Didn't get a chance to attend JavaOne 2017 earlier this month? You can now watch some of the conference talks online! See below for our selection of the most interesting and useful presentations about Java EE.

All JavaOne 2017 recorded talks can be found on the Oracle Java YouTube channel.

We're excited to announce that the second Alpha release of Payara Server 5 is now available for download! We highly encourage you to give it a go, test it out and let us know what further improvements are needed. 

As a Java EE developer, I sometimes envy how fast it’s possible to see the result of a code change in a running application with interpreted languages like PHP or JavaScript. With Java, it’s always necessary to rebuild the source code in bytecode, which can be then safely updated only by restarting the whole application. And all developers know that restoring the desired state of the application after a fresh restart takes time and is tedious.

A crucial component in many web applications is the use of a database. The chances of using JDBC directly or indirectly to access a relational database (through JPA or other ORM frameworks) on these applications are quite high. A common problem when dealing with relational databases is dealing with SQL queries or statements that take too much time to resolve, thus causing your application to be considered slow in producing results to the user. It's usually better to detect these issues preemptively, before sub-par performance damages your application, and Payara Server has you covered!

One of the core steps in every continuous integration process is running integration tests for your application. Unlike vanilla unit tests, integration tests allow you to assess the state of your applications or systems by testing all of its components together (modules, databases, messaging, etc.) and verifying that they work correctly as a whole unit. Needless to say, integration tests are more complex that simple unit tests, have a larger footprint, take more time and are usually saved to test full releases or major changes to implementations.