What's New in the Payara Platform December Release?

The last Payara Platform release of 2020 is here!  With this patch release of Payara Platform Enterprise 5.23.1, we're introducing more improvements and component upgrades to Payara InSight as well as a couple useful bug fixes. Meanwhile, the Payara Platform Community 5.2020.7 introduces some improvements and additions to the MicroProfile specs in preparation for the upcoming MicroProfile 4.0 release. We are also happy to confirm that Payara Platform Web Profile is now Jakarta EE 8 compatible!

You can download Payara Platform Community 5.2020.7 here and request Payara Platform Enterprise 5.23.1 here. 

Read more below to find out the details.

Further Payara InSight Improvements in Payara Platform Enterprise

Back in October, we introduced Payara InSight - an improved and production-ready version of  the Monitoring Console, available only in Payara Platform Enterprise (check out the Payara InSight demo here).

In Payara Platform Enterprise 5.23.1 release, we continued to make improvements that make Payara InSight easier to use. Updates include slight changes to the GUI for consistency and warning awareness, improvements in the flow of creating new pages, and improvements to the process of updating or changing a previously created Watch. 

More details on Payara InSight improvements are coming soon in a separate blog post, so watch this space!

New MicroProfile Specs in Payara Platform Community

Improved Deployment Performance with a MicroProfile Sniffer and Engine in Payara Platform Community 

In previous versions of Payara Platform Community, all MicroProfile specifications were launched when deploying an application - even if you weren’t using the specification. To improve deployment performance and efficiency, we’ve now created a MicroProfile Sniffer and Engine.

What’s the MicroProfile Sniffer and Engine in the Payara Platform?

Similar to a trained service dog increasing the efficiency of a search and rescue team using their powerful noses to “sniff” out and locate missing people, the MicroProfile Sniffer and Engine discovers which MicroProfile specifications you’re using with the Payara Platform and only deploys those. The Sniffer and Engine increases efficiency by only deploying the specifications you use, rather than deploying all of them.

Payara Platform Web Profile is Now Jakarta EE 8 Compatible!

Payara Server Web Profile has passed the approximately 18,000 open sourced licensed Jakarta EE 8 Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs) for the Web Profile Platform and is now a Jakarta EE 8 Web Profile compatible implementation! 

You can find out more in the blog post here.

Other Changes & Improvements

• Payara Platform now works with LDAP. If you are a MicroProfile user, this should be helpful if you want to fetch secure data for your application.
  
• In the November release of Payara Platform Community, we added new MicroProfile Config sources for the cloud, to allow fetching secure configuration data from each cloud provider. The newly added Hashicorp Vault is a vendor neutral service that can be deployed to any of the cloud providers, and will help you store and access secure data similarly to each of the options provided by each cloud vendor.
  

• We added one important security fix to Payara Platform Community - Hibernate Validator 6.1.2.Final contained a vulnerability that allowed remote code execution when using a custom validator that doesn’t sanitise user input. The vulnerability report can be found here: NVD - CVE-2020-10693 (nist.gov), with some more background here: Hibernate Validator 6.1.5.Final and 6.0.20.Final released - In Relation To.

• We removed production domain from Payara Server Community Edition, as Payara Platform Community is not meant to be used in production environments. If you'd like to benefit from all production-ready features of Payara Platform, reach out to ask to request Payara Platform Enterprise 
• We've had plenty of valuable community contributions to Payara Platform in the recent weeks, including MicroProfile, security and other various fixes. Shout out to Lukáš Kvídera, Alexander Pinchuk and bjetal - thank you for your help and support!

Release Notes

The Enterprise Release (request here) includes 8 bug fixes, 8 improvements and 1 component upgrade; while the Community Release (direct download here) includes 4 new features, 10 bug fixes, 4 improvements and 1 security fix. 

See more detailed overview of the fixes and improvements in the Release Notes:

• Payara Platform Community Edition 5.2020.7
• Payara Platform Enterprise Edition 5.23.1

Download The Latest Payara Platform Release

Don't forget to update your Payara Platform to the new version! You can Download the Payara Community Edition here, or request the Payara Enterprise Edition via this form.

Community Online Event: December Release Overview and Jakarta EE 9

On December 8, we held a webinar where Rudy De Busscher covered recent updates and enhancements to the Payara Platform in this latest release, as well as answering community questions. 

The event also involved a discussion about the exciting new release of Jakarta EE 9, how this relates to Payara and how you can use the Transformer Configuration Option to easily migrate.

Please find the video here: 

As usual - if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, please post them in the comments below or email us at community@payara.fish