Java EE Platform Specification

This is the project for the Java EE Platform specification. The Java EE Platform specification is the umbrella specification that defines the Java EE platform. The platform specification doesn’t define the Java EE APIs directly, but rather includes them by reference to other Java specifications and defines how they all fit together in the overall Java EE platform. The platform specification also defines other attributes of the platform such as security, deployment, transactions, and interoperability.

API Specifications

The API specifications for the Java EE platform are collected together here:

The Specifications page contains links to the project pages for all Java EE specifications.

(Be sure to view this page at https://javaee.github.io/javaee-spec/, not at the GitHub source code repository view, so that the links in this page will work correctly.)

Java EE 8

Java EE 8 was approved by the JCP EC on Aug 21, 2017. The final specification is available for download on the JSR 366 page and can also be found here. The javadocs for the entire platform are available here.

The Spec Leads for Java EE 8 were Linda DeMichiel and Bill Shannon. A full list of the Expert Group members can be found on the JSR 366 page.

Java EE Community Survey

Results from the Java EE Community Survey are available here. Thanks for telling us how to evolve Java EE for the next generation of cloud and microservices applications!

Java EE 8 Planning

At JavaOne 2016, we presented our proposed update to our Java EE 8 plans. We’ll decide exactly what updates to make based on the results of our survey, the results of other community surveys, feedback from licensees, customers, and developers, and discussions in the platform expert group.

We also presented some of our thoughts for future Java EE releases in Enterprise Java for the Cloud and Portable Cloud Applications with Java EE.

Before our first proposal for Java EE 8 in 2014, we conducted an extensive Java EE 8 Community Survey. You can read about the questions we asked and see the results here. A number of the potential features we described in the survey received strong support by the community. To get further input, we then also asked community members to tell us how they would prioritize among these. The results from this last part of the survey are described here.

If you have further feedback for us, please join the javaee group and the javaee-spec subgroup and post to javaee-spec@javaee.groups.io for further discussion.

Java EE 7

Java EE 7 was released as JSR 342 on May 28, 2013. The Spec Leads for Java EE 7 were Linda DeMichiel and Bill Shannon. You’ll find a full list of the Expert Group members who contributed to Java EE 7 on the JSR 342 page.

Project Communication

You can track all the platform expert group communication by subscribing to the javaee-spec mailing list. To subscribe, or to browse the archives, see the javaee-spec group page.

You can find the drafts of proposals and other working documents on the Documents page.

All downloads of (current and historical) proposals, draft specifications, presentations, survey results, etc. are available in the repository.

Compatibility Requirements

The rules we follow to ensure backwards compatibility when revising Java EE specifications are described on the Compatibility Requirements page.

JCP Processes

The use of JCP processes by the Java EE group at Oracle is described on the JCP Processes page.

Annotation Rules

Annotations are used heavily in the Java EE programming model. It’s important that all Java EE specifications define and use annotations in a consistent way. We’ve written up some DRAFT rules on how annotations work.

About “JEE”

For more about “JEE”, see this page.