BANGALORE, INDIA: The Java EE 6 platform defines a standard way to develop, deploy, and manage fault-tolerant, distributed, secure, and multi-tier enterprise Java applications. There are three components of the platform – a Specification, a Reference Implementation (RI), and a Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). The specification is created as Java Specification Request (JSR) 316 under the open and collaborative Java Community Process (JCP). The different aspects of the platform, such as Transactions, Persistence, and Web services, are defined in it's own specification following the same collaborative process.

For example, Java Persistence API 2.0 defines an API for the management of persistence and object/relational mapping. An RI is a binary distribution and is a proof-of-concept that the APIs and assertions defined in the specification can be implemented. GlassFish v3 is the open source reference implementation for Java EE 6 and is extremely lightweight, highly performant, and production quality that can be used in mission critical applications. The TCK is a set of tests that can be run on any Java EE 6 implementation to ensure conformance with the specification.

The Java EE platform has evolved and matured over the past 10 years. There are three main themes in the Java EE 6 platform – extensibility, profiles, and pruning. Extension points and server provider interfaces are added to the platform enabling other useful technologies desired by the web and enterprise developer to plug into platform implementations cleanly and efficiently. This allows a third party framework to be seamlessly integrated with a Java EE 6 implementation, such as GlassFish.

For example, typically these frameworks have to rely upon registering servlet filters/listeners in “web.xml” or a similar mechanism to register with the Web container. The Servlet 3.0 specification defines “web module deployment descriptor fragment” (aka “web-fragment.xml”) that allows all the framework configuration information to be specified in “META-INF/web-fragment.xml”. The Web container uses the specified configuration for registering the framework.

Profile and Pruning together address the ever increasing size of the Java EE platform. The profiles allow to refocus the Java EE platform on particular classes of developers and applications. A profile is a reconfiguration of the platform and consist of a proper subset of technologies contained in the platform, technologies not present in the platform, and may tag certain technologies optional. The platform specification defines the rules to create or revise an existing profile. As part of Java EE 6, a Web Profile targeted at developers of modern web applications is defined. It clearly defines the set of technologies needed by most web application developers.

There are certain technologies included in the Java EE platform that are no longer relevant to the platform as they were when they were introduced to the platform. Pruning defines a 2-step process to convert a required feature of the platform into an optional component. The platform Java EE 6 specification defines the technologies that are pruned in this release. For example JAX-RPC 1.1 and JAXR 1.0 are marked for pruning in this release and will be marked optional in the next release of the platform.