WebSphere Liberty Now Java EE 7 Compatible -- ADTmag

WebSphere Liberty Now Java EE 7 Compatible

By John K. Waters
July 21, 2015

IBM's WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Liberty profile, v8.5, is now Java EE 7 certified, the company announced this week. The latest stable release of this lightweight profile of the app server for Web, mobile, and OSGi also includes many of the related open standards and proprietary WAS APIs that are available in so-called WAS Classic, the company said.

WAS Liberty, which is a functional subset of the full profile of the WebSphere app server, is used for both development and production. Version 8.5 continues to support Java EE 6. Liberty can be used in bare-bones form, or augmented with additional features, which can be downloaded from the Liberty Repository.

The list of new features in the Java EE 7 release includes, among others: Java EE client container support; facilities to perform data validation in Java EE and SEE apps; support for the Java API for RESTful Web Services, version 2.0; support for Enterprise JavaBeans 3.2 and EJB 3.2 Lite (ejbLite 3.2); support for Java Authorization Contract for Containers; support for the Java API for JSON Processing; WebSocket 1.1 support.

The profile also provides features to support batch functions that extend the app server to accommodate apps that must perform batch work alongside transaction apps. Among these: a REST API for remotely managing job executions; a command-line utility for using the remote management API (and for waiting job completion); per-executions job logs with interleaved runtime and app log records; among others.

There's also new support for the Java API for XML RESTful Web Services 2.0 (JAX-RS 2.0), which allows developers to configure the client to access REST endpoints. Version 2.0 introduces a new and standardized Client API, making it possible to make HTTP requests to remote RESTful Web Services. And there's new support for Java Connector Architecture 1.7, which enables the configuration of resource adapters to access Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) from applications.

A complete list of features is available in IBM WASdevnet Developer Advocate Laura Cowen's June blog post. IBM software engineer Cindy High's post includes a useful list of "things to be aware of when updating apps to Java EE 7."

The latest version of the WAS Liberty runtime is available now for download.

About the Author

John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].