The Payara Monthly Catch: December 2020

In December, the biggest news was Jakarta EE 9’s official release, completing the move to the jakarta namespace. This officially took place at the Eclipse Foundation Jakarta One Livestream, where our CEO Steve Millidge took part in the keynote speech (watch here) and presented as lead on the GlassFish project (video here). 

In other major release news, MicroProfile 4.0 was made available towards the end of the month, with the delayed release set to bring in new features including alignment with Jakarta EE 8. 

Payara has also enjoyed kick-starting healthy debate this month, with our CEO Steve Millidge proposing that Ahead of Time Compilation with GraalVM isn’t always all it’s cracked up to – and watching the comments roll in!  

We are hoping to continue to make bold statements and drive forward discussion in the Java and Jakarta EE community in 2021. 

If this sparks your interest, make sure you are following us on Twitter!

Articles

Off-Heap memory reconnaissance – This blog by Brice Dutheil assesses Java  memory – as the shift to running applications in containers results in tighter constraints, and means Java developers need to pay close attention to how memory is consumed. 

Practical Transaction Handling in Microservice Architecture – Moving away from monolithic creates challenges. This article by Anjana Fernando presents possible solutions. 

The 10 commandments of navigating code reviews – Here Angie Jones gives her advice, from embracing compromise to not taking feedback personally. 

What are Hidden Classes in Java 15 And How Are They Used? – Looking at Java 15 or even anticipating the next major release Java 17? Check out this Vipin Sharma article for background on the role hidden classes will play for the future of Java.

Stranger Things in Java: Constructors – Claudio De Sio Cesari suggests you underestimate Java constructors at your own risk: “A basic argument of the language such as constructors actually hides even complex scenarios”. He provides theoretical knowledge.

Deploying Jakarta EE 9 applications to Payara using Cargo Maven plugin – Hantsy demos tech preview functionality, released Community 5.2020.5, to run Jakarta EE 9 on Payara. 

Comparing performance of JVM implementations – A thorough look at some different choices of JVM by Kamil Duda,  including GraalVM, Azul Zing and Eclipse Open J9.

Syntactic Sugar Is Not Always Good – Bozhidar Bozhanov, inspired by Vlad Mihalcea’s post about the recently introduced text blocks in Java,  discusses problems “syntactic sugar” can cause in consistency and code readability.

Cloud Native Foundation’s 5 technologies to watch in 2021 – Brendan O’Leary’s predictions include Kubernetes for edge and eBPF. We’d add Payara Cloud…

Why I’ve Been Merging Microservices Back Into The Monolith with InVisionApp  – Monolith vs Microservices is a conversation Payara is happy to have: sometimes the micro architecture makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t. We enjoyed this balanced view from Ben Nadel. 

A day of fishing with Jakarta EE and MicroProfile – Edwin Derks describes how Payara is “a good fit for running instances in Microservices architectures deployed on cloud environments”, offering both “full-blown” and “slimmed down” runtime options. 

How to Inspire the Next Generation of Java Developers? – Heather VanCura on encouraging others to start their Java  journey – something we try to do here at Payara, from our Degree Apprenticeships to starter resources.

Conversation Starter 

Cloud Myth: Ahead of Time Compilation Will Save You Money – Our Founder and CEO Steve Millidge debunks cloud-native myths in today’s blog. Does ahead of time compilation with GraalVM really reduce operational costs? 

Check out just some of the responses here.

Cartoon of the Month 

Videos and Podcasts 

How we make VS Code in the open – Alex Ross and Benjamin Pasero discuss how VS Code is made, keeping projects running smoothly according to open source principles – providing inspiration for best engineering practice! 

“Moving Java Forward” with Brian Goetz, Trisha Gee, and Paul Everitt – This conversation addresses Java in the modern world and keeping a language invented in the mid-90s relevant, with the, new rapid cadence playing a huge part.

AdoptOpenJDK with Rory and George Adams – This video sees Rory and George discussing the benefits of a vendor-neutral JDK,  how Microsoft is striving to improve its knowledge of the JVM and the importance of collaboration. A concise hit of Java inspiration!

Jakarta EE Contributor Contributor Markus Karg speaks to Ivar Grimstad about Jakarta EE 9 – “For Eclipse Foundation  and the Jakarta EE 9 working group, this was a huge task and we’ve proven we can deliver, and in the next stage we’ll deliver new features.”

Security by Barcoding – Avoid #security as a silo! Listen to Snyk’s Brian Vermeer on the BarCoding podcast with Paul van Alst and Arnout Rijpkema: covering his route from software developer to security, and the growth of DevSecOps.

Application Modernization and Rabbits – We love this very cute explanation by Niklas Heidloff of how a microservices architecture can help you scale-up. Bunny explosion = request explosion. 

MicroProfile Your Cloud Native Companion for Enterprise Java – At EclipseCon, Rudy de Busscher demonstrated how to optimise your Enterprise Java EE application with MicroProfile, using standards like Jaeger and Prometheus.

Java Persistence, an AirHacks podcast – Two Java Champions together: Adam Bien interviews Vlad Mihalcea, covering various JDBC drivers and features, isolation levels, consistency, databases and transactions conveniency.

“A great community uses Payara.”  – Adam Bien’s last Q+A of 2020 saw him help a user who can’t make Netbeans work with GlassFish – using Payara as the fix! 

Java, Containers, and Intellij IDEA – Elder Moraes and Mala Gupta discuss potential pitfalls of using containers with Java and the best practices that can help combat them, from Docker to using the latest OpenJDK.

Payara in the Press! 

Jakarta EE 9 provides a new baseline for evolution of platform – In SD Times, our CEO Steve Millidge discussed our role driving forward Jakarta EE and the collaborative process of being a part of Eclipse Foundation.

Jakarta EE Working Group Releases Jakarta EE 9 Specifications to Lay the Foundation for True Cloud NativeJava – Our Founder Steve Millidge was quoted in the Eclipse Foundation press release.

Community News 

Payara Services Celebrates the Release of Jakarta EE 9 – As Eclipse Foundation Jakarta EE contributors, we’re proud to have played our role driving forward Enterprise Java, with the move from the javax to jakarta namespace. 

Introducing Jakarta EE 9 – A fantastic concise summary of Jakarta EE 9 changes by  Buhake Sindi. Read here for the headline information all in one place.  

What’s new in IntelliJ IDEA 2020.3 – For Java: conversion of records, full support for sealed classes & more. At Payara, we have updated our plugin tools for Ultimate, and ported the functionality for Payara Micro to a new plugin available on the Community edition. 

Towards OpenJDK 17 – OpenJDK will be the next major Java Development Kit released – Claes Redestad looks here at what it should aim for, as well as what the experience of working on the project has been like for him.

Payara Server Web Profile is Jakarta EE 8 Web Profile Compatible – This means it has passed the approximately 18,000 open source licensed Jakarta EE TCKs for the Web Profile Platform. 

MicroProfile 4.0 is Now Available – We are already working to make Payara Platform compatible, having introduced 2 of the release candidates (now confirmed!) in our Community edition: MP Health 3.0 & MP JWT Auth 1.2.