COMMUNITY JAVA INJAVA ACTION JAVA TECHJAVA Mark Little, vice president of engineering at Red Hat, overlooks a clean room cooling and air filtration system in the Newcastle University ABOUT US building where the Red Hat o!ces are located in northeast England. JCP Executive Series Red Hat’s vice president of engineering discusses Java EE 7 and the JCP. A Conversation BY STEVE MELOAN on!nuing our series of interviews and added enterprise with Mark Little with dis!nguished members of the middleware to its roster of CExecu!ve Commi"ee of the Java technology offerings. Red blog Community Process (JCP), we turn to Hat par!cipated heavily in Mark Li"le, vice president of engineering the development of both at Red Hat. Ini!ally known for its Enterprise the Java EE 6 specifica!on and the just- PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN BLYTHE Linux OS, Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006 released Java EE 7 specifica!on. 14 ORACLE.COM/JAVAMAGAZINE /////////////////////////////////////////////// MAY/JUNE 2013 Java Magazine: Red Hat whole Java EE architecture that we’ve Java Magazine: How has the Web has been very involved in seen in a number of years. And I don’t Profile of Java EE 6 affected Red Hat COMMUNITY the evolu!on of Java EE 7. just say that because Red Hat led the technologies, and how will that further Can you comment on effort, because it was really a group change for Java EE 7—in terms of new leading the specifica!ons effort. I say it because we were hearing APIs like WebSocket and JSON-P? for CDI [Contexts and from many vendors that it was hard at Li!le: The growth and complexity of Dependency Injec!on] 1.1, !mes to develop applica!ons using the the Java EE stack is really not unique. If and Bean Valida!on, and standard Java EE stack. CDI has tried you look at CORBA and DCE and other par!cipa!ng in the devel- to greatly simplify that. So annota!ons standards, you see a similar phenom- JAVA INJAVA ACTION opment of a number of are a great addi!on to the language, enon. Java EE 6 recognized that fact other JSRs? and we’re now seeing them being used and introduced the concept of a Web Li!le: We led the CDI and in lots of different areas. Profile, which is essen!ally a stripped- Bean Valida!on updates, Since Java EE 6 was released, we’ve down version of the full profile. because we were already seen the momentum around it build- In terms of the impact that it had on leading those in Java EE 6. ing. We’re seeing a lot more people Red Hat, we’d been delivering our own And as you indicated, who didn’t consider Java EE 6 on their version of profiles to our communi!es TECHJAVA we’ve been very ac!ve radar screen but who are now really for some !me. There was no standard on a number of other taking a look at it as a means of sim- that we could present, but we could JSRs—including JTA plifying the development of enter- offer the ability to streamline the stack. [Java Transac!on API], prise applica!ons. And they men!on If a customer didn’t want Web services, JCA [Java EE Connector CDI !me and !me again. So it was for instance, we could provide that. Architecture], and JMS pre#y obvious to us that we wanted So I think the Web Profile was a really ABOUT US [Java Message Service] to lead the update to CDI in Java EE 7, good thing to introduce as a standard. updates. because there were some things that And the feedback that we’ve go#en We’ve tried to be ac!vely we couldn’t do in the version that went has been extremely posi!ve. We see a LIttle confers involved, in one way or another, with into Java EE 6. And there was also feed- lot of people who might not have con- with a colleague. all of the JSRs that have been updated back that we’d go#en from users when sidered Java EE 6, who are now looking in Java EE 7. Even if we’re not leading Java EE 6 was finalized that we wanted at the Web Profile, and then eventually them, it’s s!ll important that we bring to take into account. upgrading to the full profile because the perspec!ve of Red Hat customers In terms of the process, we’ve some of the things that they want and our wider open source community done pre#y much the same this !me aren’t in the Web Profile. So I think it’s to how Java EE is being adopted. around as we did with Java EE 6. All of a really good way to on-board more Java Magazine: Can you comment on our processes are open—so we have users, and from a company perspec- the importance of these JSRs within an open mailing list, all the par!ci- !ve, to gain new customers. blog Java EE 7, and your experiences during pants see what everybody else is talk- We saw a lot of new APIs in Java EE 6, their refinement and evolu!on? ing about, and we have open issue including JAX-RS and CDI, which have Li!le: We think that CDI is probably tracking. The dra$s go through a very received a lot of a#en!on for the bene- the most important addi!on to the wide revision process. fits they’ve brought to developers. With 15 ORACLE.COM/JAVAMAGAZINE /////////////////////////////////////////////// MAY/JUNE 2013 BIG SPEC “ We think that CDI Java EE 7, we’re seeing the is probably the applica!ons in the cloud. APIs extend yet again with We announced our own COMMUNITY addi!ons such as JSON-P most important platform as a service back and WebSocket, both of addition to the in 2011, which was ini!ally which are vital for keeping based on a pre-release of the enterprise Java stack at whole Java EE our Java EE 6–compliant the forefront of waves such architecture that applica!on server. And as cloud and mobile. then we released EAP6, Java Magazine: A variety we’ve seen in a which is our full imple- JAVA INJAVA ACTION of cloud-related features number of years.” menta!on, where we made originally intended for Java the announcement of EE 7 have been deferred OpenShi$, our platform-as- to Java EE 8. Can you com- a-service offering. ment on this change, how Java EE is When we were originally working on used in cloud environments today, and Java EE 7, there were quite a lot of new how the technology will evolve in post– JSRs that were going to be focused on TECHJAVA Java EE 7 releases? making Java EE more cloud-aware. But Li!le: From discussions with our com- as I said, Java EE 6 is pre#y darn good get these features into the IDE as Little says that open muni!es and our customers, what in the cloud today. There are certain quickly as we possibly can, so we can source communities they wanted was the ability to offload areas where it can be improved—in get people to kick the !res. “drive everything we do at Red Hat.” applica!ons from their own infra- terms of modularity and mul!- Java Magazine: Java EE 7 has pruned a structure onto somebody else’s, but tenancy. But I agree with the defer- number of older features (JSR 77, ABOUT US without having to reimplement. And ment move on these features, so that JSR 88, JSR 93, JSR 101, and so on). How the obvious way to do that is to ensure we could get Java EE 7 out on sched- will this be addressed in Red Hat’s that the platform you’ve been run- ule. Those features will be in the next Java EE 7 offerings? ning with your own hardware is on the release, and therefore Java EE 8 will be Li!le: This isn’t the first !me that JSRs cloud. From very early on, we’ve been even be#er for evolving clouds. have been pruned. What we tend to working to ensure that our implemen- Java Magazine: How will the JBoss do, and what I expect we will do with ta!ons will run on an infrastructure as Developer Studio IDE reflect/u!lize these JSRs, is if they’re no longer in the a service, and therefore form a plat- the new offerings found in Java EE 7? Java EE 7 spec, then we will remove form as a service. Li!le: We try to keep JDBS at the van- them from our Java EE 7–compliant When Java EE 6 came along, it actu- guard of ge&ng things in front of the implementa!on. ally offered us an easier route to do actual developers, so we can deter- But we’ve got the Java EE 6 imple- that, because with the profiles intro- mine pre#y quickly where the prob- menta!on—AS7 [JBoss Applica!on blog duced in Java EE 6, it became easier lems are. If a change in CDI isn’t really Server 7] is the community version, and for us to offer a standard Web Profile right, for example, then we’ll get a lot EAP6 [JBoss Enterprise Applica!on 6] and a standard full-profile platform of feedback from developers through is the product version.