with a myriad of runtime options available, making an informed choice that aligns with your specific business needs can be challenging. This webinar, led by experts from Azul (Simon Ritter) and Payara (Luqman Saeed) and designed for decision makers and architects, aims to uncover the secrets to selecting the most optimal Java runtime, focusing on the unique demands of mission-critical Jakarta EE workloads.

Uncovering The Secrets of Java Runtime Choices for Jakarta EE Applications

Wednesday, the 15th of May, 3pm BST

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2xtu5op6TDagDU0c2aR_Kg#/registration 

All aboard, Payara Community! It's time to hoist the sails and set course for new adventures in May. But before we do, let's take a look back at the treasures we uncovered in April. We've gathered our favorite catches from the depths to share with you, ready to power up your Jakarta EE applications and propel you towards success! Join us as we navigate through the highlights of the month in our latest roundup

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.