EE4J: Eclipse’s replacement for Java EE unveiled

Eclipse Foundation unveils nine EE4J proposals covering Java NIO, REST, web services, JSON, messaging, middleware, and WebSockets

t-mizo (CC BY 2.0)

The Eclipse Foundation, the new keeper of enterprise Java, has moved forward with nine project proposals for Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J), which the organization describes as the first step toward the migration of Java EE (Enterprise Edition) to the open source tools organization.

The proposals, published for community review, cover aspects of Java ranging from JSON and REST to messaging. They emerge in response to Oracle’s decision in August to turn over enterprise Java to an open source tools foundation, which resulted in Eclipse taking over the project. This followed a tumultuous year for enterprise Java, with Oracle deciding on a plan to upgrade Java EE after being criticized for neglect, only to shed stewardship of Java EE this year.  

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The nine proposals, listed last week by Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich, include:

• Eclipse Grizzly, featuring a framework designed to help developers take advantage of the NIO API, which was developed to make it easier to write scalable server applications in Java.
• Eclipse Jersey, a REST framework. This project provides a reference implementation of JAX-RS.
• Eclipse JSON Processing, offering an API to process JSON documents.
• Eclipse Message Service API for Java, enabling messaging between clients. An API is provided for Java Message Service.
• Eclipse Mojarra, serving as a reference implementation for the JavaServer Faces (JSF) specification for building UIs for web applications.
• Eclipse OpenMQ, featuring a message-oriented middleware platform.
• Eclipse RESTful Web Services API for Java, with an API and test kit for Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS).
• Eclipse Tyrus, providing a reference implementation of Java API for WebSocket and enabling development of WebSocket applications for bidirectional communication between a server and a remote host.
• Eclipse WebSocket API for Java, for integrating WebSocket into client and server applications.

Aside from these proposals, two others are in the process of being migrated over to the EE4J project. These include EclipseLink, providing an open source Java persistence solution, and Eclipse Yasson, a Java framework providing a binding layer between Java classes and JSON documents.