Java EE 7 is a step towards moving the Enterprise platform to a cloud-computing platform. Until we get to the next standard, Java EE 7 offers HTML5 productivity, and it delivers new features such as WebSocket, asynchronous communications over Servlets, RESTful endpoints, and Concurrent Utilities.

We covered in the first chapter the new features in Java EE 7 by first explaining the HTML5 movement. HTML5, we learned, is more than just a markup language, it also embraces semantics, a much improved document structure, APIs for mobile-device awareness, 3D graphics, support for the Canvas drawing, offline storage, styling content through CSS3, and exciting new APIs such as WebSocket and Web Worker.

By now we understand the overall architecture of the Java EE 7 platform. The platform sits between the infrastructure of the hardware including the operating system, network, filing systems, and the JVM-and the thousands of web clients and other business-to-business consumers. All of these are boundaries and are considered endpoints. There are two different profiles available in Java EE 7 standard: the Full and Web Profiles. The Web Profile is a reduced set of JSRs.

We took the time to examine a worked example of Java EE 7 new features with a web application called XenTracker. We saw highlights such as WebSocket and an asynchronous JAX-RS output.

In the subsequent chapters, we will introduce Gradle as a build system. The book's source code relies entirely on Gradle. We will learn how to write the integration tests with Java EE 7 application by using an open source framework called Arquillian. We use some Arquillian to clearly demonstrate the features of Java EE 7 and also rely on the embedded application server container, the reference implementation GlassFish 4 open source application server.

The next chapter gets us further in understanding the DHM of Java EE 7, by rolling the ball with CDI.