If you are arriving from a JBoss EAP 6 environment you will be eager to know about the highlights of the new platform. Broadly speaking, the changes encompass both the server administration area and the Java Enterprise APIs that can help to provide applications on it. We will start by introducing the new administrative features and then we will briefly mention the API highlights.
The administrative features are described as follows:
Undertow web server: JBoss Web has for quite a long time been the face of the web application server. Although compatible with Servlet/JSP Specifications it has kept the long-term legacy with Tomcat. The new Undertow web server has been built from scratch using the best-of-breed Java IO API. Some of its core features include non-blocking NIO based APIs, a lightweight and fully embeddable architecture based on pluggable handlers, and support for WebSockets, including JSR-356 and the HTTP Upgrade mechanism. Besides this, Undertow is capable of working as a reverse proxy or load balancer for a clustered application server, opening the door to the full JBoss clustering platform.
Simpler server management: Thanks to the HTTP upgrade mechanism available in Undertow, now you can reduce the number of ports in the default installation to just two:
* 8080 for applications with JNDI and EJB multiplexed
* 9990 for management, for both HTTP/JSON and native API
Support for HTTP/2: The new web server architecture supports the new version of the HTTP protocol, named HTTP/2. HTTP/2 aims to reduce latency and make efficient use of the TCP connection by means of binary framing, request/response multiplexing, header compression (HPACK) and more.
New life cycle modes: It is now possible to suspend and resume the execution of the application server. This allows active
sessions/requests/in-flight-txsto complete and can be used for a graceful server shutdown scenario.Enhanced server management: The administration web console has been revamped with a new graphical layout and new availabilities such as the Datasource wizard that will let you quickly create database connections with a few touches.
ArtemisMQ Messaging Broker: In the new server version, the messaging broker has changed to ArtemisMQ which is directly derived from the former HornetQ. Former HornetQ clients will be supported out of the box, while offering compatibility to Apache's ActiveMQ 5.0 clients as well.
ORB Switch: The new version of the application server has switched to OpenJDK ORB which provides better interoperability with other vendors compared with the earlier JacORB implementation.
The Java EE 7 API highlights are related to the the Java EE 7 (JSR 342) specification is an umbrella specification which encompasses 33 single specifications. There have been brand new technologies and improvements of existing ones.
Here is a short list of Java EE 7 drivers:
JSR-352 batch applications for the Java platform, featuring a new API for an XML-based job specification language and a runtime API.
JSR-236 concurrency utilities for JavaEE, providing a simple and standard API for using multiple threads from Java Enterprise components.
JSR-353 Java API for JSON Processing (JSON-P). This API can be used to parse, transform, and query JSON data.
JSR-356 WebSockets support, featuring a full-duplex communication channel between the client and the server by means of simple annotations and life cycle callbacks.
Besides the new additions, some updates have been released to existing services. The most notable ones are as follows:
JSR-345, which includes EJB 3.2, plus Interceptors 1.2 and Annotations 1.2
JSR-340, featuring Servlet 3.1: non-blocking I/O, HTTP upgrade, and so on
JSR-342, including the JMS 2.0 API that delivers a JMSContext resource as a wrapper for JMS resources
JSR-344 JSF 2.2: HTML 5, FaceFlows, Stateless views, Resource lib contracts