Java EE 5 vs Java EE 6

This post visualizes changes between Java EE Standards 5 and 6. The comparison of standards is listed in four sections Web-Services, Web-Container, Enterprise Application technologies and Maintenance. Hope this helps someone.

Web Service related changes

The new redesigned Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) is the underlayer or a middle part of new Java EE 6 Web service stack. The new stack includes JAX-WS 2.0, JAXB 2.0, and SAAJ 1.3. and is also called “integrated stack”. JAX-WS was designed to take place of JAX-RPC. Due this also JSR-109 was updated because it describes run time architecture of JEE Web Services Stack. JAXB which provides an easy way to bind an XML schema to java and vice verse, was updated to.

The SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) (also known as Java APIs for XML Messaging (JAXM)) provides a standard way to send XML documents over the Internet from the Java platform and was updated slightly containing now other consolidated standard.

New Standards are JAX-RS, that provides support for RESTful Web services and JAXR that enables pull-parsing API for reading and writing XML documents, also available in Java SE.

Web Applications related changes

In JEE6 we have updates of all technologies of the Web Container except JSTL. Servlet 3.0 improves Servlet concept in pluggability and some ease of development. It’s also introduces Async Servlet and long waited File Uploading!. Also now configuration can be done by annotations.

Newcomer is a specification of Debugging Support for Other Languages 1.0. This describes standardized tools for correlating Java virtual machine byte code to source code of languages other than the Java, so it would guarantee debugging possibility of everything what runs is JSR-45 certified container.

Enterprise Technologies changes

In the Enterprise section we see some important changes and new specifications. The probably most prominent one is the introduction of the Context and Dependency Injection (CDI) that is there to unify the JavaServer Faces-managed bean component model with the Enterprise JavaBeans component model to simplify the programming model and architecture of web-based applications. Take a look an Weld Framework as reference implementation to this.

The similar sounding Standard Dependency Injection for Java JSR-330 just define a standard and common known DI like in spring and other frameworks. Look at popular Guice DI-Framework from Google which implements JSR-330.

Bean Validation introduces a very cool annotation based and architecture layer independent Java Bean validation.

There are also some interesting improvements in EJBs. Singleton is a new type and can be only one per container, it is also possible to use @Local Beans (Same VM) without interface. Furthermore JPA 2.0 has advanced query possibilities and validation.

Management Standards

Java EE 6 Certified Application Servers

• Oracle (former Sun) GlassFish AS 3.0.1 Full certified
• JBoss AS 6.0.0 Web Profile certification
• IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.0 (in development, Beta available)

Please feel free to correct me or provide additional information.