Jakarta EE, Java EE, J2EE, and the Spring Framework

In 2017, Oracle donated Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation and as part of the process, Java EE was renamed Jakarta EE. The donation to the Eclipse Foundation meant that the Jakarta EE specification became truly vendor-neutral, with no single vendor having control over the specifications.

Java EE, in turn, was introduced back in 2006 by Sun Microsystems. The first version of Java EE was Java EE 5. Java EE replaced J2EE; the last version of J2EE was J2EE 1.4, released back in 2003. Even though J2EE can be considered obsolete technology, having been superseded by Java EE several years ago and then renamed Jakarta EE, the term J2EE refuses to die. Many individuals to this day still refer to Jakarta EE as J2EE and many companies advertise on their websites and job boards that they are looking for “J2EE developers”, seemingly unaware that they are referring to a technology that has been obsolete for several years. The current correct term for the technology is Jakarta EE.

Additionally, the term J2EE has become a “catch-all” term for any server-side Java technology; frequently Spring applications are referred to as J2EE applications. Spring is not and never has been J2EE. As a matter of fact, Spring was created by Rod Johnson as an alternative to J2EE back in 2002. Just as with Jakarta EE, Spring applications are frequently erroneously referred to as J2EE applications.