The history of key features added in Java EE since version 5

Let us now have a quick look at what changes have been introduced in Java EE after version 5.

Java EE 6

The most famous change that was introduced in Java EE version 6 is undoubtedly the support for RESTful API web services. REST has become the more popular form of web service, compared to SOAP web services, due to its flexible nature.

Additionally, version 6 saw the introduction of the Context and Dependency Injection (CDI) API. That allowed for, among other things, the use of dependency injection in Java EE applications.

Java EE 7

Java EE version 7 introduced the notion of batch applications. These are a number of tasks that are executed without user intervention.

It also introduced some additional concurrency utilities, such as the managed executor service, a scheduled variant, and a managed thread factory.

Furthermore, the first version of the WebSocket API was introduced. WebSockets allow full duplex communication between two peers.

Finally, the introduction of the JSON-P specification should not go unmentioned. It allows Java objects to be serialized to the JSON format, and vice versa. This has, with the rise of the RESTful API web services, become a pivotal specification of the Java EE platform.

Java EE 8

Java EE 8 was the final version of Java EE released by Oracle. The was a considerable amount of time between the release of Java EE version 7 and version 8 (4 years, 3 months, and 3 days to be exact). It was starting to become clear that Java EE was in demise at Oracle.

Nevertheless, this final version introduced some good functionality. Most of all, there was JAXB, the Java API for XML binding. Furthermore, annotation-based security was introduced with the Java Security EE API.