The new edition of Virtual Payara Conference is coming on the 8th of July 2025 and this time it's all about discovering practical strategies for your Java journey – whether you use Jakarta EE, Spring, or Quarkus! 

Many of today’s applications must process enormous volumes of data while providing instantaneous responses.Traditional blocking architectures often struggle to meet these demands, leading to sluggish performance and poor user experiences. Reactive programming is a coding paradigm that can help address these issues by using asynchronous, non-blocking operations to change how systems are built.

This blog posts explores the core principles, advantages and best practices of reactive programming in Java to help you create scalable, resilient and high-performance applications. 

The June 2025 release cycle brings incremental developments across the Payara Platform family, with significant updates to our Community 6.2025.6, Enterprise 6.27.0, and Enterprise 5.75.0 editions, plus the latest alpha release of Payara 7. These releases focus on enhanced diagnostic capabilities, development workflow improvements, and modernized component upgrades.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing enterprise Java applications, unlocking new capabilities, and driving unprecedented innovation and automation. But how can you bring the power of AI and LLMs like OpenAI or Ollama into your Jakarta EE/MicroProfile projects, without wrestling with complex, low-level integrations?

For developers, especially those leveraging the Payara Platform, the open-source SmallRye LLM project offers an elegant solution. It simplifies the creation of AI-powered features, often referred to as 'AI agents,' by integrating LLM capabilities through familiar Jakarta EE paradigms like CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection).

In this blog, we’ll delve into how SmallRye LLM works and explore its integration within the Payara Platform, demonstrating how it supports the creation of AI Jakarta EE applications. We'll then guide you through a practical 'payara-car-booking' demo, showcasing AI-driven conversations and seamless backend integration."

Over the past decades, the technology landscape has undergone relentless change, with innovations rapidly reshaping how applications are developed and deployed. In such a fast-moving environment, few technologies have demonstrated true staying power. Yet, Java has defied the odds. As we mark 30 years of Java and 25 years of enterprise Java, it’s evident that these platforms haven’t just endured but have thrived—constantly evolving, adapting and proving their enduring value to developers worldwide.

After two decades as Java's dominant build tool (no offense to Gradle), Maven is undergoing its most significant evolution. While the official Maven documentation outlines the technical changes in Maven 4, this blog post focuses specifically on what these changes mean for enterprise developers working with Jakarta EE, Spring Boot and Quarkus.

For this episode, I had a really interesting chat with Richard Fichtner, the leader of JUG Oberpfalz. Some of you may recognise Richard from many Java industry events, as he’s a frequent conference speaker, but he’s also known as the face of the JCon Conference as one of the organisers of this very popular Java event.

Richard is a Java Champion with 20 years of experience in the software industry. He’s the CEO and Principal Software Architect at XDEV, he’s actively contributing to the open source community through projects like RapidClipse and advocating for best practices in Apache Maven.

What is JBang?

JBang is a tool that lets you run Java code with zero build setup. It handles dependencies, compilation, and execution with a single command - making Java as easy to run as a script. With JBang, you can:

My guests for this episode of the Payara Podcast JUG Spotlight series are the leaders of Chicago and Seattle Java User Groups – Mary Grygleski and Freddy Guime. 

During our chat, we discussed Mary’s and Freddy’s journey to becoming JUG leaders, we talked about the opportunities that come with being part of a local Java User Group, whether as organisers or members. We also explored the impact of AI on modern Java development, which unsurprisingly has sparked significant interest among both new and existing community members. However, it also presents a challenge—how to ensure the next generation of developers remains effective in a workplace where AI is increasingly integrated into development workflows.

In our latest release blog post, we announced the availability of a new version of Payara Platform Community 7 Alpha, which gives developers a more snapshot view of the upcoming Jakarta EE 11 features, helping them get closer to the technology. In particular, the March release of Payara Platform Community delivers game-changing concurrency improvements.

Let's dive into what this means for your applications and your projects as well as how it can enhance developer productivity.