Today, we are announcing the general availability of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7.3, which introduces Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) 8 support, enhancements to operations on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and several new security features. JBoss EAP is an open source, Java EE 8 compliant and Jakarta EE 8-compliant application server that enables organizations to deploy and manage business-critical enterprise Java applications across hybrid IT environments, including bare metal, virtualized, private clouds or public clouds. With this release, Red Hat is continuing its commitment to Jakarta EE support and enabling customers to extend existing application investments as they continue to transition to emerging architectures and programming paradigms that require a lightweight, highly modular, cloud-native platform.

What’s new in JBoss EAP 7.3

Jakarta EE is the latest standard for building mission-critical enterprise Java applications, transitioning to the Eclipse Foundation where it continues to innovate via a collaborative, community-powered model. JBoss EAP 7.3 offers complete Jarkarta EE 8 support, including backwards-compatibility with the entire JBoss EAP 7 family of releases and the applications written for those earlier releases. This version also introduces new capabilities and enhancements that are designed to improve security, server management, observability and enhancements for JBoss EAP on Red Hat OpenShift. You can read more in the JBoss EAP 7.3 Release Notes, but here are the highlights:

  • Security enhancements - Including support for Server Name Indication (SNI) when using HTTPS, support for Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) to check certificate validity during authentication, automatic detection of multiple keystore types, support for derivation of certificates from the popular “Let’s Encrypt” certificate authority, and many more improvements brought as part of Java EE Security API Specification. Many of these features are part of the Elytron security framework introduced in an earlier release and unifies security configuration across JBoss EAP.
  • Messaging enhancements - Often used in event-driven or transactional applications, this release adds the ability for Message-Driven Beans (MDBs) to be assigned to multiple delivery groups and only receive messages when all groups are active. Memory usage of the messaging journal can be tuned for more efficient use of resources, and the Java Messaging Service (JMS) bridge now includes enhanced metrics reporting for better observability.
  • Enhancements in OpenShift - JBoss EAP has been available as a containerized OpenShift image for a while now, and this release brings new features to enhance that combination. The updates include a new EAP Kubernetes Operator, tooling to customize the deployed server image configuration to include only the capabilities that you require, thereby reducing the memory footprint. The update also adds more automated configuration of JVM memory when deployed in a Linux container, and the ability to run custom JBoss CLI scripts as part of an EAP image build on OpenShift.
  • Tech Preview of Eclipse MicroProfile - This release includes a set of tech preview features implementing several MicroProfile specifications, including MicroProfile Config (externalized microservice configuration for portability across different environments), MicroProfile Metrics (for EAP server observability), a MicroProfile REST Client (for type-safe calls to RESTful APIs), MicroProfile Health Checks (for automating container initialization and restarts when needed), and MicroProfile OpenTracing (for observability and diagnostics for cross-service calls).  Metrics and Tracing come from the SmallRye project, a Red Hat-championed open source project. MicroProfile is well suited for cloud-native Java microservices, so with this release developers can take advantage of JBoss EAP’s enterprise-grade platform while building cloud-native MicroProfile applications. We plan to deliver JBoss EAP support of Eclipse MicroProfile APIs in a future release via an expansion mechanism.

Updates to Red Hat Application Migration Toolkit

In addition to updates to JBoss EAP 7.3, there have been updates to the Red Hat Application Migration Toolkit. Specifically, users of EAP 7.3 can make use of the toolkit for the EAP server migration tool. Supported migration and update paths include upgrading from earlier versions of JBoss EAP to 7.3, third party Java EE application servers to JBoss EAP, Spring Boot to Red Hat Runtimes, Oracle JDK to Red Hat OpenJDK as well as containerization of applications.

For EAP upgrades specifically, the following features were added:

  • Jakarta EE - As a result of the move from Java EE to Jakarta EE, the Maven coordinates of several specification APIs and JBoss EAP BOMs have changed. The Application Migration Toolkit identifies the changes that are required to the analyzed applications.
  • Spring Boot - There are additional rules to support the migration of Spring Boot applications to Red Hat Runtimes. These rules are executed when the target 'rhr' is selected in the analysis configuration.
  • Target Runtime feature - this new feature assesses the technologies identified in each application for compatibility with specific runtimes (for example JBoss EAP and Red Hat JBoss Web Server). Target runtime definitions are extensible enabling the use of custom target runtimes in analysis executions.
  • Visual Studio Code / Eclipse extension - this contains the core features required to perform Application Migration Toolkit analysis in your development environment. For more information about the extension, visit the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Red Hat Application Migration toolkit can be downloaded for free. The server migration tool is included in the JBoss EAP distribution.

Getting EAP 7.3 Support

JBoss EAP is included in Red Hat Runtimes, a Red Hat Middleware product, which also includes a set of cloud-native runtimes and capabilities such as Spring Boot, Node.js, Red Hat SSO, Red Hat AMQ Broker, and Red Hat Data Grid. These are all integrated and optimized for Red Hat OpenShift, offering customers a coherent hybrid cloud application platform on which they can optimize their existing Java applications while innovating with enterprise Java and non-Java microservices, DevOps, CI/CD, and advanced deployment techniques. The idea behind Red Hat Runtimes is a full set of tools so you can choose the right tool for the job.

For full details on this release, refer to the JBoss EAP 7.3 documentation.

JBoss EAP is available for download by members of the Red Hat Developers community. Customers can get the latest updates from the Red Hat Customer Portal.