Reassessing Native Compilation for Jakarta EE Applications – A Pragmatic Perspective

Java’s Ahead-of-Time (AOT) native compilation, as seen in frameworks like GraalVM, boasts rapid startup times and lower memory usage.

However, for Jakarta EE application developers, the practical benefits of these advantages often don’t translate into substantial economic or technical gains. This leads to questioning the viability of investing resources into adapting existing Jakarta EE applications
for GraalVM compatibility.

This guide is aimed at developers working with Jakarta EE applications who are exploring the possibility of native compilation. We’ll explore the practical implications of transitioning to GraalVM, assess the impact of cloud environments on AOT benefits, compare JVM optimizations with AOT, and finally, weigh the business relevance of native Java.