News

Eclipse Jakarta EE 9.1 First Incremental Release Since 'Big Bang'

• By John K. Waters
• May 25, 2021

The Eclipse Foundation's Jakarta EE Working Group announced the release of the Jakarta EE 9.1 Platform and Web Profile specifications and related TCKs this week.

This is the first incremental release of the open-source enterprise Java platform since version 9.0 was announced in December 2020. That milestone release moved enterprise Java fully from the javax.* namespace to the jakarta.*  namespace. Nicknamed "The Big Bang," the move established Jakarta EE 9 as "a foundation on which cloud-era innovations can be built for future Java infrastructure," the Foundation said at the time.

The 9.1 release makes Jakarta EE compatible with Java SE 11, the most current long-term-service (LTS) release of Java SE, as well as Java SE 8. Enterprise developers can use the updated platform to build and deploy Jakarta EE 9.1 apps that take advantage of new Java SE 11 features added since Java SE 8 in their Jakarta EE 9.1 applications. They can move existing Jakarta EE 9 apps to Java SE 11 without changes. And they can migrate existing Java EE and Jakarta EE 8 applications to Jakarta EE 9.1 using the same process available for migration to Jakarta EE 9.

This release of Jakarta EE already has five compatible implementations, including:

IBM Open Liberty
Eclipse Glassfish
Apache TomEE
Red Hat Wildfly
ManageCat/ManageFish (support for Apache Tomcat and Eclipse GlassFish, respectively)

"This latest release for Jakarta EE is really indicative of the community momentum we’re seeing in Jakarta EE," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "With EE 9.1 following only a few months after EE 9, the Jakarta EE community is now delivering a regular cadence of releases. With the recent 'big bang' namespace shift of Jakarta EE 9, the momentum building in certified Jakarta EE-compatible products, as well as a deep interest in firms that want to move their existing Java applications into cloud environments, the enterprise Java industry is experiencing a renaissance."

The Jakarta EE Working Group was established in 2018 to serve as the successor organization to the Java Community Process (JCP) for the family of technologies formerly known as Java EE.

"It is critical that Jakarta EE remains a stable evolutionary platform for the industry in general," said Mark Little, vice president of engineering at Red Hat, a long-time contributor to the Java community, "and Red Hat customers in particular. Jakarta EE 9.1 maintains stability with continued support for Java SE 8 while adding support for Java SE 11."