Hashtag Jakarta EE #11

Welcome to the eleventh issue of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

It’s been a special week. But at least, in our industry, we are pretty well equipped and used to remote working. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that the measures taken will get the situation under control and we can get back to normal as soon as possible.

Supporting the Community

At the end of the week, we launched an initiative sponsored by the Jakarta EE Working Group to enable Java User Groups around the world to stream live events for free using our Crowdcast account. This will be available for at least as long as physical meetups are put on hold due to the Covid-19 situation.

Over to some updates about what is going on in the MicroProfile community.

Push vs Pull

The hangout this Tuesday was in entirety devoted to discussing the Pull vs Push approach for technical alignment with other standardization bodies, such as Jakarta EE. The vote is ongoing and will be closed Tuesday, March 17. Check out the MicroProfile Calendar for details about how to join the MicroProfile hangouts.

The current status of the voting indicates that the decision will be to go for a Pull model. What will this mean for Jakarta EE?

Implications of Pull

The obvious consequence of the Pull model is that if Jakarta EE decides to pull in a MicroProfile specification, it will essentially mean a fork. For those runtimes supporting either MicroProfile or Jakarta EE, but not both, it will be business as usual.

Those supporting both will have the headache of figuring out how to implement this. This will probably not be a hard nut to crack until one, or two of the tines of the fork, start evolving.

A possible Scenario

Let’s say that Jakarta EE decides to pull in MicroProfile Config and create a specification called Jakarta Config. The base package is changed from org.eclipse.microprofile.config to jakarta.config and the specification is added to the Jakarta EE Full and/or Web Profile.

Other Jakarta specifications are now free to reference Jakarta Config and implementations are required to implement it in order to be Jakarta EE Compatible. Products out there supporting both (e.g. OpenLiberty, WildFly, and Payara to mention a few open-source implementations), will now have two configuration options that are more or less identical.

Let’s say, then, that Jakarta Config adds a nifty feature. Should this feature be back-ported to MicroProfile Config? Or should MicroProfile Config be abandoned and Jakarta Config added to the base Jakarta specs required for MicroProfile?

I think these questions need to be addressed somehow, and that it is up to the vendors behind these initiatives to figure out a strategy that is in the best interest of their customers. It is a too easy way out to say that this will self-regulate by the community.

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