News

Helidon Java Microservices Framework Hits 1.0 Release

• By John K. Waters
• February 26, 2019

Project Helidon, Oracle's nascent Java Microservices Framework, which was unveiled less than five months ago, is now available in a 1.0 release that includes full support for Eclipse MicroProfile 1.2 (Helidon MP), support for Eclipse Yasson and Jackson (Helidon SE) and numerous bug fixes and performance improvements.

"We have finished the API changes that we've been working on over the last few months," said Dmitry Kornilov, senior software development manager at Oracle and Helidon Project lead, in a blog post. "From this point on we will have much greater API stability."

Project Helidon is an open source framework that provides a set of Java Libraries for writing microservices-based applications. It's designed to run on a fast Netty core. It supports MicroProfile 1.1 and provides familiar APIs, such as JAX-RS, CDI and JSON-P/B. The company's MicroProfile implementation runs on its own Helidon Reactive WebServer.

Helidon supports two programming models for building microservices-based applications: Helidon SE, which Oracle has described as a "simple, functional, lightweight microframework developed in a modern reactive way;" and Helidon MP, which is the Eclipse MicroProfile implementation that provides a "development experience familiar to Java EE/Jakarta EE developers." Helidon MP, now supports the MicroProfile 1.2 spec; Helidon SE provides three small, functional style APIs (a Web server, configuration and security).

Oracle unveiled Helidon in September 2018. In a post on Medium, Kornilov noted that Helidon was currently used by 10 internal Oracle projects. "We wanted to create a lightweight set of libraries that didn't require an application server and could be used in Java SE applications," he wrote. "These libraries could be used separately from each other, but when used together would provide the foundation a developer needs to create a microservice: configuration, security and a Web server."

Oracle's Helidon team comprises two smaller teams, one in the U.S. and one in Prague, which is where Kornilov is based. More project details are available on GitHub.

The Eclipse MicroProfile community is focused on creating a baseline platform definition that optimizes enterprise Java for microservices architecture. The MicroProfile.io initiative was unveiled by its founders Red Hat, IBM, Tomitribe, Payara and the London Java Community (LJC) at the Devoxx UK and DevNation events in June 2016. (Brazil's SouJava Community joined later.) The following September, the MicroProfile 1.0 was announced during the annual JavaOne event. It became and Eclipse project in December of that year.