by Timothy Beneke

On Tuesday afternoon, noted Java EE authors Arun Gupta and Antonio Goncalves offered a whirlwind tour of new features in “Java EE 7: Fifty New Features of Java EE 7 in 50 Minutes”. Gupta is legendary at Oracle for his hard work and astute grasp of the Java EE platform. His blog offers a wealth of insight into Java EE and other Java matters. He is the author, most recently, of Java EE 7 Essentials published by O’Reilly. Goncalves is one of the most highly regarded writers on EE anywhere and the author of Beginning Java EE 7, published by Apress.

Java EE 7’s new features enhance HTML5 support, increase developer productivity, and further improve how enterprise demands can be met. Developers will write significantly less boilerplate code, have better support for the latest Web applications, and gain access to enhanced scalability and richer, simpler functionality. The session did a stellar job of spelling out the details to a packed house.

With four new components (WebSocket, JSON-P, batch, and concurrency), and three old ones significantly updated (JAX-RS, JMS, and EL), along with other significant changes to the platform, a lot of new functionality has been added.

They divided the new Java EE 7 features into 19 categories and explained an average of two to three features in each category.  Here were the categories:

CDI 1.1 (JSR 346)
Bean Validation 1.1 (JSR 349)
Interceptors 1.2 (JSR 318)
Concurrency utilities 1.0 (JSR 236)
JPA 2.1 (JSR 338)
JTA 1.2 (JSR 907)
EJB 3.2 (JSR 345)
JMS 2.0 (JSR 343)
Servlet 3.1 (JSR 340)
Web Socket 1.0 (JSR 356)
Expression Language 3.0 (JSR 341)
JSF 2.2 (JSR 344)
JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR 339)
JSON-P 1.0 (JSR 353)
Batch 1.0 (JSR 352)
JavaMail 1.5 (JSR 919)
JCA 1.7 (JSR 322)
Java Connector Architecture
Default Resources

Here are just a few of the high points:

CDI 1.1 (JSR 346) enables finer scanning control and the ability to veto the processing of a class or package. Bean Validation 1.1 (JSR 349) allows for method validation and the ability to pre/post conditions on method and constructors. Interceptors 1.2 (JSR 318) focused on the ability to associate an Interceptor associated with a constructor and the ability to prioritize interceptor bindings.

For Concurrency utilities 1.0 (JSR 236), the emphasis was on ManagedExecutor with a focus on:
* User threads in Java EE applications
* The ability to support simple and advance concurrency design patterns
* And to extend Concurrency Utilities API from Java SE (JSR 166y)

Further emphasis in concurrency was on ManagedThreadFactory and DynamicProxy.

Dynamic Proxy:
* Creates dynamic proxy objects, and adds contextual information available for applications running in Java EE environment
* It supports Classloading, JNDI, Security, …

Also covered as part of concurrency: ManagedExecutor
* User threads in Java EE applications
* Support simple and advance concurrency design patterns
* Extend Concurrency Utilities API from Java SE (JSR 166y)
– java.util.concurrent package

In addition: ManagedScheduledExecutor
* Managed version of ScheduledExecutorService
* Submit delayed or periodic tasks

For JPA 2.1 (JSR 338), standardized database schema generation and the ability to define additional indexes in schema generation were emphasized. JTA 1.2 (JSR 907) was praised for its capacity for transaction management on Managed Beans as a CDI interceptor binding; in addition, it offers CDI scope whose lifecycle is scoped to the currently active JTA transaction.

They discussed WebSocket and annotated server endpoint which enables full-duplex bi-directional communication over a single TCP connection.

JSON Builder creates an object model (or an array) in memory by adding elements. JsonParser is an event-based parser that can read JSON data from a stream.

All in all, it was an impressive display of Java SE 7 expertise.

Java EE 7 Essentials by Arun Gupta

Beginning Java EE 7 by Antonio Goncalves

Be sure to check out Parleys.com in early October to listen to the entire session. It's well worth it.