The seamless integration of multiple Java EE standards with the convention over configuration approach minimizes the amount of boilerplate work developers have to do. The configuration of modern enterprise applications is thus kept to a minimum. Especially the default conventions, which work for the majority of enterprise applications and the possibility of overriding configuration only if required, increases the developer's productivity.

Enterprise applications should minimize their dependencies ideally to only the provided Java EE API. The third-party dependencies should only be added if they are a business necessity and not a technical one.

Java EE applications should be packaged as thin WAR files, following a zero-dependency approach. This has a positive impact on the time spend to build as well as to publish the application.

Modern Java EE applications are far from the negative image of heavyweight J2EE runtimes. They start up and deploy fast and try to reduce the memory impact. Whereas application servers might not be the most lightweight runtime out there, they ship with enough benefits for enterprise applications such as integrating technology or managing life cycles, connections, transactions, or threads, that would have to be implemented otherwise.

In order to simplify application life cycles and deployments it's advisable to deploy one application per application server. This gets rid of a few potential challenges and perfectly fits into a modern world of container technologies. The next chapter will show you this modern world in the age of cloud platforms, what container technologies are about and how Java EE fits into this picture.