Eclipse Jakarta EE 9 Release Plan Approved

The Eclipse Foundation's Jakarta EE Working Group today announced unanimous approval of a release plan for version 9 of the Eclipse Jakarta EE Platform.

The Working Group is proposing to deliver the specifications in a series of eight "waves," starting with an Independent (stand-alone) Wave, followed by Waves 1-7. Wave 1, for example, comprises the following specs:

• Jakarta JSON Processing
• Jakarta Dependency Injection
• Jakarta Expression Language
• Jakarta Bean Validation
• Jakarta WebSocket
• Jakarta Servlet
• Jakarta Activation
• Jakarta SOAP with Attachments
• Jakarta Interceptors

Details of the specs planned for each wave are available on the project page. So is the release timeline, but the Working Group emphasized that the schedule is "aggressive" and the dates are early estimates that will be reviewed and adjusted at each release. For now, the final release is planned for mid-2020 on the following release schedule:

• Individual Component Plan Reviews (Feb 1)
• All API jars available (Feb 14th)
• Platform TCK changes complete (March 13th)
• Full Profile and Web Profile First Release Candidate (May 4th)
• Full Profile and Web Profile Final Release Review Votes Start (June 12th)

The Foundation's executive director, Mike Milinkovich, announced the plan in his "Life at Eclipse" blog. (If you're not reading it, you should be.) The primary goal of the Jakarta EE 9 release, he said, is to deliver a set of specifications that are functionally similar to Jakarta EE 8, but in the new jakarta.* namespace .

"Moving a platform and ecosystem the size and scale of Jakarta EE takes time and careful planning," Milinkovich said. "After a great deal of discussion, the community consensus was that using EE 9 to provide a clear transition to the jakarta namespace, and to pare down the platform would be the best path to future success. While work on the EE 9 platform release is proceeding, individual component specification teams are encouraged to innovate in their individual specifications, which will hopefully lead to a rapid iteration towards the Jakarta EE 10 release."

The Working Group is also developing a program plan, as well as marketing and budget plans for 2020, Milinkovich said.

Milinkovich's post also includes a recap of some the enterprise Java community's accomplishments over the past year.

Posted by John K. Waters on January 16, 2020