Every Java EE 6 API has been changed, enhanced, or some minor updates have taken place. The focus of this version was put on WebTier. For this purpose there is a Web 2.0 profile with some of the interfaces to make it able to use the lightweight features. The use of profiles with specific subsets of Java EE APIs are intended for specific types of applications.
Each profile is fully integrated and just works out of the box, although integrating add-ons is still possible. With profiles one can create modular, lightweight Java EE compliant application servers a lot easier. In this release, there's only one profile, the Web Profile (except from the full profile where you get all the APIs that belong to the full profile.)
The following table shows you which API's are in the Web Profile:
|
API |
Web Profile |
|---|---|
|
Servlet 3 |
√ |
|
JSF 2 |
√ |
|
CDI |
√ |
|
EJB 3.1 |
√ |
|
JPA 2 |
√ |
|
Bean validation |
√ |
|
JTA |
√ |
The major changes the new Java EE 6 has are:
- Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI): Since the introduction of Java EE 6, CDI is the next generation dependency injection.
- Java Server Faces (JSF) 2: JSF 2 is more flexible, is easy to use and has adopted various new technologies and new features.
- Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.1: Ease of use, some new features are added. EJB Lite is a lightweight version with local interfaces, session beans (stateful, stateless and singleton), and no timers or scheduling included.
- Java Persistence API (JPA) 2: More flexibility and new features.
- Servlet 3: Easier to use, new features that are focused on lightweight web profile. Also, some more security enhancements and asynchronous support.
- Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS 1.1): REST-based web services in addition to SOAP support in JAX-WS.
- Bean validation: Validating data in JavaBeans can be done better by expressing application constraints declaratively.
- Java Connection Architecture 1.6 (JCA): Ease of development by using metadata annotations and no need to use
ra.xmlanymore, better security, and integration for EIS applications. - Java Authorization Contract for Containers 1.4(JACC): Some updates like the use of annotations for propagating security policies.
- JAXB 2.2: To bind an XML schema to Java and the other way around was updated too.
In the following sections, some of the new features will be highlighted.