In addition to the main themes, the platform continues to evolve on simplicity and ease-of-development. A few new specifications are added to the platform to make it more robust. Contexts and Dependency Injection (JSR 299), aka CDI, provides a type-safe dependency injection for Java EE. It utilizes the annotations defined by the more generic Dependency Injection for Java (JSR 330) and adapts it for Java EE environments. Basically CDI adds a number of additional features useful for enterprise applications.

Bean Validation (JSR 303) defines a metadata model and API for JavaBean validation. Standard constraints like @NotNull and @Size are defined in “javax.validation.constraints.*” package and may be applied to JSF managed beans and JPA entity beans. New constrains can be easily defined using the framework defined by the specification. Java API for RESTful Web services (JSR 311), aka JAX-RS, defines an API for RESTful Web services in the platform. This API has been available for for some time and is now included in the platform.

Several other specifications in the platform received a major facelift as well. Servlets 3.0 make “web.xml” optional in most of the cases by introducing equivalent annotations and following the better defaults and convention-over-configuration rules defined in the specification. Dynamic registration of servlets and filters, asynchronous processing, and security enhancements are some other enhancements in this area. Java Server Faces (JSF) 2.0 now uses Facelets as the view technology, has Ajax support integrated, does not require “faces-config.xml” in common cases, and makes composite components' authoring easier.

Starting with Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.1, EJBs can now be easily packaged into a Web ARchive (WAR) file. A singleton bean for shared state across the java Virtual Machine (JVM), optional interface, and cron-like calendar semantics are some other improvements made in this area. JPA 2 expands the object/relational mapping and makes it more natural to a Java developer. A type-safe Criteria API, improvements to the Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL), and a metamodel API provides useful additions for database developers.

Several other specifications like Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6, Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.2, Java API for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.2, Web Services Metadata MR3, Java Server Pages (JSP) 2.2 / Expression Language (EL) 2.2, and many others are also updated to align with the platform. The complete list of specifications is included in the Java EE 6 platform specification.